Best American Fiction Poll

The New York Times recently published the results of a poll on the best American work of fiction over the last 25 years. I like to think of myself as well-read, and I was heartened to see that I have read about half the works listed (a few of them are a series of novels, which I have read part). But this is mostly due to the frequency of appearance by Philip Roth, who is my favorite writer.

Roth has six books of the 22 listed, an impressive feat. I have read and enjoyed them all: American Pastoral, The Human Stain, Operation: Shylock, The Counterlife, Sabbath's Theater, and The Plot Against America. Of these, I would say The Counterlife was my favorite, the last of the Zuckerman trilogy (although Zuckerman still shows up in Roth's books). My favorite Roth book, perhaps my favorite book of all time, is Portnoy's Complaint, too old for this poll. Any writer who can write so detailingly and humorously about masturbation is certainly a compadre of mine. I have read almost all of Roth's books, but am a little behind, as I have not read The Dying Animal and he has a new book, called Everyman.

The winner of the poll was Beloved, by Toni Morrison. I read that about twenty years ago, and it was rough going. I won't say that I didn't like it, but it was a struggle to get through. Roth's writing is like butter to me, but while reading Beloved I found that I had trouble understanding what was going on. I felt this way while reading another finalist, Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian.
Here are the other books on the list that I've read: The Rabbit novels of John Updike (two of the four: Rabbit is Rich, which is one of the best novels I've ever read, and Rabbit at Rest), A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole, Winter's Tale, by Mark Helprin (too precious by half), Libra, by Don DeLillo (a good book, but kind of got co-opted by the similar story of Oliver Stone's film JFK), Cormac McCarthy's Border Crossing trilogy (I read All the Pretty Horses, but not the other two).

Unread by me: Underworld, by Don DeLillo (well, I read the first chapter, which was great, but put it down and didn't go back to it. I should find it and start again), and White Noise, by the same author; Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson, Where I'm Calling From, by Raymond Carver, The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien; Mating, by Norman Rush, Jesus's Son, by Denis Johnson, Independence Day, by Richard Ford (I own this, and is in a stack of yet-to-be-read books); and The Known World, by Edward P. Jones. I guess it's time for more reading!