ILX BOOKS OF THE 00s: THE RESULTS! (or: Ismael compiles his reading list, 2010-2019)

Steinbeck? Pretty much the last novelist I'd compare 00s Chabon to.

Yeah fair enough. My knowledge of midcent Amfic is not sufficient to make a good comparison and maybe there isn't one.

That video game idea is amazing.

Ismael censored my blurb for this, my #8!

"A simple book that succeeds completely at the small task it sets itself."

Heh, so much for my prediction. I thought this would take it in a walk. I've never heard a bad word about it.

making ready to poop on this thread from a great height if Everything is Illuminated takes this

Question is can I get a pback copy of The Road that doesn't have NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE EVENT all over it.

So I did xp! That blurb was just too controversial to include.

I'm going with Everything Is Illuminated to win. It's short enough and prominent enough for loads of people to have read and enjoyable enough to make a lot of people's ballots, even if it doesn't really feel like Book of the Decade material.

have lots to say on this subject but am holding my poop until the announcement (as mentioned earlier, I am crouched high above the thread)

I hadn't read "The Road" by the time I voted in this poll. I have since read it. If I voted now I would have placed it in my top 3 most likely. It's one of those sort of timeless stories, like "Of Mice and Men", only better.

*shifts uneasily to one side*

Oh, fuck Everything is Illuminated if it's the top choice.

Heh, so much for my prediction. I thought this would take it in a walk. I've never heard a bad word about it.

lots of people (not me) think cormac mccarthy is macho bs and I think those people don't like this book, see it as a twisted fantasy about "what would it take for dads and sons to have a real man-to-man relationship in this degraded world" -- this reading is crazy, of course, but I report, you decide

Everything Is Illuminated = Is This It
The Corrections = Speakerboxx/The Love Below
Plot Against America = Kid A

like "Of Mice and Men"

this is very apt, I withdraw any connection of Chabon to Steinbeck and award the analogy to McCarthy

I'm not so certain about Plot Against America, by the way, the other two are obviously in

I've avoided The Road so far cuz Blood Meridian was one of the dumber books that I've read in the past few years... should I give McCarthy another chance y/n?

y. I found Blood Meridian much more of a slog, though a worthwhile one, because the action seems so aimless. The Road is, as the cliche goes, hard to put down - it has this grinding, relentless magnetism.

I like the idea that this is McCarthy's idea of a father-son bonding weekend. "What we really need, son, is for your mother to die and for civilisation to be brought to its knees, leaving nothing but murderers and cannibals roaming a charred wasteland just so that they can live another day in hell. Then we can have some real us-time. I'll teach you to fish - no, wait, the fish will be dead. Er, I'll teach you to kill a man with a sharpened stick. Come on now, son, don't cry. It'll be fun! Just don't tell your mom."

fwiw my favorite part of Blood Meridian was the episode with the Judge making gunpowder -- the vague atmosphere of violence and dread works better when the narrative's a bit more taut, it's true. should see if anyone I know has a copy of The Road I can borrow.

3. The Plot Against America - Philip Roth (2004)
(147 points, twelve votes)

http://www.charleslindbergh.com/images/amfirst.jpg

RedRaymaker:
A fascinating insight into what might have been.

eephus!:
None of Roth's books this decade match American Pastoral, but this one has at least an echo of AP's insistent ambivalence. Thus it beats out the more sure-of-itself Human Stain.

Philip Roth - Where to begin?

The Plot Against America left me stunned. More affecting than American Pastoral, even. The counterfactual/alternate history element gets balanced by Roth's hyper-realistic and empathetic portrayal of lower middle class family life in 1940s urban New Jersey. And the whole notion of Charles Lindebergh as isolationist/fascist US president put me in mind not so much of George W. Bush but of Arnold Schwarzenneger. As Mailer recently wrote, Arnold comes across like he's auditioning for dictator.
But this book is no mere political tract, it works as a flesh-and-blood novel and then some. Highly recommended.
― lovebug starski (lovebug starski), Tuesday, November 30, 2004 12:05 PM (5 years ago)

Last weekend: author Philip Roth, talking to a streetside book vendor w/ a table full of "The Plot Against America." "Yo, buddy, I'm not getting any royalties here."
― lovebug starski (lovebug starski), Sunday, February 6, 2005 2:51 PM (5 years ago)

Last book I read was Portnoy's Complaint.
Now reading The Plot Against America.
Why didn't I check out Roth earlier? Ach!
― Øystein (Øystein), Friday, July 8, 2005 2:31 PM (4 years ago)

