The New York Times Presents the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, Selected by 503 Novelists, Poets & Critics

For long­time read­ers of Amer­i­can book jour­nal­ism, scrolling through the New York Times Book Review’s just-pub­lished list of the 100 best books of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry will sum­mon dim mem­o­ries of many a once-unig­nor­able crit­i­cal fuss. At one time or anoth­er over the past 25 years, some of us felt as if we could hard­ly con­sid­er our­selves lit­er­ate unless we’d read The Amaz­ing Adven­tures of Kava­lier & Clay, say, or A Vis­it from the Goon Squad, or The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao, or seem­ing­ly any­thing by George Saun­ders — all of which have placed on the Book Review’s list, the prod­uct of sur­vey­ing “hun­dreds of lit­er­ary lumi­nar­ies,” some of whose bal­lots have been made avail­able for pub­lic view­ing.

As a reminder of how deep we are into this cen­tu­ry, more than a few of the authors of these not­ed books — Denis John­son, Joan Did­ion, Philip Roth, Cor­mac McCarthy, Hilary Man­tel — have already shuf­fled off this mor­tal coil. Rober­to Bolaño, whose The Sav­age Detec­tives and 2666 placed at num­bers 38 and 6, respec­tive­ly, was already dead when both of those nov­els first appeared in Eng­lish trans­la­tion.

Some selec­tions may cause despair over the health of lit­er­a­ture itself: Don­na Tart­t’s The Goldfinch, for instance, whose rap­tur­ous recep­tion crit­ic James Wood once mem­o­rably described as “fur­ther proof of the infan­tiliza­tion of our lit­er­ary cul­ture: a world in which adults go around read­ing Har­ry Pot­ter.”

But then, every­one will have their objec­tions, which is the point behind these lists as much as behind lit­er­ary prizes like the Nobel, works by whose lau­re­ates from Toni Mor­ri­son to Han Kang have placed among the top 100. I note the omis­sion of Saul Bel­low and J. M. Coet­zee, whose Rav­el­stein and Eliz­a­beth Costel­lo would’ve eas­i­ly made my bal­lot were I lumi­nary enough to vote. In any case, these stand­ings are hard­ly like­ly to look much the same in a few decades’ time. Imag­ine a list of the best books of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry com­posed in 1924, when even The Great Gats­by had­n’t come out — or indeed, a list of the best books of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry from 1824, thir­teen years before the pub­li­ca­tion of the first nov­el by a cer­tain promis­ing young scrib­bler named Dick­ens.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The 10 Great­est Books Ever, Accord­ing to 125 Top Authors (Down­load Them for Free)

29 Lists of Rec­om­mend­ed Books Cre­at­ed by Well-Known Authors, Artists & Thinkers: Jorge Luis Borges, Pat­ti Smith, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, David Bowie & More

The 100 Best Nov­els: A Lit­er­ary Crit­ic Cre­ates a List in 1898

Joseph Brodsky’s List of 83 Books You Should Read to Have an Intel­li­gent Con­ver­sa­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.