When
I purchased a used copy of Books of the Century; A Hundred Years of Authors,
Ideas, and Literature at the Strand Bookstore in New York City over the
summer, I mistakenly thought it was just another compilation of what one person
or group believes were the best books over a period of time. But upon finally getting to look through it
more closely, I realize it is far more than one’s best-of list. It is an amazing
journey into 20th century books and their book reviews that provide
some amazing historical context to the world of books.
Over
250 books are covered in this fat, 664-page tome. The New York Times Book Review editor (at the
time the book was published two decades
ago), Charles McGrath. spent time reading through old book reviews from a hundred
years of reviews and presented a book of reviews as they originally appeared,
adding in a publishing timeline of factoids that should interest bibliophiles
and historians alike.
The
New York Times Book Review still remains America’s most widely read publication
of the literary arts, cherished for its intelligence, insights, and history of
credible reporting.
McGrath
notes that pouring through the volumes of old newspapers was a challenging
experience. He writes of the
well-preserved paper collection: “They are also a chastening and depressing
catalogue of once-famous books and authors now utterly forgotten. In those yellowing
newsprint pages, mighty literary reputations rise and fall…”
His book, the editor admits, snubs some deserving books just as the book review
section had. Space, prejudice, and personal tastes always dictate there will be
winners and losers that don’t always result from the merits.
“Book
reviews are, by their very nature, even more transitory, more forgotten, than
the books they purport to evaluate, and there’s
something slightly self-defeating about creating yet another book,
eventually to be forgotten, by assembling within hard covers writing that was
never intended (as most reviews are not) to be more than of the moment. If you
look at enough reviews, though, and at reviews over a long enough period, amid
the accidental changes you can spot some trends ... that seem
instructive, if not reliably permanent,” writes McGrath.
So
which authors are covered in this book?
It’s a lot of recognizable names – Helen Keller, Upton Sinclair, H.G.
Wells, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and W.E.B. DuBois – and those are just from
the first decade. But there certainly
are books and authors in there that are no longer talked about or read. Only the fittest survive.
The
volume also reprints interviews with such great writers as John Updike, Eudora
Welty, Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, and D.H. Lawrence.
Maybe
one of the best things about this book is its recognition of The New York
Times getting the review wrong. It
headlines these mistakes with the word “Ooops!”
Look at a July 15, 1951 review of The Catcher in the Rye. It says: “This book, though it’s too long, gets kind of monotonous. And he should’ve cut out a lot about those jerks and all that crumby school. They depress me.”
Look at a July 15, 1951 review of The Catcher in the Rye. It says: “This book, though it’s too long, gets kind of monotonous. And he should’ve cut out a lot about those jerks and all that crumby school. They depress me.”
In a
June 13, 1920 review of Virginia Wolf’s The Voyage Out it says “the
reader is disappointed“ and “there is
little in this offering to make it stand out from the tuck of mediocre novels
which make far less literary pretension.”
In
an 1897 review of The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells it says: “The
scientific machinery is not very delicately constructed and the imagination of
the reader is decidedly overtaxed.”
The October
22, 1961 review of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 says: “It fails here because
half its incidents are farcical and fantastic.”
So
if you learn anything from a book that pays tribute to great books and book
reviews, it is that each reader should decide on the value of a book. It helps
to have professionals guide us and call to our attention the books that deserve
a reading, but we should never defer all of our reading decisions to any one
source or expert.
Here’s
a sampling of the historic dates sprinkled throughout the book:
1904
– Peter Pan opens as a play by J.M. Barrie, but the book was not
published till 1928.
1923
– Kahlil Gibran brings forth The Prophet; it is still Alfred A. Knopf’s
best-selling book.
1930
– Sinclair Lewis is the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
1935
– The WPA is created. Many writers make
it through the Depression on the Federal Writer’s Project.
1946
– Dr. Benjamin Spock’s Baby and Child Care appears for the first time;
its publishers will later call it the best seller of the century; others
declare it the best seller in American publishing history (not counting The
Bible).
1953
– Casino Royale, the first James Bond Book, is published – to little
acclaim.
1964
– Jean-Paul Sartre choses to decline the Nobel Prize in literature.
1966
– Legal publication in the United States of Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure,
better known as Fanny Hill, 216 years after it first appeared in
England.
1971
– Abbie Hoffman causes some disruption in bookstores with Steal This Book.
1986
– Robert Penn Warren the only person to win Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction
and poetry is named the first poet laureate of the United States.
1996
– A Manhattan court rules that Random House, which has sued to get back a $1.2
million advance paid to the actress and steamy – book writer Joan Collins, must
instead pay her an additional $1 million.
Who
knows what you’ll come to discover in next week’s edition of The New York
Times Book Review, but upon reflection of old reviews we know there should
be some great books worthy of discovery.
But don’t forget to read books that are not listed anywhere or given
five-star reviews.
You are the critic of books for your life.
You are the critic of books for your life.
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