BEST, BESTER, BESTEST NOVELS

posted by James Reel

    Two Time magazine critics have issued their list of the 100 best novels published from 1923 to the present. I’ll withhold comment, because the blogosphere will no doubt be teeming this week with close analysis and random yelping on the subject. Instead, I’ll point you to a column I wrote in 1998 for a now-defunct e-zine archived at an undisclosed location; the subject was a similar list released by the Modern Library:

Look at the Modern Library's list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century, and you can easily argue over rankings, neglected titles, undeserving titles and excluded authors of color. But it's more difficult to argue against a more general observation: This list has less to do with the vitality of great literature than with the decline of the book. Novels aren't getting worse as the century draws to a close, but the book itself is losing its cultural authority, and even the Modern Library's savants have begun to define great fiction less by its status as literature than by its familiarity through other media. Want to know what the great English-language novels are? Go to Blockbuster Video.