Okay, assessing a century’s literary legacy after only 18 and a half years is kind of a bizarre thing to do. Show
Actually, constructing a canon of any kind is a little weird at the moment, when so much of how we measure cultural value is in flux. Born of the ancient battle over which stories belonged in the “canon” of the Bible, the modern literary canon took root in universities and became defined as the static product of consensus — a set of leather-bound volumes you could shoot into space to make a good first impression with the aliens. Its supposed permanence became the subject of more recent battles, back in the 20th century, between those who defended it as the foundation of Western civilization and those who attacked it as exclusive or even racist. But what if you could start a canon from scratch? We thought it might be fun to speculate (very prematurely) on what a canon of the 21st century might look like right now. A couple of months ago, we reached out to dozens of critics and authors — well-established voices (Michiko Kakutani, Luc Sante), more radical thinkers (Eileen Myles), younger reviewers for outlets like n+1, and some of our best-read contributors, too. We asked each of them to name several books that belong among the most important 100 works of fiction, memoir, poetry, and essays since 2000 and tallied the results. The purpose was not to build a fixed library but to take a blurry selfie of a cultural moment. Any project like this is arbitrary, and ours is no exception. But the time frame is not quite as random as it may seem. The aughts and teens represent a fairly coherent cultural period, stretching from the eerie decadence of pre-9/11 America to the presidency of Donald Trump. This mini-era packed in the political, social, and cultural shifts of the average century, while following the arc of an epic narrative (perhaps a tragedy, though we pray for a happier sequel). Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, one of our panel’s favorite books, came out ten days before the World Trade Center fell; subsequent novels reflected that cataclysm’s destabilizing effects, the waves of hope and despair that accompanied wars, economic collapse, permanent-seeming victories for the once excluded, and the vicious backlash under which we currently shudder. They also reflected the fragmentation of culture brought about by social media. The novels of the Trump era await their shot at the canon of the future; because of the time it takes to write a book, we haven’t really seen them yet. You never know exactly what you’ll discover when sending out a survey like this, the results of which owe something to chance and a lot to personal predilections. But given the sheer volume of stuff published each year, it is remarkable that a survey like this would yield any kind of consensus—which this one did. Almost 40 books got more than one endorsement, and 13 had between three and seven apiece. We have separately listed the single-most popular book; the dozen “classics” with several votes; the “high canon” of 26 books with two votes each; and the rest of the still-excellent but somewhat more contingent canon-in-utero. (To better reflect that contingency, we’ve included a handful of critics’ “dissents,” arguing for alternate books by the canonized authors.) Unlike the old canons, ours is roughly half-female, less diverse than it should be but generally preoccupied with difference, and so fully saturated with what we once called “genre fiction” that we hardly even think of Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic The Road, Colson Whitehead’s zombie comedy Zone One, Helen Oyeyemi’s subversive fairy tales, or even the Harry Potter novels as deserving any other designation than “literature.” And a whole lot of them are, predictably, about instability, the hallmark of the era after the “end of history” that we call now. At least one distinctive new style has dominated over the past decade. Call it autofiction if you like, but it’s really a collapsing of categories. (Perhaps not coincidentally, such lumping is better suited to “People Who Liked” algorithms than brick-and-mortar shelving systems.) This new style encompasses Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels; Sheila Heti’s self-questing How Should a Person