I have wanted to write this column for a long time but didn’t have the chutzpah. But I can’t resist.
In 1998, the Modern Library published a list of the best 100 English-language novels of the 20th century. A few years later, at dinner with my wife and a friend who is a novel-reading fiend, we started composing our own list. We soon gave up. But being a male who likes lists and novels, I squirreled the list away and tinkered with it occasionally. I always wanted to toss it into the ether and see other readers play with it and comment.
I am not a learned or prolific reader of novels. My taste is probably medium-brow, male and parochial in many ways. Tough. It’s my list. I included two books that probably aren’t novels: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Fabulous Small Jews. Lots of innovative, modern stuff didn’t make it because I am not good at reading it.
My criteria were essentially how much the book hit me, moved me, made me see — and how it stuck with me. The books are all English-language novels written after 1900. The order is essentially silly. Here it is:
1. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
2. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
4. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
5. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
6. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
7. Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner
8. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
9. Humboldt’s Gift, Saul Bellow
10. A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
11. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
12. U.S.A. Trilogy, John Dos Passos
13. The Untouchable, John Banville
14. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
15. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike
16. All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren
17. American Pastoral, Philip Roth
18. Beloved, Toni Morrison
19. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
20. Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham
21. Light in August, William Faulkner
22. My Antonia, Willa Cather
23. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
24. A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest Gaines
25. Rabbit, Run, John Updike
26. Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis
27. The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
28. The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
29. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
30. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
31. All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy
32. The Sportswriter, Richard Ford
33. The Lay of the Land, Richard Ford
34. Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence
35. Aloft, Chang-Rae Lee
36. Appointment in Samarra, John O’Hara
37. Atonement, Ian McEwan
38. So Long, See You Tomorrow, William Maxwell
39. Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
40. Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis
41. The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy
42. Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger
43. A Soldier of the Great War, Mark Helprin
44. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
45. Animal Farm, George Orwell
46. Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White
47. The Good Soldier, Ford Maddox Ford
48. The Secret Sharer, Joseph Conrad
49. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
50. The Day of the Locust, Nathaniel West
51. Crossing to Safety, Wallace Stegner
52. Felicia’s Journey, William Trevor
53. Ironweed, William Kennedy
54. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
55. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John LeCarre
56. In the Lake of the Woods, Tim O’Brien
57. A Coffin for Dimitrios, Eric Ambler
58. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig
59. The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk
60. The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara
61. The Human Factor, Graham Greene
62. Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs
63. Paris Trout, Pete Dexter
64. Howard’s End, E.M. Forster
65. The Killer Inside Me, Jim Thompson
66. The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
67. Portnoy’s Complaint, Philip Roth
68. Fabulous Small Jews, Joseph Epstein
69. Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
70. Roscoe, William Kennedy
71. Charming Billy, Alice McDermott
72. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
73. Razor’s Edge, W. Somerset Maugham
74. Lying Awake, Mark Salzman
75. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
76. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
77. Light Years, James Salter
78. Black Dogs, Ian McEwan
79. Spartina, John Casey
80. A Fan’s Notes, Frederick Exley
81. Scoop, Evelyn Waugh
82. Blood of the Lamb, Peter De Vries
83. Empire Falls, Richard Russo
84. The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett
85. Double Indemnity, James Cain
86. The Sunlight Dialogues, John Gardner
87. The Ginger Man, J.P. Donleavy
88. Seize the Day, Saul Bellow
89. Rabbit Is Rich, John Updike
90. Deliverance, James Dickey
91. The Bird Artist, Howard Norman
92. Pnin, Vladimir Nabokov
93. City Boy, Herman Wouk
94. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John le Carre
95. Advise and Consent, Allen Drury
96. A Man in Full, Tom Wolfe
97. Sophie’s Choice, William Styron
98. Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
99. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
100. A History of Love, Nicole Krauss
I’d welcome any comments, counterlists, other lists and mockery.