Three Coasts

The New York Times recently published the results of their survey to find out what is the best work of fiction in the last 25 years. The winner was Beloved by Toni Morrison. (here's the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/books/fiction-25-years.html) I can't say that I'm surprised and in fact I am ok with the results. Beloved is an excellent novel by one of America's best living novelist. I know that other critics have shunned the very concept of such a list, arguing that you simply cannot pick ONE book as the best and most representative of American fiction. I don't want to touch this point because I think overall literary fiction needs any positive press it can get. Already, many news outlets have reviewed the list, including Slate and NPR. My initial reactions to seeing it were one: damn, Roth had a lot of novels nominated; and two: where are the post-modernists? Where's Pynchon, Barth, and David Foster Wallace? DeLillo is well represented, and that's about it.

My explanation for this is that American post-modernists simply aren't that good. Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night and Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian's "Soul Mountain" are the best post-modern novels that I've read. DeLillo's White Noise is exactly that in comparison. I'm curious how history will judge American post-modernism. Pynchon will certainly remain in the canon, but I wonder how many others will?