Be?; Karl Ove Knausgaard’s just-completed 3,600-page experiment in radical mundanity; the essay-poems of Claudia Rankine on race and the collagelike reflections of Maggie Nelson on gender. It’s not really a genre at all. It’s a way of examining the self and letting the world in all at once. Whether it changes the world is, as always with books, not really the point. It helps us see more clearly. Our dozen “classics” do represent some consensus; their genius seems settled-on. Among them are Kazuo Ishiguro’s scary portrait of replicant loneliness in Never Let Me Go; Roberto Bolaño’s epic and powerfully confrontational 2666; Joan Didion’s stark self-dissection of grief in The Year of Magical Thinking. They aren’t too surprising, because they are (arguably as always, but still) great. And then there’s The Last Samurai, Helen DeWitt’s debut: published at the start of the century, relegated to obscurity (and overshadowed by a bad and unrelated Tom Cruise movie of the same name), and now celebrated by more members of our panel than any other book. That’s still only seven out of 31, which gives you a sense of just how fragile this consensus is. Better not launch this canon into space just yet. —Boris Kachka The Best Book of the Century (for Now)By Christian Lorentzen The Last Samurai, by Helen DeWitt (September 20, 2000) Ask a set of writers and critics to select books for a new canon, and it shouldn’t come as a shock that the one most of them name is a novel about the nature of genius. It is also, more precisely, a novel about universal human potential. Like many epics, Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai charts the education of its hero and proceeds by means of a quest narrative. A boy undertakes rigorous training and goes in search of his father. What makes it a story of our time is that the boy lives in an insufficiently heated London flat with a single mother. What makes it singular is that his training begins at age 4, when he starts to learn ancient Greek, before quickly moving on to Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese, Finnish, etc. That’s not to mention his acquisition of mathematics, physics, art history, music, and an eccentric taste for tales of world exploration. Is this boy, Ludo, a genius? Sibylla, his mother, is of two minds about it. She recognizes that she’s done something out of the ordinary by teaching the kid The Iliad so young, following the example of J.S. Mill, who did Greek at age 3. She knows he’s a “Boy Wonder” and she encourages him in every way to follow his omnivorous instincts. But she also believes that the problem with everybody else — literally everybody else — is that they haven’t been properly taught and have gone out of their way, most of the time, to avoid difficult things, like thinking. Otherwise we’d be living in a world of Ludos. So a novel that appears on the surface to be elitist — concerned as it is with great works of art, scientific achievement, and excellence generally — is actually profoundly anti-elitist at its core. DeWitt’s novel is infused with the belief that any human mind is capable of feats we tend to associate with genius. But the novel’s characters, especially Sibylla, are aware that youthful talent can be thwarted at any turn. She knows it happened to her parents — a teenage-whiz father who was accepted to Harvard but made to go to seminary by his Christian father; and a musical prodigy mother who never went back to Juilliard for a second audition — and to herself. Whatever the world had in store for Sibylla changed forever the night Ludo was conceived.
The 12 New ClassicsPer our panel. $19 $19 The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen (September 1, 2001) | 6 votes $19 at Amazon Buy $19 at Amazon Buy DISSENT: Freedom (August 31, 2010) $14 $17 now 18% off $14 Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro (March 3, 2005) | 6 votes $14 at Amazon Buy $14 at Amazon Buy $16 $19 now 16% off $16 How Should a Person Be?, by Sheila Heti (September 25, 2010) | 5 votes $16 at Amazon Buy $16 at Amazon Buy The Neapolitan Novels, by Elena Ferrante (2011-2015) | 5 votes Buy at Amazon Buy Buy at Amazon Buy $9 $16 now 44% off $9 The Argonauts, by Maggie Nelson (May 5, 2015) | 5 votes $9 at Amazon Buy $9 at Amazon Buy $20 $28 now 29% off $20 2666, by