Best Book of the Decade?

[Chilly]

If you had to chose any novel as the best published between 2000-2009, what would it be? (especially you literary experts here on Litnet). I mean the most worthwhile to be remembered, best written novel you can think of. Life of Pi? The Kite Runner?

[dfloyd]

I haven't read it yet, or perhaps I have but it was so bad I didn't recognize it as being the best. The best writers tend to be in the mystery genre: Michael Connolly, Patricia Cornwell, and P. D. James. I will try The Kite Runner, but I must warn you: I find Don DeLilo, Philip Roth. Ian McEwan and others of that ilk extremely boring.

[sixsmith]

The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen

[dfloyd]

but since it was published in 2005 I will have to say it is the best I have read of those published after 2000: Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. I just finished The Road, but it is not nearly as good as No Country ... Whether you like him or not, Cormac is not boring! He also doesn't deal in scatological descriptions or dialog nor weird sexual connotations, which is not true of many post moderns.

[mal4mac]

In my experience, the best writers are certainly not in the mystery genre. The most boring novel I read, from the last decade, was an Ian Rankin novel. I like Philip Roth and Ian McEwan. In fact, "Indignation" and "Saturday" may be the best I've read. But I much prefer reading old classics, and haven't even read "the Kite Runner" or "Life of Pi". (I am tempted though!) Sometimes I break down and read a modern novel and it's usually a disappointment, so I scurry back to Dickens et. al. ... In the last decade, I found Rankin, Ishiguro, Creighton, De Lillo, Philip Pullman, and Stephen King very disappointing. I'd read more Roth and McEwan, though... Ravelstein by Saul Bellow was another good one.

[Travis_R]

The Life of Pi was terrible, The Kite Runner was alright.

Like sixsmith I have to go with The Corrections.

[mal4mac]

I've only read "Blood meridian" by McCarthy, and that was excellent, if gruelling! If you like "strangeness" in a novel , then that's a great choice. I have "The Road" lined up to read...

Here's an interesting review by James Wood of the Corrections (and deLillo's Underworld!):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/nov/09/fiction.reviews

"The novelist Michael Cunningham likens it to Buddenbrooks, but a comparison of those two novels shows The Corrections to be wide rather than deep, and smart rather than subtle. It has some of Mann's sweep and some of his gentle comedy (and even some of his Schopenhauer); but it lacks the luminous control of that great German book. Indeed, The Corrections suffers from a desire to put too much in."

Buddenbrooks was great! I'm tempted to read more Mann, rather than Franzen...

Is Cunningham any good?

[WICKES]

Ian McEwan. In fact, "Indignation" and "Saturday" may be the best I've read. .

Yes, I'd go for Saturday. For me it had a great deal to say about modern Britain-or more broadly about life in a modern western city.

My favourite writer of the noughties was Jeanette Winterson. I like her mystical, other-worldy leanings. In a bleak, scientific-materialist, Dawkin-esque world it is very refreshing.

[wlz]

I am still trying to convince myself that Jonathan Littells work, 'The Kindly Ones', was a book worth reading. ...just about, in the French, anyway. I wonder has anyone tried the English translation to this work?

[OrphanPip]

Is Cunningham any good?

The Hours and Specimen Days were so-so for me, not terrible.

Don't know about his earlier books. I've heard his short fiction is worth reading as well.

[Kafka's Crow]

Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore (2002) is one of the better recent books that I have come accross. Obviously it may not be the best (who can make such a big claim with all certainity) but still it did make quite a stir.

[stlukesguild]

Most of what I have read from the last decade has been limited to poetry. Among the strongest books I would count:

Geoffrey Hill- The Triumph of Love- A powerful book of knotty poetry which I am struggling with a second time... now researching and annotating all the myriad references and allusions that make this book as dense as the Wasteland.

Yves Bonnefoy- Curved Planks- A magnificent collection of the 80 year-old luminary of French poetry who combines elements of Valery, Modernism, Surrealism, and simply folk-song.

Homero Aridjis- Eyes to See Otherwise- A marvelous collection of lyrical poems of the contemporary Mexican poet and heir to Octavio Paz.

Paul Kane- Work Life: New Poems- Well crafted verse of a wide array of styles and intents. Perhaps his strongest voice is as that of the elegiac... writing eloquently upon the death of his father and mother-in-law.

Charles Wright- Littlefoot and Sestets:Poems- Author of some of the best poetry to come out of the US over the last few decades, Wright offers a layered, exquisitely musical, lyrical poetry laden with allusions to poetic predecessors... and the mundane realities of life. Along our journey through his poems we find ourselves meeting everyone from Elizabeth Bishop, T.S. Eliot, Egyptian mummies, Dino Campagna, and Lao Tzu to Miles Davis and Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.

