Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Nice try at least The Observer | The 100 greatest novels of all time: The list
No list like this is ever going to please even a fraction of people but this one is a little strange even considering that qualification. It's very heavy on the English authors (which isn't too surprising since it's an English paper doing the list) but any list of greatest novels whose only Hemingway is a book of short stories is a little off in more than one sense (no Sun Also Rises? And since when is a collection of stories a novel?). And no Vonnegut? That puts me off right there. No Delillo? No Pynchon? Don Quixote as number one is a safe choice but a good one. But I guess my liking for The New biases me against any list like this which has to be heavy with The Old to appease people who think anything from the past century is automatically disqualified from Great status. Like I say, nice try.