Roberto Bolaño (November 11, 2008) | 4 votes $20 at Amazon Buy $20 at Amazon Buy DISSENT: The Savage Detectives (March 4, 2008) $15 $17 now 12% off $15 The Sellout, by Paul Beatty (March 3, 2015) | 4 votes $15 at Amazon Buy $15 at Amazon Buy The Outline Trilogy (Outline, Transit, and Kudos), by Rachel Cusk (2014–2018) | 4 votes Buy at Amazon Buy Buy at Amazon Buy $10 $17 now 41% off $10 Atonement, by Ian McEwan (September 2001) | 3 votes $10 at Amazon Buy $10 at Amazon Buy $12 $17 now 29% off $12 The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion (September 1, 2005) | 3 votes $12 at Amazon Buy $12 at Amazon Buy $12 $17 now 29% off $12 Leaving the Atocha Station, by Ben Lerner (August 23, 2011) | 3 votes $12 at Amazon Buy $12 at Amazon Buy DISSENT: 10:04 (September 2, 2014) $14 $19 now 26% off $14 The Flamethrowers, by Rachel Kushner (April 2, 2013) | 3 votes $14 at Amazon Buy $14 at Amazon Buy The High CanonBooks endorsed by two panelists. $13 $16 now 19% off $13 Erasure, by Percival Everett (August 1, 2001) $13 at Amazon Buy $13 at Amazon Buy $25 $25 Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides (September 4, 2002) $25 at Amazon Buy $25 at Amazon Buy $17 $17 Platform, by Michel Houellebecq (September 5, 2002) $17 at Amazon Buy $17 at Amazon Buy $16 $16 Do Everything in the Dark, by Gary Indiana (June 1, 2003) $16 at Amazon Buy $16 at Amazon Buy $10 $15 now 33% off $10 The Known World, by Edward P. Jones (August 14, 2003) $10 at Amazon Buy $10 at Amazon Buy $13 $17 now 24% off $13 The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth (September 30, 2004) $13 at Amazon Buy $13 at Amazon Buy DISSENT: The Human Stain (April 2000) $11 $20 now 45% off $11 The Line of Beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst (October 1, 2004) $11 at Amazon Buy $11 at Amazon Buy $14 $17 now 18% off $14 Veronica, by Mary Gaitskill (October 11, 2005) $14 at Amazon Buy $14 at Amazon Buy $12 $17 now 29% off $12 The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (September 26, 2006) $12 at Amazon Buy $12 at Amazon Buy $16 $16 Ooga-Booga, by Frederick Seidel (November 14, 2006) $16 at Amazon Buy $16 at Amazon Buy $10 $17 now 41% off $10 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz (September 6, 2007) $10 at Amazon Buy $10 at Amazon Buy $15 $18 now 17% off $15 Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel (April 30, 2009) $15 at Amazon Buy $15 at Amazon Buy $16 $18 now 11% off $16 The Possessed, by Elif Batuman (February 16, 2010) $16 at Amazon Buy $16 at Amazon Buy $14 $17 now 18% off $14 The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender (June 1, 2010) $14 at Amazon Buy $14 at Amazon Buy $13 $17 now 24% off $13 Mr. Fox, by Helen Oyeyemi (June 1, $13 at Amazon Buy $13 at Amazon Buy $19 $19 Lives Other Than My Own, by Emmanuel Carrère (September 13, 2011) $19 at Amazon Buy $19 at Amazon Buy DISSENT: The Kingdom (August 29, 2014) $10 $16 now 38% off $10 Zone One, by Colson Whitehead (October 6, 2011) $10 at Amazon Buy $10 at Amazon Buy DISSENT: Sag Harbor (April 28, 2009) $16 $18 now 11% off $16 Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn (May 24, 2012) $16 at Amazon Buy $16 at Amazon Buy $17 $17 NW, by Zadie Smith (August 27, 2012) $17 at Amazon Buy $17 at Amazon Buy $31 $31 White Girls, by Hilton Als (January 1, 2013) $31 at Amazon Buy $31 at Amazon Buy $13 $20 now 35% off $13 My Struggle: A Man in Love, by Karl Ove Knausgaard (May 13, 2013) $13 at Amazon Buy $13 at Amazon Buy $18 $20 now 10% off $18 The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt (September 23, 2013) $18 at Amazon Buy $18 at Amazon Buy $48 $48 Dept. of Speculation, by Jenny Offill (January 28, 2014) $48 at Amazon Buy $48 at Amazon Buy $17 $17 All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toews (April 11, 2014) $17 at Amazon Buy $17 at Amazon Buy $11 $20 now 45% off $11 Citizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine (October 7, 2014) $11 at Amazon Buy $11 at Amazon Buy $25 $29 now 14% off $25 consent not to be a single being, by Fred Moten (2017–2018) $25 at Amazon Buy $25 at Amazon Buy The Rest of the (Premature, Debatable, Arbitrary, But Still Illuminating) Canon$27 $30 now 10% off $27 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon (September 19, 2000) $27 at Amazon