Friday, November 11, 2022

The best novels written in English / Help us come up with a more diverse list

Patricia Highsmith
David Levine

The best novels written in English: help us come up with a more diverse list

Robert McCrum’s two-year tour of the 100 best English-language novels has provoked a mixed response, with many readers pointing to the shortage of women and non-white writers. Let us know who you would like to see included on the list

Marta Bausells
Friday 21 August 2015

No Atwood. No Pynchon. No Vonnegut. No Julian Barnes, no Patricia Highsmith, no Martin Amis, no David Foster Wallace, no Chinua Achebe. We could continue. Robert McCrum’s list of the 100 best novels has already been picked over for its shortage of women, of writers of colour - even of Irish authors. It’s all in good humour, and to prolong the fun we’re inviting you to nominate the one (or several) novels that you think should absolutely have been on the list. We will publish a compilation soon on the Guardian site. Here are some examples of what readers have already said.

Most of the 'best novels' I miss are other novels by authors already on the list. By limiting the list to one book per author, McCrum is as good as admitting that this is a survey of English literature, not a best novels list. This is strengthened by the palpable sense that he's tried to include every genre --only missing fantasy. Grateful for this exclusion, as it means no Tolkien.

Speaking of Tolkein: a shame to see Amis and Rushdie on the list. They're quite unreadable, and not in the forgiveable way that, say, Ishiguro is (claustrophobic to the point of causing depression) but by having their quite unforgivable personalities so present in their books that 'quality' becomes a meaningless measure.

I miss Jane Bowles, WIlliam Burroughs, Elmore Leonard and Len Deighton (quite justified by the inclusion of Hammet and Chandler -- the latter being a quite appalling writer) Margaret Atwood, Ursula Le Guin, Samuel R. Delany, John Berger, Jenny Diski, James Baldwin, John Kennedy Toole, William Gibson, Angela Carter, Arthur Ransome (as good a prose artist as K. Grahame) Mary Renault! .... no need to specify particular books, as the list is, as I say, clearly a survey of authors.

A shorter list would have been harder, but more meaningful. A longer list -- and perhaps one that gave us authors rather than novels -- would have made for a better survey.

iruka 18 August 2015 6:57am

English-language literature is not just British and American literature. Unless you count Bellow (and you shouldn't), there are no novels on the list by Canadian authors, although there is no dearth of excellent novels to choose from. Besides Rushdie, Indian and Nigerian novelists are also conspicuous in their absence here.

PolydentateBrigand 17 August 2015 4:31pm

I've read 53. I'm missing Jean Rhys, Angela Carter, Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Atwood, James Baldwin, Patricia Highsmith, Barbara Pym. And some of the novels selected are quirky. If you wanted to get started with Sylvia Townsend Warner you should read The Corner That Held Them, a brilliant historical and profoundly human story, rather than the slighter Lolly Willowes.