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20th Century's Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction

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The 20th Century's Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction is a list of the 100 best English-language books of the 20th century compiled by American literary critic Larry McCaffery. The list was created largely in response to the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list (1999), which McCaffery considered out of touch with 20th-century fiction. McCaffery wrote that he saw his list "as a means of sharing with readers my own views about what books are going to be read 100 or 1000 years from now".[1]

The list includes many books not included in the Modern Library list, including five of the top ten: Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, Robert Coover's The Public Burning, Samuel Beckett's Trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable), Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans, and William S. Burrough's The Nova Trilogy. Topping the list is Vladimir Nabokov's 1962 novel Pale Fire, which McCaffery called the "most audaciously conceived novel of the century."

List

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Rank Year Title Author
1 1962 Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov
2 1922 Ulysses James Joyce
3 1973 Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Pynchon
4 1977 The Public Burning Robert Coover
5 1929 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner
6 1955, 1956, 1958 The Trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable) Samuel Beckett
7 1925 The Making of Americans Gertrude Stein
8 1961, 1962, 1964 The Nova Trilogy (The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded, Nova Express) William S. Burroughs
9 1955 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
10 1939 Finnegans Wake James Joyce
11 1976 Take It or Leave It Raymond Federman
12 1987 Beloved Toni Morrison
13 1994 Going Native Stephen Wright
14 1947 Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry
15 1927 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf
16 1968 In the Heart of the Heart of the Country William H. Gass
17 1975 J R William Gaddis
18 1952 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
19 1997 Underworld Don DeLillo
20 1926 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway
21 1916 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce
22 1925 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
23 1903 The Ambassadors Henry James
24 1920 Women in Love D. H. Lawrence
25 1981 Sixty Stories Donald Barthelme
26 1994 The Rifles William T. Vollmann
27 1955 The Recognitions William Gaddis
28 1902 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
29 1961 Catch-22 Joseph Heller
30 1949 Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
31 1937 Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston
32 1936 Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner
33 1975 Dhalgren Samuel R. Delany
34 1939 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
35 1984, 1986, 1992, 1993 The Four Elements Tetralogy (The Stain, Entering Fire, The Fountains of Neptune, The Jade Cabinet) Rikki Ducornet
36 1984, 1986, 1988 Cyberspace Trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive) William Gibson
37 1934 Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller
38 1957 On the Road Jack Kerouac
39 1974 Lookout Cartridge Joseph McElroy
40 1973 Crash J. G. Ballard
41 1981 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie
42 1960 The Sot-Weed Factor John Barth
43 1965 Genoa Paul Metcalf
44 1932 Brave New World Aldous Huxley
45 1924 A Passage to India E. M. Forster
46 1972 Double or Nothing Raymond Federman
47 1939 At Swim-Two-Birds Flann O'Brien
48 1985 Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy
49 1949 The Cannibal John Hawkes
50 1940 Native Son Richard Wright
51 1939 The Day of the Locust Nathanael West
52 1936 Nightwood Djuna Barnes
53 1980 Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson
54 1969 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut
55 1988 Libra Don DeLillo
56 1952 Wise Blood Flannery O'Connor
57 1985 Always Coming Home Ursula K. Le Guin
58 1930, 1932, 1936 U.S.A. Trilogy (The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money) John Dos Passos
59 1962 The Golden Notebook Doris Lessing
60 1951 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger
61 1929 Red Harvest Dashiell Hammett
62 1981 What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Raymond Carver
63 1914 Dubliners James Joyce
64 1923 Cane Jean Toomer
65 1905 The House of Mirth Edith Wharton
66 1980 Riddley Walker Russell Hoban
67 1956, 1958, 1963 The Checkerboard Trilogy (Go in Beauty, The Bronc People, Portrait of the Artist with 26 Horses) William Eastlake
68 1976 The Franchiser Stanley Elkin
69 1985, 1986, 1986 The New York Trilogy (City of Glass, Ghosts, The Locked Room) Paul Auster
70 1990 Skinny Legs and All Tom Robbins
71 1996 Infinite Jest David Foster Wallace
72 1995 The Age of Wire and String Ben Marcus
73 1966 Tlooth Harry Mathews
74 1969 Pricksongs and Descants Robert Coover
75 1962 The Man in the High Castle Philip K. Dick
76 1991 American Psycho Brett Easton Ellis
77 1969 The French Lieutenant's Woman John Fowles
78 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983 The Book of the New Sun Tetralogy (The Shadow of the Torturer, The Claw of the Conciliator, The Sword of the Lictor, The Citadel of the Autarch) Gene Wolfe
79 1962 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess
80 1975, 1978, 1983 Albany Cycle (Legs, Billy Phelan's Greatest Game, Ironweed) William Kennedy
81 1995 The Tunnel William H. Gass
82 1966 Omensetter's Luck William H. Gass
83 1949 The Sheltering Sky Paul Bowles
84 1981 Darconville's Cat Alexander Theroux
85 1968 Up Ronald Sukenick
86 1969 Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down Ishmael Reed
87 1919 Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood Anderson
88 1987 You Bright and Risen Angels William T. Vollmann
89 1948 The Naked and the Dead Norman Mailer
90 1968 The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. Robert Coover
91 1970 Creamy and Delicious Steve Katz
92 1980 Waiting for the Barbarians J. M. Coetzee
93 1953 More Than Human Theodore Sturgeon
94 1979 Mulligan Stew Gilbert Sorrentino
95 1929 Look Homeward, Angel Thomas Wolfe
96 1925 An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser
97 1981 Easy Travel to Other Planets Ted Mooney
98 1989 Tours of the Black Clock Steve Erickson
99 1990 In Memoriam to Identity Kathy Acker
100 1995 Hogg Samuel R. Delany

Statistics

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Not counting the tetralogies of Rikki Ducornet (#35) and Gene Wolfe (#78), the most cited author is James Joyce, who has written four works on the list: Ulysses (#2), Finnegans Wake (#10), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (#21), and Dubliners (#63). Robert Coover and William H. Gass each have three works on the list, while Samuel Delany, Don DeLillo, William Faulkner, Raymond Federman, William Gaddis, Vladimir Nabokov, and William Vollmann have two apiece.

Titles in common with Modern Library 100 Best Novels

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Altogether, there are 34 titles in common between the Modern Library list and the Greatest Hits list:

  1. ^ The entire Albany Cycle was included on the list, where Ironweed was listed as a solo work on the Modern Library list.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Top 100 List with comments at Spineless Books' Larry McCaffery archive
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