Buy $27 at Amazon Buy $9 $9 The Amber Spyglass, by Philip Pullman (October 10, 2000) $9 at Amazon Buy $9 at Amazon Buy $15 $17 now 12% off $15 True History of the Kelly Gang, by Peter Carey (January 9, 2001) $15 at Amazon Buy $15 at Amazon Buy $17 $17 The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos, by Anne Carson (February 6, 2001) $17 at Amazon Buy $17 at Amazon Buy $14 $17 now 18% off $14 The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, by Louise Erdrich (April 3, 2001) $14 at Amazon Buy $14 at Amazon Buy $30 $30 Austerlitz, by W.G. Sebald (October 2, 2001) $30 at Amazon Buy $30 at Amazon Buy $14 $18 now 22% off $14 Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters (February 4, 2002) $14 at Amazon Buy $14 at Amazon Buy $31 $31 The Time of Our Singing, by Richard Powers (October 3, 2002) $31 at Amazon Buy $31 at Amazon Buy $14 $17 now 18% off $14 The Book of Salt, by Monique Truong (April 7, 2003) $14 at Amazon Buy $14 at Amazon Buy $20 $20 Mortals, by Norman Rush (May 27, 2003) $20 at Amazon Buy $20 at Amazon Buy $12 $19 now 37% off $12 Home Land, by Sam Lipsyte (February 16, 2004) $12 at Amazon Buy $12 at Amazon Buy $16 $18 now 11% off $16 Oblivion, by David Foster Wallace (June 8, 2004) $16 at Amazon Buy $16 at Amazon Buy $15 $15 Honored Guest, by Joy Williams (October 5, 2004) $15 at Amazon Buy $15 at Amazon Buy $12 $25 now 52% off $12 Suite Française, by Irène Némirovsky (October 31, 2004) $12 at Amazon Buy $12 at Amazon Buy $15 $17 now 12% off $15 The Sluts, by Dennis Cooper (January 13, 2005) $15 at Amazon Buy $15 at Amazon Buy $22 $22 Voices From Chernobyl, by Svetlana Alexievich (June 28, 2005) $22 at Amazon Buy $22 at Amazon Buy $17 $17 Magic for Beginners, by Kelly Link (July 1, 2005) $17 at Amazon Buy $17 at Amazon Buy $16 $16 The Afterlife, by Donald Antrim (May 30, 2006) $16 at Amazon Buy $16 at Amazon Buy $28 $28 Winter’s Bone, by Daniel Woodrell (August 7, 2006) $28 at Amazon Buy $28 at Amazon Buy $16 $19 now 16% off $16 Wizard of the Crow, by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (August 8, 2006) $16 at Amazon Buy $16 at Amazon Buy $18 $18 American Genius, A Comedy, by Lynne Tillman (September 25, 2006) $18 at Amazon Buy $18 at Amazon Buy $15 $18 now 17% off $15 Eat the Document, by Dana Spiotta (November 28, 2006) $15 at Amazon Buy $15 at Amazon Buy The Harry Potter novels, by J.K. Rowling (1997–2007) Buy at Amazon Buy Buy at Amazon Buy $19 $19 Sleeping It Off in Rapid City, by August Kleinzahler (April 1, 2008) $19 at Amazon Buy $19 at Amazon Buy $11 $18 now 39% off $11 The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga (April 22, 2008) $11 at Amazon Buy $11 at Amazon Buy $13 $17 now 24% off $13 The Lazarus Project, by Aleksandar Hemon (May 1, 2008) $13 at Amazon Buy $13 at Amazon Buy $14 $17 now 18% off $14 Home, by Marilynne Robinson (September 2, 2008) $14 at Amazon Buy $14 at Amazon Buy DISSENT: Gilead (November 4, 2004) $10 $17 now 41% off $10 Fine Just the Way It Is, by Annie Proulx (September 9, 2008) $10 at Amazon Buy $10 at Amazon Buy $22 $22 Scenes From a Provincial Life: Boyhood, Youth, and Summertime, by J.M. Coetzee (1997–2009) $22 at Amazon Buy $22 at Amazon Buy $15 $16 now 6% off $15 Notes From No Man’s Land, by Eula Biss (February 3, 2009) $15 at Amazon Buy $15 at Amazon Buy Spreadeagle, by Kevin Killian (March 1, 2010) Buy at Amazon Buy Buy at Amazon Buy $14 $17 now 18% off $14 Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart (July 27, 2010) $14 at Amazon Buy $14 at Amazon Buy $18 $18 Seven Years, by Peter Stamm (March 22, 2011) $18 at Amazon Buy $18 at Amazon Buy $15 $17 now 12% off $15 The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes (August 4, 2011) $15 at Amazon Buy $15 at Amazon Buy $16 $20 now 20% off $16 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami (October 25, 2011) $16 at Amazon Buy $16 at Amazon Buy $22 $22 The Gentrification of the Mind, by Sarah Schulman (January 7, 2012) $22 at Amazon Buy $22 at Amazon Buy $12 $17 now 29% off $12 Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, by Ben Fountain (May 1, 2012) $12 at Amazon Buy $12 at Amazon Buy $17 $17 Capital, by John Lanchester (June 11, 2012) $17 at Amazon Buy $17 at Amazon Buy $40 $51 now 22% off $40 The MaddAddam Trilogy (Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam), by