Anne Carson- Autobiography of Red- This may be a bit of a cheat dating from 1999... but this marvelous novel in poem form is certainly one of the most intriguing works of the last decade... and Carson is one of the strongest living voices in literature... even if she is Canadian.:D

[JBI]

I was also was going to put Autobiography of Red, but that is last decade. I am tempted to put a non-fiction reference, but I think I will be ridiculed.

[stlukesguild]

I am tempted to put a non-fiction reference, but I think I will be ridiculed.

Surely that's never stopped you before?:D

[Kafka's Crow]

I was also was going to put Autobiography of Red, but that is last decade. I am tempted to put a non-fiction reference, but I think I will be ridiculed.

Talking of non-fiction, wasn't it the decade of Malcolm Gladwell, Nassim Taleb and Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner? Gladwell's The Tipping Point and Blink!, Taleb's The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness and Levitt & Dubner's Freakonomics summed up a very unpredictable decade where trends, business empires and economies rose and fell without any reasonable pattern or predictability.

[sixsmith]

I've only read "Blood meridian" by McCarthy, and that was excellent, if gruelling! If you like "strangeness" in a novel , then that's a great choice. I have "The Road" lined up to read...

Here's an interesting review by James Wood of the Corrections (and deLillo's Underworld!):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/nov/09/fiction.reviews




De Lillo's influence on the novel is not as pronounced as Wood would have us believe. Indeed, save for one errant narrative, one unfortunate 'riff', I don't really see De Lillo there at all (unless any reference to anything outside the mind of a character can be attributed to the influence of Don De Lillo). 'The Corrections' is a novel built very much on the depth and development of its characters and it succeeds, brilliantly, on that front.


Yes, I'd go for Saturday. For me it had a great deal to say about modern Britain-or more broadly about life in a modern western city.


I thought Saturday was an absolute howler. It seems to me that McEwan wanted it to be a kind of updated Herzog, a novel which explored the inner life of an intelligent man in a modern Western City. However, unlike Moses Herzog, McEwan's protagonist never really confronts anything, and certainly never challenges, never rallies against the age in which he lives. He is intellectually passive, and almost wholly, unbelievably, content in his middle class existence. And even this is rendered in a dull cliche: his mental digressions are given over to the comfort he takes from his consumer possessions (cars, wardrobes etc). It makes for terrible fiction: Perowne is too thin to carry a whole novel. And the ending (oh the ending) is risible. Simply risible.:brickwall

[JBI]

Talking of non-fiction, wasn't it the decade of Malcolm Gladwell, Nassim Taleb and Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner? Gladwell's The Tipping Point and Blink!, Taleb's The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness and Levitt & Dubner's Freakonomics summed up a very unpredictable decade where trends, business empires and economies rose and fell without any reasonable pattern or predictability.

I was thinking more along the lines of some unknown volume of scholarship that sort of hides in the corners of libraries.

[dfloyd]

than we colonists are. I have tried two McEwan books: Atonment and Saturday and they just couldn't hold my interest. I just finished The Road and didn't feel it was up to his earlier Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men. Just watched the movie of Old Country which follows the book fairly well except it chickens out in showing the graphic murder of the protagonists wife.

Everyone seemed to praise Underworld, and I really liked the first part where the 1950 playoff game was related. I saw (on very early b&w tv) the home run termed the 'shot heard round the world". A little take off on Lexington and Concord. The dialog in the stands between Frank Sinitra, Jackie Gleason, and Toots Shore was clever and intriguing, but later everything fell apart,and I couldn't finish the book.

I'm at the age where I can't afford to waste time reading what I consider inferior literature. I guess I should stick with classics. The early and middle twentieth century novels are more to my liking: Somerset Maugham, Fitxgerald, Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, and some Steinbeck seem far superior to what is being published today. And another couple Brits, Daphne Du Maurier and Evelyn Waugh wrote som real page turners. I keep trying, but writers like DeLilo and McEwan just don't have it compared those listed above.
I just finished my second time through Of Human Bondage which is my kind of novel.

[fb0252]

Anybody writing since 2000 equivalent in talent to Kafka, V. Woolf, Joyce, Beckett?

[JBI]

Anybody writing since 2000 equivalent in talent to Kafka, V. Woolf, Joyce, Beckett?