Here's a story you might find reassuring. Last year, around the publication of The Plot Against America, I saw Philip Roth speak and take questions at Columbia. Someone asked him about a scene in which a seemingly minor character tries to help the narrator open a stuck bathroom door -- asking, of course, after the possible symbolism of the door, the thematic significance of the narrator's being stuck behind it, and the role of this woman in trying to open it. It's her only real appearance in scene, after all -- surely what she's doing means something!
... Okay so Roth answers in the same thoughtful tone, as if he's revealign the inner workings of the prize-winning novelist. And he says something like this: "Well, I got to the part at the end where she dies. And I thought, well, this death will have much more emotional impact if we've actually seen her in the book, actually had her in a scene and gotten to know her. So I went back and added that part."
... Whoah duh! This is an extreme example, but it's something I kind of like about Roth -- he'll actually talk about writing on the kind of boneheaded level that writing often has to get done. If you're gonna kill someone, it helps to introduce her first -- anyone who's ever seen Star Trek is familiar with this.
... Point is: the vocabulary of breaking down and analyzing literature is different from the vocabulary of building it in the first place; they're very different practices. Just because you don't feel up to speed on one doesn't mean anything about the other; hell, I can think of lots of instances where being non-conversant with critical stuff makes people less self-conscious and more effective in making art.
... What you do want to worry about is whether you feel like you understand the mechanics of writing -- from that butt-obvious level Roth's talking about above all the way up to how to create subtle effects. You want to have a sense of how every decision you could possibly make will affect the whole piece. Not necessarily right away, or anything -- just write and see what happens. But that's the part that's important.
... I mean, with writing, you're first and foremost the carpenter -- not the architecture critic.
― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, September 16, 2005 9:08 PM (4 years ago)

nabisco massively OTM here

xp

The gunpowder segment of Blood Meridian is brilliant, but it's also the only part of it that seeks to entertain through rhythym, suspense or other common techniques. I think the whole point of Blood Meridian is that it's a grinding series of massacres and violence without reason and without resolution, and it's telling that gunpowder episode is relayed through a character as a 'story within the story'.

Yeah, I love that quote, delighted to get the chance to employ it here.

http://wpcontent.answers.com/wikipedia/en/e/e9/Am1logo.jpg

I also like this graphic.

I definitely thank that's the point of Blood Meridian - I'm just not sure I like the point. But I did settle into the rhythm of it and loved the second half. The more Judge the better, basically.

Plot's not up there with the American Pastoral/Human Stain/Communist trilogy but it's a great change of pace from the old-man-losing-his-sexual-potency vein that he's been mining recently, and the one that I find it easiest to recommend to people. Its strengths don't rely on you being a Roth fan already.

I read that Ashton Kutcher is being talked about as the Judge in the proposed movie, btw- that may have been an ILX only wind up but dear god.

It's a time since I read The Plot Against America, but I remember it almost like a children's book now. I don't know if it's just because the narrator's young, or whether it actually would be a fabulous thing to discover aged 13 or 14.

darraghmac sorta makes Blood Meridian sound like some kind of po-mo steez about the impossibility of achieving narrative closure, especially in an adventure story where 'excitement' and 'action' are basically synonyms for violent transgression and near-misses with death.

but I think that would be a better book than the one that I read.

found a comment I wrote shortly after I read it, where I complain about "prose that bypasses the mind and permits nothing more than a gut reaction (dread, fear, disgust, awe, wonder)"; I think I'd still agree with that. it's like "show, don't tell" taken to an absurd extreme.

it's like "show, don't tell" taken to an absurd extreme

show, don't tell, and if you can rub their noses in the rotting flesh and faeces then so much the better would maybe be even more accurate.

I felt that McCarthy had finally found his subject with The Road. If you like writing about blasted wastelands where the only morality is kill or be killed, don't fuck about with the real America - go post-apocalyptic.

xpost: which, I mean... maybe that would be effective if I had a romanticized/whitewashed notion of American history that I had tried to keep free of such 'unpleasantness' and McCarthy was totally exploding my perceptions, but since I don't, it just comes across (to me) as fetishizing the obviously-bad

mccarthy is a pretty good antidote to the self-help/positivity vibe of the past decade tbh, now that we're in a good worldwide recession i don't think i need to read him so much anymore.

BUT ENOUGH ABOUT THAT, let's talk about the 00s! Kafka on the Shore, really? I only got about halfway through that one... it was no Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, that's fershur

can i just

Just want to be in first with the McCARTHY OUT
― Suggest Bandage (Noodle Vague), Saturday, February 7, 2009 4:59 PM

loooooooooooooooooool

I don't know what that meanz

2. The Human Stain - Philip Roth (2000)
(152 points, seven votes, one first-placed vote)

http://www.longpauses.com/blog/01_18_06.jpg

Red Raymaker:
This book was the best book I've read which has been published since 2000. It comes close behind my favourite books of any decade which are Updike's four main "Rabbit" books. I also think that "The Human Stain" is the best book Roth has written. I love the way he combines writing about sex, love, race, belonging, aging, prejudice, fear and redemption within the same unified story. He covers such a broad range of subjects which are at the core of the human experience but fits it in to the story. It reads very easily and he writes intelligently and imaginatively without seeming to be pompous or trying to show off; I find that I can get distracted when reading Rusdhie by his tendency to show off, even though I recognise that Rushdie can be a terrific writer too.