Margaret Atwood (2003-2013) $40 at Amazon Buy $40 at Amazon Buy DISSENT: The Blind Assassin (September 2, 2000) $14 $18 now 22% off $14 A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, by Anthony Marra (May 7, 2013) $14 at Amazon Buy $14 at Amazon Buy $16 $17 now 6% off $16 Taipei, by Tao Lin (June 4, 2013) $16 at Amazon Buy $16 at Amazon Buy $19 $26 now 27% off $19 Men We Reaped, by Jesmyn Ward (September 17, 2013) $19 at Amazon Buy $19 at Amazon Buy $15 $24 now 38% off $15 Family Life, by Akhil Sharma (April 7, 2014) $15 at Amazon Buy $15 at Amazon Buy $15 $17 now 12% off $15 How to Be Both, by Ali Smith (August 28, 2014) $15 at Amazon Buy $15 at Amazon Buy $16 $18 now 11% off $16 A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Marlon James (October 2, 2014) $16 at Amazon Buy $16 at Amazon Buy $12 $17 now 29% off $12 Preparation for the Next Life, by Atticus Lish (November 11, 2014) $12 at Amazon Buy $12 at Amazon Buy $28 $28 The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen (April 7, 2015) $28 at Amazon Buy $28 at Amazon Buy $10 $18 now 44% off $10 The Light of the World, by Elizabeth Alexander (April 21, 2015) $10 at Amazon Buy $10 at Amazon Buy The Broken Earth trilogy, by N.K. Jemisin (2015-2017) Buy at Amazon Buy Buy at Amazon Buy $15 $17 now 12% off $15 What Belongs to You, by Garth Greenwell (January 19, 2016) $15 at Amazon Buy $15 at Amazon Buy $34 $45 now 24% off $34 Collected Essays & Memoirs (Library of America edition), by Albert Murray (October 18, 2016) $34 at Amazon Buy $34 at Amazon Buy $19 $24 now 21% off $19 The Needle’s Eye, by Fanny Howe (November 1, 2016) $19 at Amazon Buy $19 at Amazon Buy $16 $16 Ghachar Ghochar, by Vivek Shanbhag (February 7, 2017) $16 at Amazon Buy $16 at Amazon Buy $13 $19 now 32% off $13 The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas (February 28, 2017) $13 at Amazon Buy $13 at Amazon Buy $13 $25 now 48% off $13 All Grown Up, by Jami Attenberg (March 7, 2017) $13 at Amazon Buy $13 at Amazon Buy $29 $29 The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir, by Thi Bui (March 7, 2017) $29 at Amazon Buy $29 at Amazon Buy $12 $14 now 14% off $12 Tell Me How it Ends, by Valeria Luiselli (March 13, 2017) $12 at Amazon Buy $12 at Amazon Buy $15 $17 now 12% off $15 Priestdaddy, by Patricia Lockwood (May 2, 2017) $15 at Amazon Buy $15 at Amazon Buy $16 $26 now 38% off $16 Red Clocks, by Leni Zumas (January 16, 2018) $16 at Amazon Buy $16 at Amazon Buy $15 $27 now 44% off $15 The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, by Denis Johnson (January 16, 2018) $15 at Amazon Buy $15 at Amazon Buy $8 $16 now 50% off $8 Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday (February 6, 2018) $8 at Amazon Buy $8 at Amazon Buy ContributorsAlice Bolin, essayist Every editorial product is independently selected. If you buy an item through our links, Vulture may earn an affiliate commission. *A version of this article appears in the September 17, 2018, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now! What should I read in 2022 non fiction?The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2022. The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, Stacy Schiff. ... . The Invisible Kingdom, Meghan O'Rourke. ... . How Far the Light Reaches, Sabrina Imbler. ... . His Name Is George Floyd, Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa. ... . Constructing a Nervous System, Margo Jefferson. ... . An Immense World, Ed Yong.. Which is the No 1 book in the world?Having sold more than 500 million copies worldwide, Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling is the best-selling book series in history.
What is one book that everyone should read?"Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen. "The Diary of Anne Frank" by Anne Frank. "1984" by George Orwell. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J.K. Rowling.
Who is the best writer in the 21st century?The 5 Greatest and Most Talented Writers of the 21st Century. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. We rarely get to hear about African talents. ... . Dan Brown. There is hardly a person who doesn't know Dan Brown. ... . Neil Gaiman. Neil Gaiman started his career as a comic book writer. ... . J K Rowling. ... . John Green.. |