TIME Critics Select 100 Best English-Language Novels Since 1923

-- Library Journal, 10/26/2005

Time Magazine literary critics Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo have named their picks for the 100 best novels released since 1923 the year of the magazine’s founding. Like the Modern Library’s Best Novels of the 20th Century list that caused such a big brouhaha in 1998, TIME mostly rounds up the usual suspects, but there are several delightful surprises amongst titles included and those not. The criteria of beginning in 1923 immediately excludes the 800-pound gorilla of modern literature, Joyce’s 1922 Ulysses, which will anger many, but as Lacayo states in his introduction to the list, “please, no emails about Ulysses. Rules are rules.” The purpose of the list, he says, is to “instruct” and “to enrage,” and Grossman and Lacayo welcome feedback. While the duo included decades-long high school curriculum standards like The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Catcher in the Rye, there are also some pop culture shockers like William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s graphic novel Watchmen. Another oddity is that while best-list regulars Hemingway and Hammett appear, it’s not for their usual works—the critics chose The Sun Also Rises and Red Harvest, respectively, over For Whom The Bell Tolls and The Maltese Falcon.