Ismael Klata:
A perfect novel. If I hadn't read 'American Pastoral' this might've been my no.1. I liked it because it works its subject so hard, in so many ways and with so many twists. It was the first Roth I read and a terrific choice, very adult and about real stuff. I read it after seeing an article using him to draw unfavourable conclusions about modern British fiction. It was immediately obvious what it meant - every other 'serious' book I'd read looked like it was just playing in comparison.

Ask me about the work of Philip Roth

The second best book on the pyschic unravelling of a human who we think is perfect . A Jewish Gatsby with all of the prestige and none of the money. A catalogue of how messy sexuailty is
― anthony, Saturday, July 21, 2001 12:00 AM (8 years ago)

Philip Roth bijvoorbeeld. I Married A Communist vond ik geweldig. Heb daarom meteen meer gekocht/geleend, maar dat was allemaal toch vooral hard werken.
zijn romans American Pastoral en The Human Stain lezen niet voor de volle lengte echt lekker weg, terwijl Sabbath's Theater juist weer om te smullen is. De belevenissen van de perverse oude vieze man Mickey Sabbath zijn hilarisch pijnlijk.
― Vido Liber (Vido), Friday, January 31, 2003 12:38 PM (7 years ago)

I read The Human Stain and didn't particularly like it - in that novel, at least, he couldn't characterise women for shit, and it all seemed a bit, well, whiny. Is THS particularly representative of hiw writing as a whole? I really like the idea of The Counterlife, but if it's written in the same style as THS I know I'll dislike it.
― cis (cis), Wednesday, December 24, 2003 11:43 AM (6 years ago)

I had a long and frustrating conversation with someone wherein I was pointing out, with amazement, that the title of Philip Roth's The Human Stain could be read in two different ways, and that ads for the film version seemed to be inflecting it in the one of those two ways that I hadn’t thought of. Unfortunately I couldn’t seem to make the different inflections clear to the person I was talking to. I’ll try it with you guys: I had always read the title (without having read the book) as being “The Human Stain” like “The Human Condition”; the film trailer suddenly made me realize it was possibly supposed to be “The Human Stain” like “The Human Cannonball” or “The Human Calculator,” referring to the individual character.
I share this only because I need some reassurance that I wasn't being a bonehead in this conversation.
― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, December 1, 2004 7:40 PM (5 years ago)

I've had a hard time getting into a lot of Roth's books, but then all of a sudden 'The Plot Against America' and 'The Human Stain' floored me. I just loved the overall structure of both of them, the unpredictability page by page, the giant changes that characters make in their lives (in completely credible ways), etc.
― Eazy (Eazy), Thursday, October 13, 2005 1:28 PM (4 years ago)

Dear Philip Roth,
What is up with the awful crow metaphor/symbolism in The Human Stain? You are a much better writer than this.
Sadly,
― Mr. Que, Tuesday, April 10, 2007 6:42 PM (2 years ago)

The Human Stain is still probably the most satisfying novel I've read this decade.
― Eazy, Friday, May 4, 2007 4:19 AM (2 years ago)

The Human Stain was sort of like watching an expert marksmen at a carnival shooting gallery; sure dude hit all the targets but the effect was still slightly ridiculous.
― Lamp, Thursday, June 19, 2008 3:28 AM (1 year ago)

i'm not sure if i like it. i feel like i'm not old enough to read it.
― steamed hams (harbl), Tuesday, September 29, 2009 12:41 PM (4 months ago)

I guess I am going to have to check out Roth?

nicole kidman can be so pretty when she isn't nicole kidman

not what I expected at all, had no idea people liked this one so much. I'm sort of with Lamp overall.

Blimey

I guess I am going to have to check out Roth?

― 80085 (a hoy hoy), Tuesday, February 16, 2010 5:44 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark
^^^^^^^^

I know my gf owns The Counterlife; is that a good one to start with?

sorry, I didn't mean to sound like I don't like this book, I do! I just didn't expect so much Roth love so near the top.

I think this one is damaged by a too-great interest in the super-boring topic of "political correctness" though.

The Counterlife is quite difficult. I read it recently (I think it's the eleventh of his I've read) and I felt it was a bit meta for me even though it's by no means his most meta (though I'm not a fan of meta full stop). I started with The Human Stain then went back to Portnoy's Complaint - both of those are good starting points. The Plot Against America might be the best one to kick off with, it's probably the most straightforward.

I got the Roth/Kidman photo from this article comparing film and book. I haven't seen the film, but I thought the article was really insightful in terms of showing how what works in one doesn't necessarily translate to the other.

the human stain is worse for being a "good book" imo - something in really rebelled against how 'well-crafted' it is

Well, I think the time has come for your number one...

*drumroll*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTo6-Tx7uOU