{"id":193,"date":"2003-09-10T06:30:04","date_gmt":"2003-09-10T06:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:20","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:20","slug":"20th_centurys_top_books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=193","title":{"rendered":"20th Century’s Top Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

A reading friend (somehow many of my friends are placed in a kind of activity taxonomy; there are overlaps, like my cycling\/punk rock or shooting\/opera friends) sent me a link to a list of the “20th Century’s Greatest Hits”<\/a> by Prof. Larry McCaffrey of SDSU. <\/p>\n

They probably sent it because it lists “Pale Fire” as #1, and it may well be my favorite book, and Nabokov my favorite author.<\/p>\n

I thought I’d burn some pixels commenting on McCaffrey choices. Start with numbers 1 – 10:
\n# Pale Fire, Nabokov.<\/b> A freaking brilliant book. An epic poem wrapped in an academic misinterpretation worth killing for. The madness of analysis. But not the book I’d take as an entree to Nabokov’s coruscated world. I’d suggest three others: Lolita, mentioned below; The Defense, a novel about genius; and Ada, a sprawling book that was my personal introduction to the idea that books could do more than tell stories. <\/p>\n

# Ulysses, James Joyce.<\/b> The only book more owned and less read is ‘Remembrance of Things Past.’<\/p>\n

# Gravity’s Rainbow, Pynchon<\/b>. Sorry, ‘The Crying of Lot 49’ takes this and launches it to oblivion. ‘Lot 49’ is still one of the best books about Southern California – and what we have done to America. Funny, wild, and you’ll never look at a W.A.S.T.E. basket (or a mailman) the same way again.<\/p>\n

# The Public Burning, Coover<\/b>. Don’t know it, but I’ll go look for it.<\/p>\n

# The Sound And The Fury, Faulkner<\/b>. Sorry, ‘Absalom’ gets my vote as the best Faulkner.<\/p>\n

# Trilogy<\/b> (Molloy 1953 , Malone Dies 1956, The Unnamable 1957), Beckett. Sorry, again, I’ve never appreciated Beckett.


\n# The Making Of The Americans, Stein<\/b>. She was never a great writer, but she led a great life, and reported it well.<\/p>\n

# Nova Trilogy<\/b> (The Soft Machine 1962, Nova Express 1964, The Ticket that Exploded, 1967), Burroghs. Any one of these is enough; worth the read, but tame today, when we’re on the other side of the psychedelic revolution.<\/p>\n

# Lolita, Nabokov<\/b>. God, what a great book. I reread it last year, and was amazed that I had forgotten how funny and sad and brilliantly written it is. One of the best novels, and certainly one of the best American novels (by an author who first wrote in Russian, then in French!!)<\/p>\n

# Finnegan’s Wake, Joyce<\/b>. Somehow, I like this better than Ulysses; I’ll need to go reread it someday and figure out why.<\/p>\n

I’ll get to the other 90 as time and space allow, but go check them out<\/a> for yourself<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A reading friend sent me a link to a list of the “20th Century’s Greatest Hits” by Prof. Larry McCaffrey of SDSU. I thought I’d burn some pixels commenting on his choices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}