No, people stopped writing good literature after 1950 - the world just ran out of stuff to talk about, and no good writers were born, despite a wider spread of literacy, a greater exposure geographically of texts, more free time, ease of writing supplies, and larger readerships.

Seriously, what kind of a {edit} question is that? Not only is that not answerable, in the sense that the decade is hardly over, and texts haven't moved around yet, but also because none of those authors were writing particularly in the same decade.

[Scheherazade]

No, people stopped writing good literature after 1950 - the world just ran out of stuff to talk about, and no good writers were born, despite a wider spread of literacy, a greater exposure geographically of texts, more free time, ease of writing supplies, and larger readerships.

Seriously, what kind of a {edit} question is that? Not only is that not answerable, in the sense that the decade is hardly over, and texts haven't moved around yet, but also because none of those authors were writing particularly in the same decade.Well, it is not so "unanswerable" if you can type a 91 words reply!

:p

[JBI]

Well, it is not so "unanswerable" if you can type a 91 words reply!

:p

I didn't answer the question.

[Jozanny]

Oh people, people, this is absolutely lame. Poor Chilly offers us an interesting challenge, and obviously no one here stays current with Publishers Weekly, goodness gracious.

Chilly, to actually answer your question, the best novel of this decade in terms of technique, genius, depth of vision, structure is David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, 2004.

Now, the negatives are: Mitchell is conceited. He knows he can do anything and that smugness isn't lost on the astute reader. And another, which is just a matter of aesthetics, is the vision thing. Very educated reviewers balk at Mitchell's vision, which is not species optimistic--but I find it a perfectly reasonable worldview, as a member of the oppressed class of humanity.

However, even with these minor objections noted, he is the most dazzling contemporary writer I have ever read. I have never seen anything like him before, and I don't think I will ever see anyone like him again. He sends Cormac McCarthy back to grade school, and Cormac is a master craftsman.

If anything renews my faith in the possibilities of the human animal, it is what Mitchell brings to the table.

[stlukesguild]

JoZ... you almost sell me on this. The description of the book on Amazon certainly suggests that it may be quite up my alley.

[sixsmith]

Oh people, people, this is absolutely lame. Poor Chilly offers us an interesting challenge, and obviously no one here stays current with Publishers Weekly, goodness gracious.

Chilly, to actually answer your question, the best novel of this decade in terms of technique, genius, depth of vision, structure is David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, 2004.

Now, the negatives are: Mitchell is conceited. He knows he can do anything and that smugness isn't lost on the astute reader. And another, which is just a matter of aesthetics, is the vision thing. Very educated reviewers balk at Mitchell's vision, which is not species optimistic--but I find it a perfectly reasonable worldview, as a member of the oppressed class of humanity.

However, even with these minor objections noted, he is the most dazzling contemporary writer I have ever read. I have never seen anything like him before, and I don't think I will ever see anyone like him again. He sends Cormac McCarthy back to grade school, and Cormac is a master craftsman.

If anything renews my faith in the possibilities of the human animal, it is what Mitchell brings to the table.

Jozanny,

You strike at a very raw nerve here because in a recent attempt to rank (yes, yes, futile I know) the best novels of the decade, I had 'Cloud Atlas' number 2 and of course I have suggested above that 'The Corrections' is the greater novel. However, I realise now that I have actually punished (he is, of course incensed at being at #2) Mitchell for of his prodigious talent. I pictured a fastidious Jon Franzen slaving away at the great modern American novel, toiling in the long shadow of 'Infinite Jest', and i thought to myself, 'His effort deserves reward.'

Personally, I didn't find the structure and vision of 'Cloud Atlas' to be as daunting as some reviewers cautioned. For me the novel was primarily a display of a singular and formidable talent. As I moved from the flawless evocation of Melville through to a fully realised and powerfully rendered post apocalypse, I kept thinking, 'For all the very talented writers alive today, there is nobody else who could do what is being done right here.' He just hits every note. I get the smugness but damn, it's a small price to pay.

So yes. I recant. Sorry Jon. 'Cloud Atlas' is the best novel of the decade.

[blazeofglory]

I like Malcolm Gladwell's Blink and the Outlier as the best books for this writer is not claimable to be original and he kind of drew ideas from different sources but at least he has amazingly made things comprehensible to us so that the common man can profit from some of the complex study materials.

[Heathcliff]

I think it is the most recent encyclopedia.

When you think of it, what is the meaning of best?

