Posted on by Gil

0-fer 20th century edition

Because I’m not some commie pinko, I don’t listen to NPR. So I don’t know if Dick Meyer has worthwhile literary opinions or not. What I do know is that he posted this list of his top English-language novels written last century.

He organized the list in terms of “how much the book hit me, moved me, made me see — and how it stuck with me.” He listed Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man at #1, and History of Love by Nicole Krauss (0-fer!) at #100.

I, on the other hand, reorganized his list in terms of whether I’ve read ’em, whether I’ve at least read something by the author, and whether they’re on my 0-fer list.

Since some authors have multiple books on his list, the 0-fer numbers won’t add up to 100, but hey:

I’ve read 32 of the books on his list, at least something by 12 other authors, and my 0-fer list is a remarkable 50 titles! (but only 45 authors, because of dupes)

Wanna see what’s what? Just click “more”!

Read It

  1. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
  2. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
  3. The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
  4. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
  5. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
  6. All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren
  7. American Pastoral, Philip Roth
  8. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
  9. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
  10. The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
  11. All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy
  12. Appointment in Samarra, John O’Hara
  13. Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger
  14. Animal Farm, George Orwell
  15. Chalotte’s Web, E.B. White
  16. The Secret Sharer, Joseph Conrad
  17. The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West
  18. Ironweed, William Kennedy
  19. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John Le Carré
  20. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig
  21. Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs
  22. Howard’s End, E.M. Forster
  23. The Killer Inside Me, Jim Thompson
  24. The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
  25. Portnoy’s Complaint, Philip Roth
  26. Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
  27. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
  28. A Fan’s Notes, Frederick Exley
  29. The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett
  30. Double Indemnity, James Cain
  31. Seize the Day, Saul Bellow
  32. Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut

Read Something Else by the Author

  1. Humboldt’s Gift, Saul Bellow
  2. A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
  3. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
  4. The Untouchable, John Banville
  5. Beloved, Toni Morrison
  6. Light in August, William Faulkner
  7. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
  8. Atonement, Ian McEwan
  9. A Soldier of the Great War, Mark Helprin
  10. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
  11. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
  12. Roscoe, William Kennedy
  13. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
  14. Black Dogs, Ian McEwan
  15. The Sunlight Dialogues, John Gardner
  16. Pnin, Vladimir Nabokov
  17. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John Le Carré
  18. A Man in Full, Tom Wolfe

0-ferriffic!

  1. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
  2. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
  3. Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner
  4. U.S.A. Trilogy, John Dos Passos
  5. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
  6. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike
  7. Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham
  8. My Antonia, Willa Cather
  9. A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest Gaines
  10. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
  11. Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis
  12. The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
  13. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
  14. The Sportswriter, Richard Ford
  15. The Lay of the Land, Richard Ford
  16. Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence
  17. Aloft, Chang-Rae Lee
  18. So Long, See You Tomorrow, William Maxwell
  19. Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
  20. Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis
  21. The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy
  22. The Good Soldier, Ford Maddox Ford
  23. Crossing to Safety, Wallace Stegner
  24. Felicia’s Journey, William Trevor
  25. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
  26. In the Lake of the Woods, Tim O’Brien
  27. A Coffin for Dimitrios, Eric Ambler
  28. The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk
  29. The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara
  30. The Human Factor, Graham Greene
  31. Paris Trout, Pete Dexter
  32. Fabulous Small Jews, Joseph Epstein
  33. Charming Billy, Alice McDermott
  34. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
  35. Razor’s Edge, W. Somerset Maugham
  36. Lying Awake, Mark Salzman
  37. Light Years, James Salter
  38. Spartina, John Casey
  39. Scoop, Evelyn Waugh
  40. Blood of the Lamb, Peter De Vries
  41. Empire Falls, Richard Russo
  42. The Ginger Man, J.P. Donleavy
  43. Rabbit Is Rich, John Updike
  44. Deliverance, James Dickey
  45. The Bird Artist, Howard Norman
  46. City Boy, Herman Wouk
  47. Advise and Consent, Allen Drury
  48. Sophie’s Choice, William Styron
  49. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
  50. History of Love, Nicole Krauss

7 Replies to “0-fer 20th century edition”

  1. Really? You never read The Bell Jar? Were you never a teenage girl?… oh, wait. You weren’t. My advice for the 0-fers, for no particular reason other than I really liked them: The Killer Angels, Lying Awake, and Empire Falls.

