Time magazine has published its annual Top 10 lists of “everything” in 2011, but the fiction list is the most conspicuous. Rather than make you click through ten different screens, here is the list in a shorter form:
( 1.) George R. R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons. To quote Kingsley Amis from New Maps of Hell: “I think it better to say straight out that I do not like fantasy.” Speaking for myself: I stand by my earlier assertion that, if a fantasy novel is the best work of fiction this year, then an epochal change occurred in the literary culture while no one was watching.
( 2.) David Foster Wallace, The Pale King. The half-finished manuscript that Wallace left behind when he committed suicide.
( 3.) Ann Patchett, State of Wonder. Patchett is our greatest author of overlong Tendenzromane — romances of political tendentiousness. The politics can’t conceal the sentimentality at the heart of Patchett’s vision.
( 4.) Teju Cole, Open City. About a Nigerian immigrant to New York. Fascinating voice. Nothing happens.
( 5.) Kate Atkinson, Started Early, Took My Dog. Fifth volume in a series of mysteries.
( 6.) Kevin Wilson, The Family Fang. A first novel about performance artists who use their kids as props. Ha, ha.
( 7.) Kate Beaton, Hark! A Vagrant. A collection of cartoons. Don’t ask me what it’s doing on a fiction list. “[I]t ought to be somewhere,” Lev Grossman says, “so let’s put it here.” Um, okay.
( 8.) Lars Kepler, The Hypnotist (trans. Ann Long). You’ve read all of Stieg Larsson? Not to worry. Here’s another grisly Swedish thriller. Better title: Cruelty in a Cold Climate.
( 9.) J. Courtney Sullivan, Maine. An increasingly common genre: the multi-generational saga of women. In Maine this time, for the sake of difference if not originality.
(10.) Daniel Clowes, The Death Ray. A graphic novel about a Chicago boy who acquires a working death ray.
Time magazine, the press secretary for middlebrow thought in America, has now officially abandoned its readers. A fantasy, an unfinished philosophical jawbreaker, two mysteries, a collection of cartoons, a far-fetched debut, and a graphic novel — these are the “best books” it can recommend to readers with limited time for reading and a non-specialist interest in new fiction? Where are the big fat reads? The thick novels, thick with characters and incident, in which readers can lose themselves? Jonathan Franzen tried to write such a novel last year in Freedom, although he insisted that his nearly 600-page book — in the 19th century it would have been called a triple-decker — belonged “solidly in the high-art literary tradition.” (It didn’t.)
My wife’s favorite novel this year was Abraham Verghese’s Cutting for Stone (2009), a book that was recommended to her by another professional who is more interested in people than in literary form. This is a perfectly respectable kind of novel, serious fiction without pretensions to difficulty. That’s pretty much the 19th-century conception of the novel, in fact; and good writers can still do wonderful things with the kind. Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Marriage Plot is the ideal cross-over novel, for example, appealing both to serious part-time readers and those who want to “keep up” with the latest in literary thinking. Its absence from Time’s list says far more about the magazine’s desperate efforts to seem edgy and clever than it does about the best fiction of 2011.
Dear Mr. Myers, nI don't want to jump to any conclusions, so let me ask: Have you actually read George Martin? Your dislike of fantasy novels you haven't bothered to read is well known, after all. So I don't think it's unreasonable for me to hypothesize that you haven't read A Dance With Dragons or any of the A Song of Ice And Fire books. This seems especially probable when you write, "Where are the big fat reads? The thick novels, thick with characters and incident, in which readers can lose themselves?" n nYou see, "big fat…thick novels, thick with character and incident" is an almost perfect description of Martin's books. Maybe you should try reading them.
Believe me. I’ve tried, I’ve tried.
Not to grind the axe you’re grinding, Mr Ledoux, but I never said I disliked the Harry Potter novels. I merely questioned their status as public novels. n nOver Thanksgiving, however, I read the second and third volumes (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), and I can now say that, no matter what damage it does to my reputation, I will not be reading any more.
Dear Mr. Myers, n nYou really should try book four, The Goblet of Fire. That's when the series shifts to adult themes (death, sacrifice, loyalty, courage, redemption, and loss). n nI still don't see how you can make the claim that Harry Potter is not a "public novel." People waited in line at midnight for the book releases (Just as crowds waited on the docks for the newest installments of Dickens novels). Hundreds of millions of people have read them in many different languages. Reading Harry Potter is a common experience that people share. A common experience that you dismissed without having read the books! n nI would submit that you have simply missed the boat. That's ok. I accept that you did finally read the first three books and did not enjoy them. You don't have to enjoy them. Harry Potter is still a "public novel." I think you're confusing your personal taste in novels with whether certain novels have an affect on society. A la Pauline Kael's apocryphal, "I don't know how Nixon won, I don't know anyone who voted for him," you first made the statement, "I don't see how Harry Potter could be a public novel, I haven't read it." Now you're stating, essentially, "I don't see how Harry Potter could be a public novel, I read less than half of the series and I didn't like it." n nUnless you're now willing to admit that, your personal disinterest in the series, and fantasy in general, notwithstanding, Harry Potter has had a huge cultural affect all across the world? n nAs for George RR Martin, today I was on Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron District of Manhattan, where I work. There was a new food truck serving Korean fusion parked on my block, and there was a long line. And as I waited to order food I heard the two men standing in line behind me speaking. "I'm really surprised to find myself liking the Kingslayer in this one," said the first one. "Yeah, it's surprising," replied his friend. I turned to them and said, "Are you reading the latest one?" "No, I'm reading the third one," said the first man. "Oh, yeah, Jaime really redeems himself in that one, doesn't he?" He nodded. "I'm reading the fourth one now," said the second man. n nWe were not standing around on the sidewalk in 34 degree weather talking about Cutting for Stone. But that's just to say I haven't read it, not that it doesn't deserve to be discussed in near freezing temperatures with total strangers. n nKind regards, nMax
Dear Mr. Myers, n nI just re-read your first post on Harry Potter from Hallowe'en, and I realized that you had used the same Pauline Kael reference there that I just did in my previous comment. I had forgotten that! Funny how we both used it… n nBut you also wrote, "Harry Potter certainly seemed to bring nearly everybody together in a congregation of enthusiastic readership, but whether the novels provide (in Bottum’s phrase) “deep explanations of the human condition” is more doubtful." n nTo which I really have to say, it's not doubtful if you've read the entire series. It's obvious. n nKind regards, nMax