Posted by joffre on 11/2/2009, 0:13:31, in reply to "Re: Guardian List: "1000 Novels Everyone Must Read""
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Is 94 the year The Western Canon was published? I do wish Bloom would update the list. In Genius, he calls Machado de Assis the greatest black author the world has yet produced, but Machado de Assis isn't listed in the canon. I assume that Bloom discovered him since then. And as you say, some worthy books have surely been published since then.
My approach was to draw a short list from various long lists. I don't feel critically adept enough to add to Bloom's list myself. I do generally assume that unlisted books by listed authors are more or less worth reading. There are also other people whose word I'll take as well. For me, if you take the lists of Bloom, Fadiman, and Burt; their honorable mentions, and assume that unlisted works by listed authors are good enough, then you probably have all the books you ever need. There are other lists I won't quibble with, but as I said elsewhere, some lose my confidence. Contemporary books are trickier, but one somehow gets a sense of what can be respected. And I guess literary prizes must mean something.
Bloom says somewhere, probably in How to Read and Why, that he finds Beloved much inferior to Song of Solomon. Presumably his other omissions are for similar reasons.
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