20th Century's Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction

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The 20th Century's Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction is a list of the 100 best English-language books of the 20th century compiled by American literary critic Larry McCaffery. The list was created largely in response to the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list (1999), which McCaffery considered out of touch with 20th-century fiction. McCaffery wrote that he saw his list "as a means of sharing with readers my own views about what books are going to be read 100 or 1000 years from now". [1]

Contents

The list includes many books not included in the Modern Library list, including five of the top ten: Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow , Robert Coover's The Public Burning , Samuel Beckett's Trilogy ( Molloy , Malone Dies and The Unnamable ), Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans , and William S. Burrough's The Nova Trilogy . Topping the list is Vladimir Nabokov's 1962 novel Pale Fire , which McCaffery called the "most audaciously conceived novel of the century."

List

RankYearTitleAuthor
11962 Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov
21922 Ulysses James Joyce
31973 Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Pynchon
41977 The Public Burning Robert Coover
51929 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner
61955, 1956, 1958The Trilogy ( Molloy , Malone Dies , The Unnamable ) Samuel Beckett
71925 The Making of Americans Gertrude Stein
81961, 1962, 1964 The Nova Trilogy ( The Soft Machine , The Ticket That Exploded , Nova Express ) William S. Burroughs
91955 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
101939 Finnegans Wake James Joyce
111976Take It or Leave It Raymond Federman
121987 Beloved Toni Morrison
131994 Going Native Stephen Wright
141947 Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry
151927 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf
161968In the Heart of the Heart of the Country William H. Gass
171975 J R William Gaddis
181952 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
191997 Underworld Don DeLillo
201926 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway
211916 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce
221925 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
231903 The Ambassadors Henry James
241920 Women in Love D. H. Lawrence
251981 Sixty Stories Donald Barthelme
261994 The Rifles William T. Vollmann
271955 The Recognitions William Gaddis
281902 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
291961 Catch-22 Joseph Heller
301949 Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
311937 Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston
321936 Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner
331975 Dhalgren Samuel R. Delany
341939 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
351984, 1986, 1992, 1993The Four Elements Tetralogy ( The Stain , Entering Fire, The Fountains of Neptune, The Jade Cabinet) Rikki Ducornet
361984, 1986, 1988 Cyberspace Trilogy ( Neuromancer , Count Zero , Mona Lisa Overdrive ) William Gibson
371934 Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller
381957 On the Road Jack Kerouac
391974 Lookout Cartridge Joseph McElroy
401973 Crash J. G. Ballard
411981 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie
421960 The Sot-Weed Factor John Barth
431965Genoa Paul Metcalf
441932 Brave New World Aldous Huxley
451924 A Passage to India E. M. Forster
461972 Double or Nothing Raymond Federman
471939 At Swim-Two-Birds Flann O'Brien
481985 Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy
491949 The Cannibal John Hawkes
501940 Native Son Richard Wright
511939 The Day of the Locust Nathanael West
521936 Nightwood Djuna Barnes
531980 Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson
541969 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut
551988 Libra Don DeLillo
561952 Wise Blood Flannery O'Connor
571985 Always Coming Home Ursula K. Le Guin
581930, 1932, 1936 U.S.A. Trilogy (The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money) John Dos Passos
591962 The Golden Notebook Doris Lessing
601951 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger
611929 Red Harvest Dashiell Hammett
621981 What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Raymond Carver
631914 Dubliners James Joyce
641923 Cane Jean Toomer
651905 The House of Mirth Edith Wharton
661980 Riddley Walker Russell Hoban
671956, 1958, 1963The Checkerboard Trilogy (Go in Beauty, The Bronc People, Portrait of the Artist with 26 Horses) William Eastlake
681976The Franchiser Stanley Elkin
691985, 1986, 1986 The New York Trilogy (City of Glass, Ghosts, The Locked Room) Paul Auster
701990 Skinny Legs and All Tom Robbins
711996 Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace
721995 The Age of Wire and String Ben Marcus
731966Tlooth Harry Mathews
741969Pricksongs and Descants Robert Coover
751962 The Man in the High Castle Philip K. Dick
761991 American Psycho Brett Easton Ellis
771969 The French Lieutenant's Woman John Fowles
781980, 1981, 1982, 1983 The Book of the New Sun Tetralogy ( The Shadow of the Torturer , The Claw of the Conciliator , The Sword of the Lictor , The Citadel of the Autarch ) Gene Wolfe
791962 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess
801975, 1978, 1983Albany Cycle ( Legs , Billy Phelan's Greatest Game , Ironweed ) William Kennedy
811995 The Tunnel William H. Gass
821966 Omensetter's Luck William H. Gass
831949 The Sheltering Sky Paul Bowles
841981 Darconville's Cat Alexander Theroux
851968Up Ronald Sukenick
861969 Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down Ishmael Reed
871919 Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood Anderson
881987 You Bright and Risen Angels William T. Vollmann
891948 The Naked and the Dead Norman Mailer
901968 The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. Robert Coover
911970Creamy and Delicious Steve Katz
921980 Waiting for the Barbarians J. M. Coetzee
931953 More Than Human Theodore Sturgeon
941979 Mulligan Stew Gilbert Sorrentino
951929 Look Homeward, Angel Thomas Wolfe
961925 An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser
971981Easy Travel to Other Planets Ted Mooney
981989 Tours of the Black Clock Steve Erickson
991990In Memoriam to Identity Kathy Acker
1001995 Hogg Samuel R. Delany

Statistics

Not counting the tetralogies of Rikki Ducornet (#35) and Gene Wolfe (#78), the most cited author is James Joyce, who has written four works on the list: Ulysses (#2), Finnegans Wake (#10), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (#21), and Dubliners (#63). Robert Coover and William H. Gass each have three works on the list, while Samuel Delany, Don DeLillo, William Faulkner, Raymond Federman, William Gaddis, Vladimir Nabokov, and William Vollmann have two apiece.

Titles in common with Modern Library 100 Best Novels

Altogether, there are 34 titles in common between the Modern Library list and the Greatest Hits list:

  1. The entire Albany Cycle was included on the list, where Ironweed was listed as a solo work on the Modern Library list.

See also

References

  1. Top 100 List with comments at Spineless Books' Larry McCaffery archive