Yes, I find lists of "best books" to be irresistible. And yes, they make me crazy.
Recently, Parade magazine asked novelist Ann Patchett to come up with a list of the 75 best books of the past 75 years. She did so, with the help of colleagues at her Nashville bookstore.
(Modestly, Patchett did not include any of her own books on the list, although "Bel Canto" almost certainly should have been there.)
The normal thing with such lists is to tote up how many books one has read, and then to start picking the list apart. How many women and writers of color? Not enough! Why this title when everyone knows his other book was better? Ridiculous! What's missing? Lots of things I liked!
And then we start arguing, smugly, at where the list fails and why our list would be so much better.
But the thing is, Patchett's list is a pretty good list.
She thought broadly, boldly including poetry, fiction, nonfiction and history, as well as a "how-to" book (by Stephen King, "On Writing"), a graphic novel ("Maus," by Art Spiegelman) and a cookbook (Julia Child, of course).
She includes children's books ("Charlotte's Web" and "Where the Wild Things Are"), populist books ("The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy") and serious histories (the three-volume "The Civil War: A Narrative," by Shelby Foote, "The Guns of August," by Barbara Tuchman).
The Harry Potter novels — how many of them are there? Eight? Ten? Seventeen? (you wish) — together count as one (which hardly seems fair). So I wasn't able to tick that off, seeing as how I have read only one Harry Potter and I can't remember which one it was. (There were some snakes in a bathroom drain, if that helps narrow it down.)
John Updike's "Rabbit" novels also count as one, but those I ticked off with confidence; I read them as a teenager, every one of them, fascinated and appalled.
Still, I had quibbles. I saw no Edna O'Brien, William Trevor, Roddy Doyle, Seamus Heaney — did she forget about Ireland? — and very little poetry. (Jane Kenyon, yea, and Jack Gilbert, but would it have killed her to throw in a little Robert Bly? Seriously, go reread "Silence in the Snowy Fields.")
She has Salinger, Harper Lee, Walker Percy, Sylvia Plath, Flannery O'Connor, Toni Morrison, Jhumpa Lahiri — can't argue with any of those. But she does not have Shirley Jackson or Louise Erdrich, and that, I think, is unforgivable.
Patchett knew that any such list would be fraught and criticized. ("When Parade asked me … my first answer was, "Not a chance!' " she wrote. "I could picture the mountains of furious letters complaining about all the great works of literature I'd left off.")
No fury here, just admiration at taking on such a difficult task and doing such a good job. It seems to me a list to tweak, not to blow up.
You can read the whole thing here: tinyurl.com/zwgmeqj and then let me know what you think is missing.
One reader has already written to lament the absence of "From Here to Eternity." What else? We can do our own list! We will drive people crazy!
Laurie Hertzel is the Star Tribune senior editor for books. On Twitter: @StribBooks. On Facebook: facebook.com/startribunebooks
