'NYT' Says 'Beloved' Is Best

-- Publishers Weekly, 5/11/2006

The New York Times will announce in next Sunday's Book Review that Toni Morrison's Beloved has been named the "best work of fiction" in the last 25 years. The Book Review asked 100 prominent writers to nominate one book published since 1980. Morrison's novel took 15 votes, beating out Don DeLillo's Underworld, with 11, John Updike's four-in-one Rabbit Angstrom and Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, tied with 8 votes each, and Philip Roth's American Pastoral (7 votes).

The critic A.O. Scott, in an accompanying essay, says the the "best works of fiction, according to our tally, appear to be those that successfully assume a burden of cultural importance. They attempt not just the exploration of particular imaginary people and places, but also the illumination of epochs, communities, of the nation itself. America is not only their setting, but also their subject." Also, Scott comments on the dearth of younger novelists receiving nominations, and wonders, "Is this quantitative evidence for the decline of American letters—yet another casualty of the 60s? Or is the American literary establishment the last redoubt of elder-worship in a culture mad for youth?" This should all make for good cocktail chatter at the BEA.