Memories of how the 2006 “What is the best work of American fiction in the past 25 years?” Prompt from the New York Times dominated my reading for two years.

The Article by AO Scott: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/bo...

0:00 Introduction
7:43 The Top 5
14:22 The Long List
19:26 Contemporary Literature
21:24 19651980

Books mentioned:
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Underworld by Don DeLillo
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Rabbit Angstrom by John Updike
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
McCarthy’s Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain
Libra by DeLillo, my discussion:    • Libra by Don DeLillo (historical fict...  
White Noise by DeLillo
The Counterlife, Sabbath’s Theater, The Plot Against America, and Operation Shylock by Roth
Where I’m Calling From by Raymond Carver
Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Known World by Edward P. Jones
Mating by Norman Rush
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
The IceShirt by William T. Vollmann
The Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Ragtime by EL Doctorow
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, my discussion:    • Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison  
Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
JR by William Gaddis

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