You are sleeping, you do not want to believe

I thought this NYT Book Review article was interesting and somewhat frustrating. Seems that "200 prominent writers and critics" are in lockstep regarding the best writers of the last 25 years (and willing to stretch well beyond 25 years to include John Updike). I know lists like these are intended to generate controversy, but I notice a couple of trends that bother me. The first is the general absence of novels in which the plot is at all important (Beloved being a notable exception) in favor of novels that seem intended to reflect the angst of the period about which they are written. Are plot and storyline really dead? Jonathan Franzen and Tom Wolfe can be a little irritating in their sanctimony about the "fate of the American novel" but I have to say I'm on their side when it comes to this issue.

The second is the scary orthodoxy of this list. I look at this list and wonder if any of these people actually read White Noise. Perhaps I missed something, but wasn't White Noise a bit, ummm, completely f--ing obvious? Really, do you even have to read the book after reading the Amazon summary? And is every single thing that Philip Roth and Don Delillo wrote over the last 25 years really better than, say, Ironweed, A Thousand Acres, Crossing to Safety (sorry Tripp) or _____________ [insert your favorite novel here]? Is it too much to ask for even one young novelist to appear on this list? I'd nominate Jonathan Lethem but admit freely there is a lot of room for the token youthful presence. Don't get me wrong, I like Roth but The Counterlife and Operation Shylock are the same damn book. Come to think of it, so are all of Updike's books so perhaps that is the trick.

Okay, whale away at me for being too dumb to get it.