    Reply

  2. don’t tell me you’ve never read The Grapes of Wrath, or To Kill a Mockingbird –
    where did I go wrong????

    Reply

  4. He sounds like an idiot–Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ranks nowhere near #1, isn’t remotely as good as books such as To the Lighthouse, The Recognitions, Dhalgren (everyone’s afraid of science fiction unless Huxley or Orwell writes it although Dhalgren’s not, as billed, a sci-fi novel). I never even heard of Nicole Krauss; my bad. But Joyce wasn’t very good with characters and couldn’t write an actual story to save his life. Nonetheless every critic in America is afraid not to say Ulysses (which Woolf rightly considered a failure as a novel though it’s brilliant as a literary model for reality) or Portrait. And, I must respectfully disagree with Cecily about Empire Falls. Aside from the obvious plot, the humor is absurdly overdone, the characters cartoonish, and the writing just pretty bad. The last time I recally the Pulitzer having some sort of a clue is Beloved. I did, however, find the Bell Jar engaging in spite of the fact that I was no longer a teen when I read it and have never been a girl (at least not to my knowledge). His list by the way, looks suspiciously very much like the Modern’s Library’s … with a few glaring misfires, like the Godfather. I’m surprised Robert Ludlum didn’t make his list. Or Dan Brown. But i guess it’s all subjective & everybody’s right & nobody’s wrong.

    Reply

  5. I just spent an hour writing a comment, and somehow it didn’t go through. Oh, well. Here was the essence of it.

    I’ve read 18 of these books and something by 8 other authors.

    Many 0-fers. Nabokov and Steinbeck prominent among them.

    I see a lot of people hating on Joyce.

    I think Joyce is good.

    He writes vivid and pitch perfect dialogue and evokes an entire metropolis populated with individual people with words alone. He has an extraordinarily developed artistic sensibility.

    His intent in story was to forge the uncreated conscience of his race, and he succeeded in telling a more interesting story than 99+% of books.

    After you’ve read 50 or so books, most plots are either the same, or not very interesting. There are some tremendously constructed and beautifully complicated plots, like Tom Jones or 100 Years of Solitude, that are fascinating in themselves, but these kinds of books are rare.

    Joyce has a lot of genuine fans. Many of them geeks, yes, but fakers, I don’t think so.

    Many sexually attractive people who read vigorous lives also enjoy reading Joyce. His hyper advanced artistic sensibility alluded to earlier appeals to them.

    Reply

  6. Gil, how on god’s green earth did you get away with never having to read To Kill A Mockingbird? I swear we read it once a week in middle school.

    I like Somerset Maugham, although I suspect he’s not a very good writer. His prose is very straightforward, almost plain. He’s like John O’Hara, except you don’t want to punch him in the face. I have no idea what that means, except that I want to punch O’Hara in the face. Appointment With a Beating, that guy.

    I also enjoyed the USA Trilogy. I thought it was funny and mean, and I was entertained throughout. Couldn’t tell you if it was good. It took like 20 minutes to read each book, though, plus 15 people will tell you they always meant to get around to that one if you read it in public. It’s snotty to read stuff in public so you pretty much deserve whatever any bozo wants to lob in your direction. Unless you’re on the bus, reading this:

    http://www.comicsreporter.com/images/uploads/01crackwhoreuse.jpg

    In which case you’re awesome.

    Did you like the Le Carre?

    Finally, I appreciate you laughing at all my Darkness Visible jokes even though apparently you’ve never read Styron.

    Reply

  7. The older I get, the more issues I have with the idea that there is a canonical list of books that must be read. That being said, there are a lot of novels on his list that are worth reading. And some not–I’d love to have someone explain why any of Tom Wolfe’s novels crack a list like this, let alone “A Man in Full.” I read it a few years ago, and I wouldn’t recommend it. Also, when did Edgar Rice Burroughs gain enough respect to be considered?

    One other thing–I noticed that the Modern Library list to which he refers also includes the reader’s poll list, which is worth a chuckle, if only for its odd emphasis on the so-called novels of Ayn Rand and L. Ron Hubbard. Gotta love the internetz.

    Reply

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