hot air and a good time
a brief take on the NYT's "Best Books of the 21st Century" list from a classics editor
First of all: hello to my new subscribers! I am thrilled to see you here.
I think we can agree: it’s been a HOOT of a week, thanks to The New York Times’ list of the best books published in English (though not originally published in English) on or after January 1, 2000. The mulling! The grumbling! The suspense! I can’t remember the last time the publishing world watched the Gray Lady’s book coverage with such baited breath.
Now I love reading lists. But I’m also wary of lists with such prescriptive undertones—and make no mistake, when a cultural institution like The NYT enlists 500 novelists, nonfiction writers, librarians, poets, booksellers, editors, critics, and journalists to compile such a list, and creates a fun interactive module (“I’ve read X” and “I want to read Y”), then the list will be seen, is intended to be seen, as prescriptive. Imagine how differently the list would feel if it had been titled “Our Favorite Literary Luminaries’ Collective Favorite Books of the 21st Century”!
I also happen to believe—from my vantage point as a classics editor—that these lists are meaningless hot air which bear no resemblance whatsoever to what will be considered canonical works, years from now. And here’s why I think you should, too.
The books that are considered “the best” now are not always the ones that last.
LitHub had an eye-opening article a few years ago that compared the bestselling books of the 1920s with the classics of the 1920s—and the chasm between the two is frankly eye-opening. Sometimes a bestseller does become a classic: Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Sometimes a bestselling book evaporates out of the culture—perhaps because it has little to offer succeeding generations or perhaps because it lacks academic champions who add it to curricula. But either way, a book’s canonical status is never determined by its contemporary readership.
This list is a snapshot of what is currently accepted as great, rather than what our culture is currently contesting.
What does it mean that not a single writer on this list is under forty; that only two Millennial writers make the cut? Are Philip Roth’s The Human Stain or The Plot Against America really two of the best books of the past quarter-century? Or were those titles added because of the reputation he established in the 20th century with Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoy’s Complaint? Is Isabel Wilkerson’s “best” book the magisterial historical portrait of The Warmth of Other Sons or the adroit and daring trans-racial intellectual framework of Caste? Is an age—say, the 1950s—defined by the aesthetic ideals of its contemporaneous literary luminaries, or by the boundary-pushing demands of its contentious, younger generation—say, the Beat Poets? I lean towards the latter opinion. But perhaps I’m just a grumpy Millennial who refuses to believe that the first quarter of the twenty-first century is best defined by the creative output of the Boomers and the Silent Generation.
Where are the children’s books?
Some of the most influential and enduring works of the 20th century are children’s books: The Little Prince, Anne of Green Gables, The Wizard of Earthsea, and The Hobbit, to name a few. Most avid readers credit, fervently and adoringly, a book they read as a child as the book that opened them up to the delights of reading. Too, given the pivotal way that the rise of children’s lit, YA, New Adult, etc. has shaped both children’s and adult literature over the past twenty-five years, I’m even more surprised that this list is so rigorously, sternly adult. (Certainly academia is already seriously studying children’s, adult, and YA/New Adult works within this context) Given that adult books are often seen as “above” children’s books—quite literally, as adult editors are paid more than children’s editors—this exclusion of children’s books from what is deemed “the best” only underscores the hierarchical, aspirational cast to this list.
My takeaway: have fun with these lists, but don’t take them seriously.
I’d recommend viewing these lists as a recommendation engine—an excellent alternative to typing “good book to read” in your Amazon search bar—but not as authoritative cultural analysis. A handful of these books may even become classics: Nella Larsen’s novels had little commercial success, but she was heralded as a critical breakout of the highest order, as well as the first Black woman to win a Guggenheim Fellowship. But by and large, the critics have no better sense of what will last. And so you should feel free to disagree with these lists, to build your own canon: the readers of the future certainly will.
To borrow the sage advice of A.S. Byatt:
Lists can be canons—the agreed list of essential books in a culture, which at best are those books that its writers would not willingly let die. Or personal canons—books that have changed you or me, as individuals. Or they can be syllabuses, which are academic and political instruments ordering what those in charge believe should be studied and valued…Lists are part of the arguing process that constantly readjusts canons, and leads to impassioned conversation.
Or, to put it more bluntly: