The TIME 100 Q&A.

Quick admin notes: NYC 1050 AM hit moved back to 9:25 pm tonight. Podcast of my chat with Jeff Erickson is available here. Tentatively scheduled to appear on 101 ESPN in St. Louis Wednesday at 1:20 pm CDT.

I’m working my way through a half-dozen greatest books lists, from the Novel 100 to the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel/Fiction winners, but I think the most successful one for introducing me to books I liked or loved has been the TIME magazine list of the 100 greatest English-language novels published from 1923 to 2005. (Details on all the lists I use are on the FAQ.) On a whim, I contacted Lev Grossman, one of the two critics behind the TIME 100, and he and co-conspirator Richard Lacayo agreed to answer some questions I had about their list. Lacayo wrote about the process behind the list’s construction when it first appeared, and that essay may be useful background for those of you unfamiliar with the list itself.

Lev, you mentioned in your first response to me that you didn’t care for Tropic of Cancer, yet it’s on the list. How much did literary influence or academic value weigh against readability or trivial things like plot?

LG: I wasn’t that interested in academic value. I’ve spent some time in academia, and I feel like I have a good sense of what that’s good for it, and what it isn’t. As for readability, I’m a major backer of it. It was the fashion in the earlier part of the 20th to write very challengingly and elliptically and occasionally boringly. Which was a mode that was appropriate to its time. But not all those works are still worth the tremendous trouble they put the reader through.

I am however very interested in literary influence — works that changed the literary landscape through their sheer force and power and visionary newness. I’ll forgive a book a lot I would say I weighed those heavily.

RL: That was my pick, and one that I re-read for the list to make sure I still liked it. As I mentioned in that essay I wrote to introduce the list and explain how we made it, we didn’t agree on every title, and we decided not to, because we thought it would be more interesting for the list to include non-consensus choices. As for Tropic, I love the shaggy dog quality of that book. I don’t care whether it goes anyplace in particular. That willingness to blow off the “responsibility” to provide much of a plot is part of Miller’s personal ethic. The book is a demonstration of its own philosophy.

I was aware of the book’s history as the object of a landmark obscenity trial in the U.S., but it didn’t play any part in my judgment. And as for academic value – is Miller much read in “the academy”?

Unlike most lists of this ilk, yours was unranked. Why? If you had to choose a top 5 from your 100, what would it include?

LG: Oh, you know how it is. Lists are arbitrary enough as it is, without bringing ranking into it. You start splitting hairs, comparing apples and oranges … it started to seem absurd.

Top 5, off the top of my head?

Brideshead Revisited
Mrs. Dalloway
The Sound and the Fury
The Sun Also Rises
The Great Gatsby

RL: I just don’t think that’s possible. There’s no rational unit of measurement. You can do that with a poll of numerous critics by counting up which titles got the most votes, the way Sight and Sound magazine does every ten years with the greatest films. But I couldn’t claim with a straight face that Pale Fire is 22.5% better than Appointment in Samarra.

But if I had to pick a top five, it would probably be To the Lighthouse, Pale Fire, The Crying of Lot 49, 1984, Midnight’s Children but ask me a year from now and I might choose five others.

Your list was limited to novels first published in English. Why exclude works from other languages as long as they were eventually published in English? Did you consider, at the time or afterwards, creating a parallel list so that Franz Kafka and Gabriel Garcia Marquez could be similarly recognized?

LG: We did consider creating a parallel list. But the body of work was just too vast — how could we pretend to have read all of world literature, even in translation? We needed ways to narrow the field. That was one.

RL: We weren’t belittling “foreign” literature by not including it. We were paying it our respects. We felt we could not plausibly tell readers we had sifted the fiction of every nation. There’s simply too much of it – French, Japanese, German, Italian, Scandinavian, Latin American. Halldor Laxness may have won the Nobel Prize, but never made it on to my bookshelf. Lev and I both have English lit. degrees and have been reading for decades and were comfortable claiming to know enough of the range of English language work to make what we hoped were useful evaluations of it.

Also, I can never find the umlaut on my keyboard.

The Modern Library’s list, which covered the entire 20th century, was criticized for its lack of female and minority authors. Did you consider the authors’ genders or ethnicities at all in assembling the list? Should those be factors?

LG: I think it’s worth considering those things, along with everything else. There is a subjective dimension to the idea of ‘literary value,’ a big one, and Richard and I were conscious that the people making this list were two white men. We did our best to ensure that a broad range of points of view was represented.

RL: Lev speaks for both of us when he says we were aware that we were both white men drawing up this list, but I didn’t find it necessary to worry about that too much. For starters there were always going to be plenty of women on the list. Virginia Woolf is one of my favorite writers. Likewise Muriel Spark. Beloved? Death Comes for the Archbishop? These are no-brainers. In the end I think there are 19 titles by women.

Similarly with black authors, You don’t put Invisible Man on the list to be “correct”. You put it there because it’s so obviously brilliant. James Baldwin? Zadie Smith? We didn’t have to go searching for them. The only book by an African-American writer that I picked up because I hadn’t been introduced to it before and felt I needed to know it was Their Eyes Were Watching God, which I loved. Along with Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates that book was the fun discovery of this whole process for me. (Re-reading Portnoy’s Complaint was also a nice surprise. I had forgotten how good it was. Not just funny. Good in many ways.)

As I mention in that introductory text, there were writers who almost made the cut but didn’t quite — Dawn Powell is in that category for me. And as I also there, there are a number of women writers whose greatest work is in stories, not novels. Flannery O’Connor is a genius, but her novel, Wise Blood, doesn’t do it for me. Likewise Annie Proulx, The Shipping News notwithstanding, who once said to me herself that she considered stories her real forte. Close Range is my idea of a masterpiece, but it’s a story collection. Karen Blixen, Katherine Anne Porter, Shirley Jackson, Eudora Welty – same thing.

What I didn’t do was include a book simply because it represented any kind of social or political breakthrough. I love Christopher Isherwood’s novel A Single Man, about a gay man living in California after the death of his lover. It was published in 1964 and really is a breakthrough book in terms of introducing a gay character who’s not troubled by his own sexuality, just carrying on with his life. But good as it is, as a book it doesn’t measure up for me to The Berlin Stories.

If I had an agenda of any kind it may have been British novels of the 20s, 30s and 40s. I like Elizabeth Bowen, Henry Green, the novels of Aldous Huxley beyond just Brave New World. Waugh. Graham Greene. It’s not the Masterpiece Theatre aspect, it’s just something about the ease with which they practice the conventions of novel.

Richard wrote at the time that you agreed on roughly 80 titles more or less off the bat. What book that made the list sparked the biggest disagreement? How about one that missed?

LG: It’s been a while since we formulated the list, and I’m trying to remember. Richard is a staunch Pynchonian, which I definitely am not — I’m sure I rolled my eyes at putting two Pynchon novels on the list. But I did it quietly. Likewise I expected resistance to some of the science fiction entries on the list — Dick, Gibson, Stephenson — but got none. Likewise the YA novel (Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret) and the graphic novel (Watchmen). I wish I had stories for you about shouting matches and fisticuffs, but it was a pretty civilized process. I think Richard’s essay has all the dirt there is in it.

RL: Not to sugar coat the thing, but there weren’t that many, partly because we had this agreement that there would be titles we just wouldn’t agree on. Lev likes graphic novels. It would never occur to me to put Watchmen on the list but he loves it. Meanwhile, I really enjoy a lot of what you might call classic modernist writers, the ones who play around with the conventions of the novel, from Woolf to Pynchon. That stuff bores some people, including sometimes Lev. It’s ice cream to me. As he mentioned to you, I would have put a third Pynchon title on (V.), but there wasn’t room. (And I’m not somebody who pats Pynchon on the head for everything he does. I pretty much panned his last book in the magazine.

Have you reconsidered – or regretted – any of the entries since the list was published?

LG: I haven’t.

RL: Only the books there weren’t room for, but that’s list making for you. As mentioned, Dawn Powell. Elizabeth Hardwick’s novel Sleepless Nights. Maybe The Wapshot Chronicle by (John) Cheever. E.L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel. (Saul) Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift.

Are there any works published since 2005 that you would place on a revised list?

LG: Yes, one. Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

RL: Oscar Wao, definitely.

KL: It’s on my to-be-read shelf and just moved up in the queue after that response.

Did you consider other lists or awards, such as Pulitzer Prizes, as criteria for inclusion or even as “bonus points” for specific books?

LG: We really didn’t. I’ve sat on enough awards committees to know how arbitrary they are. I don’t give them much weight.

RL: Did we care whether a book had won prizes? Not at all. The Nobel didn’t get Patrick White on the list. And The Pulitzer has gone to many dreary books.

*KL: Concur.

One inclusion that confused me at the time that I read it was Watchmen, which is really a short story stretched to novel length by illustrations. To me, it offers none of the complexity of even a short novel like Red Harvest. Tell me about the decision to include a graphic novel in a list of prose works.

LG: There are plenty of things to complain about in Watchmen, but a lack of complexity? I couldn’t disagree more! I’m a great believer in the power and importance of graphic novels — or comic books, as I prefer to call them — and I think they’re one of the most exciting things to happen to the novel in the 20th Century. To me the list would have had a hole in it without them.

I’ll throw some titles at you that I thought should have made the list or at least been considered. Tell me whether they came up at all, and if so, why they didn’t make the cut.

Cry the Beloved Country
Tender is the Night
A Confederacy of Dunces
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Empire Falls
The Dud Avocado


LG: Now we’re really going to expose the ugly underbelly of subjectivity in this list. A Confederacy of Dunces – I’ve always felt this book was rather heavy-handed and unfunny and hence over-rated. I know it’s beloved by many, and I’m buying myself some serious ire by saying that, but if there’s one rule I have as a critic, it’s never lie. And I couldn’t in all honesty put that book on the list, because I just don’t feel it’s great.

Tender is the Night was a tougher decision, it’s a beautiful novel with reams of great writing in it, but I think ultimately it’s slightly overstuffed and ungainly and melodramatic, especially when you put it next to the jewel-like perfection that is The Great Gatsby, which I think is better suited to represent Fitzgerald on the list.

I could go on slagging the classic works you’ve listed, but you get the general idea. I’ll just add that, to my shame, I had never read or heard of The Dud Avocado. There’s that ugly underbelly I was talking about.

RL: I read Cry the Beloved Country long ago, but wasn’t moved to re-visit it. I like Confederacy, but wasn’t in love with it. Tender is the Night was on my short list – an adolescent favorite, adolescents love doom. But Fitzgerald’s problem is that he wrote one book so perfect it makes everything else he wrote look a bit dim, even the good things.

The Dud Avocado – I’ll have to go looking for that one.

Awesome stuff. I’ll even forgive you for trashing Tender is the Night, which is my favorite novel by an American author. My readers will enjoy you taking me to task over Watchmen, although I stand my ground – it was thinner than a sheet of phyllo dough.

Thank you both for your answers and for the great list.

Comments

  1. Terry Gross of Fresh Air recently interviewed Isherwoods lover. Very pederasty and very compelling. I cannot remember the gentleman’s name but it might be worth going through the logs to find it. Certainly sheds a lot of light onto Isherwoods work.

    Great post. Their honestly was nice especially considering the nature of the topic.

  2. I’m with them on Oscar Wao.

  3. Very interesting! Also, really glad that RL mentioned Midnight’s Children in his top 5, because as I said before, I’m devouring it.

  4. This was pretty awesome, especially how seemingly easily you were able to contact them. Bravo!

    I did like a point made early in the Q&A (echoing one I argued on behalf of earlier): “As for readability, I’m a major backer of it. It was the fashion in the earlier part of the 20th to write very challengingly and elliptically and occasionally boringly. Which was a mode that was appropriate to its time. But not all those works are still worth the tremendous trouble they put the reader through.”

    Amen to that!

  5. Klaw,
    I’m in a book club with some of my friends, and the first book we picked (we started last November) was Oscar Wao, and I have to agree, it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read.

  6. Keith, how surprised were you that neither had heard of “The Dud Avocado”? With the amount of books published and movies released it is almost impossible for critics to keep track of everything.

  7. I wasn’t surprised; I even told them afterward it was a bit of a trick question. I wanted to know if they had heard of it, certainly, but it’s been in and out of print for decades and had been out for a while before the 2007 reissue. Richard mentioned wishing Dawn Powell had found her way on to the list, and Dundy’s work was often compared to Powell’s.

  8. “But Fitzgerald’s problem is that he wrote one book so perfect it makes everything else he wrote look a bit dim, even the good things.”

    I agree. It’s called Tender is the Night.

  9. Thanks for a very enlighting exchange Keith. I didn’t care for Osacar Wao, mostly because the footnotes felt like someone trying to copy David Foster Wallace. I just read White Tiger, and thought it was brilliant.

  10. Tech issue:

    KLaw, maybe I’m being nitpicky, but I feel like your hyperlinks don’t stand out. I realize they are colored differently, but not dramatically so, and are not underlined. Does this have to do with my browser settings or is this on your end?

  11. They don’t really stand out on my browser either, although it doesn’t bother me; I don’t want it to look like I’m pushing people to buy stuff or anything. But if you have a style suggestion, I’m all ears. I’m no design expert and I monkey with the CSS here from time to time to try to make it better.

  12. I understand not wanting to turn the page into a Wikipedia article. I don’t know enough about formatting to have suggestions, but I’m sure others on here do. It’s most tricky when using a laptop, since a slightly askew angle makes the links invisible. Maybe more bright pink and polka dots?

  13. I recently took two trains rides (there and back again), both starting at mid afternoon and riding into dusk. Going I read The Crucible and returning I read Red Harvest. I’m not sure I’ve ever had such an intense experience on a train with any two books, especially back to back.

    So, Keith, what’s your best travel book recommendation to follow that up?

  14. I cannot for the life of me understand the critical love for “The Watchmen.” Several comics that are better (“Y: The Last Man” and “Maus”) easily come to mind. Is it simply that it was very early and foundational?

  15. Keith:

    Thank you for the interesting and informative interview. Your ESPN readers and chat participants would be shocked to know that it is possible to have an informative, respectful Q&A with someone/someones without seeing eye-to-eye on everything.

  16. My first impulse was to put MAUS on the list. Then I remembered that it’s not a novel, it’s (sadly) non-fiction …

  17. So glad to see their thoughts on Confederacy…I was thinking there was something wrong with me because I did not find it to be so hysterically funny as everyone else…

  18. Keith – Have you had a chance to use a Kindle yet? Trying to decide if I want to make the leap but I still haven’t actually seen one in person. The new, larger screen version is interesting.

  19. Chris: No, not really interested. I like the physical feel of books too much to give them up just yet. Plus I can swap or resell them.

  20. Chris – I’ve been using a Kindle for about a year now. I use it for about half of what I read – the books that I used to get at the library or buy and resell. For mainstream fiction, it’s great. I’ve had a harder time with books without a straightforward narrative – it still seems more difficult for me to sort out what’s going on than when I have a book in my hands. I love it for traveling because I can download books easily rather than ration what I have or find a place to buy more.

  21. Andrew,
    ‘Night’ by Elie Wiesel can be read in about the time of your train ride, though you will not arrive in a good mood. I don’t read nearly as fast as Keith does, but I read ‘The Reader’ during two flight layovers of about one hour and fifteen minutes apiece. Those are pretty intense. I’ve always loved ‘The Crucible,’ but that may be because I grew up in Salem, Mass.

  22. I think LG nails Dunces. Might be the only KLaw recommendation i’ve read that i didn’t enjoy.

    So with that said, I think they’re both off on Tender is the Night. It might not be Gatsby, but if it was written by someone else it would have made their list. It’s like saying Pedro wasn’t good in ’98 because of what he did in ’99 and ’00.

  23. brianjkoscuiszka (BSK)

    Jeff-

    Great points on Maus. Did you read the sequel, Maus II? Though I knew it was based on a true story (or IS a true story, I suppose), I still think I internalized it as a “fiction” novel, because of the illustrations. What are your thoughts on Y? I’ve heard about it, somewhat mixed reviews, but was more interested than turned-off.

  24. I just wanted to say that interview was a great idea and greatly executed.

  25. KLaw’s got Klout. Well done. Think we could all learn from the back and forth exchange of question and answer. Guess the bar has been raised for Thursdays at 1.

    Slowly but surely becoming the most most feared blogger/baseball writer/foodie/bookworm in the game.

  26. BSK-

    Love Y: The Last Man. Great series; interesting premise and exploration of said premise. The other two I love for their headiness are 100 Bullets and Fables. Both high concept stories executed extremely well. I’d recommend them over Watchmen (which I enjoyed but didn’t love).

  27. I guess after today’s news, one of the shortest books in history would be “MLB Players not implicated by steroids in the last 10 years”….

  28. Bob,

    If you believe the MSM, it would include all of 2 names: Frank Thomas and Ken Griffey Jr. Why they – and no one else – continue to get passes is extremely confounding.

    And I’m not saying they should be implicated either, just that the arbitrary nature of who to focus on/speculate about is astounding.

  29. brianjkoscuiszka (BSK)

    David Eckstein CERTAINLY never did steroids!

    Todd-

    Thanks for the heads up. I didn’t read Watchmen, but I saw the movie (which I’ve heard mixed reviews about how true-to-text it was), but I was severely disappointed. The ending in particular, with no exploration of the morals of the situation’s resolution just made me feel as if the story was trying to be smart and was really just stupid. Granted, I was so bored that I fell asleep halfway through, but the idea that everyone just accepted whatever that guy’s plan was pissed me off. Is the novel better? I’ll definitely try to find Y and the others you mentioned. Do public libraries carry them?

  30. BSK: That was my #1 problem with the book.

  31. A bit delayed in getting through this post, but great interview – I’m impressed. Seems like I stand alone on this one, but I thought Oscar Wao was totally overrated, so it was one of the bigger disappointments I’ve read recently. I suppose that’s the danger of having high expectations… Look forward to seeing your thoughts soon.

  32. Great questions. Was interesting to hear how the process of picking such a list worked, in particular the fact that rankings themselves were abandoned. As an English major who always abhorred graphic novels until I finally read Watchmen after many, many recommendations, I can offer that perhaps the reason it’s so universally acclaimed is that its technical brilliance is married with metafiction and nihilism in a way that we are accustomed to reading in novels. That said, I find it cold and distant, and altogether unpleasant. The only graphic novel I’ve read since that seems remotely close to reaching the level of a top 100 list, however, is Gaiman’s Sandman. That, to me, is a treasure of a story: tragic, funny, compassionate and infinitely sad. All things that Watchmen, in the end, is not.

  33. Oh, and Oscar Wao is fantastic. Along with Tender is the Night.

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  1. […] the dual endorsement given by the two critics behind the TIME 100, I expected to love Junot Díaz’s The Brief […]

  2. […] my attention because of his work (with Richard Lacayo) on the TIME 100, and when I asked them to do a Q&A for the dish about that ranking, Lev asked if I’d be interested in reading his upcoming book, The […]