Actually, I'm rather fond of the Mr. Men books. :lol:

[Jozanny]

six,

It is odd, but I have noticed that you and I seem to share similar aesthetic pathways, much more than most. I mention Gaddis and you are at least on a shared footing about Gaddis (though as I mentioned, I am not entirely comfortable with Gaddis perhaps deliberately going over my head...); we've both read Lampedusa, me thinks. I will probably like Ballard--I did not hold off, and downloaded Crash to the mighty k--and we apparently rank Mitchell rather highly.

Now, Franzen. He is a fine writer, but much like those who balk about Mitchell's pessimism, I balk at Franzen's, and also felt The Corrections overplayed its hand, and drew out its character study too fully. What was the point of describing the father's death down to the last detail? I almost have a moral objection to how he treated his own characters.

This does not mean he is not without talent--as the novel still lives on in my memory--but he has some distance to travel before I feel I can fully admire him.

If you know anyone out your way mid-forties or so who is a safe fellow, if they are ever out my way I could use some post-collegiate literary company. Yes, I may read a little silly, but I mean it as a compliment even if it's the harder way to seek new friendships ;).

[TheFifthElement]

six,

It is odd, but I have noticed that you and I seem to share similar aesthetic pathways, much more than most. I mention Gaddis and you are at least on a shared footing about Gaddis (though as I mentioned, I am not entirely comfortable with Gaddis perhaps deliberately going over my head...); we've both read Lampedusa, me thinks. I will probably like Ballard--I did not hold off, and downloaded Crash to the mighty k--and we apparently rank Mitchell rather highly.

Oh, I read Crash last year. I have very mixed feelings about the book. It is crude, ugly and repetitive and yet at the same time it is extraordinary, brave and inspired. Mostly I think the latter. I'd be very interested in your views once you've read it.

Mitchell is pretty brilliant. I read Number9Dream towards the end of last year and it was a fantastic read. Very complex and diverse and utterly fascinating. Of course Cloud Atlas is brilliant, as is Ghostwritten, though Black Swan Green didn't really do it for me. Too plain fayre after such a delicious feast.

[kafkaroach]

I really found Everything's Illuminated andExtremely Loud and Incredibly Close rather enjoyable reads and innovative as well.

I also second the notion of Murakami's Kafka on the Shore as particularly delightful, though not as great as his masterpiece (at least in my eyes), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

That's about all I've read from this decade, but a friend of mine has been raining down praise on Dave Eggers's rendition of Where the Wild Things Are.

[mal4mac]

It isn't that there are no great writers since 1950, the problem is trying to identify them. As this thread shows, there is no consensus on which modern writers are great. Most books on "the canon" admit to this problem. Classic novels have had several generations of critics, readers, and other writers poring over them, which seems to lead to some critical consensus. It's easy to find supposedly good critics who disagree about whether DeLillo is great or not, but very difficult to find any who think Tolstoy, Dickens, and Tolstoy are not great. So in looking for a "great read" it's much safer to turn to a classic. Then again, only a modern author can capture "your life in your time", so I like to look for "that kind" of modern novel. This may be why I liked "Saturday" and did not much like "Atonement". My favourite novel of the noughties (or is it a biography?) was Youth by J.M. Coetzee. This really captures how working through a sequence of IT jobs in the late 20th century can be a strange amalgam of interesting and soul destroying. Microserfs by Coupland was quite a good novel in this genre, but Coetzee was better.

[Kafka's Crow]

The problem lies in the sheer magnitude of productivity in our time. So much of the fiction writing is being published that we will need a long time to digest all this literary output. It will take longer than other decades and centuries to reach a consensus about the greatness of writers as there are, simply, more writers to be read, more reputations to be saved or resurrected and, thank God for that, burried. We will find out by 2050 about the representative writer of the last decade as we know about the stature of Beckett etc now. Still reputation of great writers rise and sink through history. Even the great Shakespeare's had to be rescued by the 19th Century.

It would be presumptuous of me (or anybody else) to name one writer or book at this stage in time because I have not read them all (yet)!

[gruntingslime]

This doesn't answer the topic question, but since the 1950s two books that come to my mind immediately are Cosmos and Pornographia by Witold Gombrowicz. They're a little obscure and hard to find but they're both classic and amazing. Try looking for them in their better translations by Danuta Borchardt.
I would even go so far as to add The Tenant by Roland Topor

[kelby_lake]

Can't think of any modern books talking about modern times that have particularly striked me. Maybe because I don't know what defined the noughties as a decade? Technology advancements? Iraq war? I don't know.

[sparechange]

"The Lay of The Land" by Richard Ford was my favorite in the last decade...
He was born in 44, so I guess he qualifies...:)
He seems to get overlooked a lot in these discussions of illustrious authors, (still living) but for my money he is tough to beat.