perfidy

So I've read (that is... finished) three: "The Things They Carried," "The Known World," and "Confederacy of Dunces." All three were great novels in my opinion. Although to be fair, Since O'Toole wrote his novel well before 1980, I don't think it belongs on this list, no matter when it was first published.

In fact, "The Known World" actually does make a bid to be one of the great American novels of all time, in my opinion.

Of the rest, I hated - hated - HA- A- A- A- AYAYAYAY- TED DeLillo's "Underworld," which I got 75 pages into and put down with a feeling of disgust and a keen sense of time wasted.

I managed to escape college without reading "Beloved," but having read sections of it through the years have come to like it OK, but I don't get what all the hoopla is about.

I have a personal animus against Updike, who lives not far from me and is well known in the area to be a supercilious prick, jealous of his own talent and prone to venom. None of which I knew when I picked up something of his to try (which, I don't even remember), and was nearly as mesmerized by his prose as I was bored by what he did with it.

In fact, I'm having a T-shirt made that reads, in simple block letters, "Suck it, Updike".

Roth, well, he's an East Coast writer who writes about the East Coast (as are DeLillo and Updike for that matter), so little wonder his works make up about half of the New York Times' list. Ho Hum.

Overall, that list is so one-dimensional as to be shameful. Where's the younger writers? The California writers (save Carver)? Just how many novels about New York and New England need to be on that list? Where's "A Man In Full?" Where's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay?" (which is about New York, but at least in a different way!) Where's "Mason & Dixon," for chrissakes, a better novel as a novel than "Gravity's Rainbow," and a more mature effort besides?? And even though I hated it worse than any book I've ever read, where is "Infinite Jest," which if not a great novel is unarguably influential. for starters.

I thought it was a bad list. Of course, the methodology is suspect - basically, it was a competition for best novel, and then twenty-four runners-up. No one was asked to list the twenty five best novels, and then have those lists compiled.

I read Confederacy and Things like you, and loved them both. I read Beloved, mostly because Nissa Laughner was doing her senior thesis on it, and I hated it. To be fair, at least some of my hatred was aimed at the critical infrastructure that Nissa was always talking about, which was even worse.

I suppose it's too much to ask for, but there have been some truly amazing sf books lately. In the literary sense, not just the cool gadgets sense. Light by M John Harrison. Anything by Jon Courtney Grimwood. I can see where people would really appreciate China Mieville. There are others.

For a list to be one dimensional even counting the fact that it will only be appraising mainstream east coast lit is rather sad.

I looked at NDR's list. Well right, not HIS list, - his personal list would be quite different, I'm sure.

I haven't even heard of most of those titles. I think the only one I read on full was "Beloved", which I thought was awful.