The Modern Library (2 page)

This idea of a national inheritance is complicated by the great migrations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Was Brian Moore Irish or Canadian? Is Amy Tan American or Chinese? Is V. S. Naipaul Trinidadian or English? Is Oscar Hijuelos Cuban or American? The answer is all are both.

While we differ in our response to literary theory – one of us is hostile to it, the other cannot have enough of it – we were as one in our determination to ignore the distinction between so-called popular fiction and literary fiction (also so-called). This false distinction which is prevalent in literary prizes, in academia and in our educational mores, has been responsible for the treacherous suggestion that reading is a chore, and that the best writing is always difficult and obscure.

For us, the debate as to whether
Interview with the Vampire
is of greater intrinsic merit than
Oscar and Lucinda
is irrelevant, because any decision on the subject – and a decision can be made – alters not at all the fact that both are splendid feats of the human imagination, explains nothing of the pleasure experienced as the novelists’ words lock into the reader’s imagination, but simply reveals a great deal about those arguing. The critical dividing line between popular and literary also ignores the reader and the writer, who rarely contemplate the novel in this way.

There are novelists, of course, who are not interested in the reaction of their readers, who would write for a seagull if that bird praised such a novelist’s self-absorptions. We have, generally, avoided them effortlessly. Not altogether, of course, because some, albeit few, are great writers who have created complex and difficult novels, which require concentration but are worth it.

We chose these books together on the basis that the idea of two people disputing – hotly at times, not at all on other occasions – is always preferable to one person laying down the law. We come from different places. Both of us come from the Free World, i.e. neither of us is English or American, and we have not the slightest interest in political correctness. We have different prejudices and preferences. Any list such as this is entirely personal, but in every choice we’ve looked for the same quality – a certain (or sometimes even an uncertain) genius in the work, a certain (always certain) excitement in the reading, and a feeling that you would love to hand this book to someone else to read. Most of us, these days, are almost imprisoned by choice, as anyone examining the fiction shelves of a large bookshop will notice. We have used our prejudices and preferences to cut a path through this rich jungle, using as our final point of judgement that touch of genius and sense of excitement which connect Patrick White with Ruth Rendell, Georgette Heyer with Don DeLillo, Daphne du Maurier with Katherine Anne Porter, J. D. Salinger with Irvine Welsh.

A large part of the list is common to both of us; some choices, while admired by both, more passionately belong to one or the other. In only two cases we could not agree: V. S. Naipaul and Saul Bellow have two entries, not because we consider them greater than any of the other novelists we have chosen, but because one of us considered
A Bend in the River
and
Herzog
to be the masterworks of Naipaul and Bellow, while the other disliked
Herzog
but argued passionately for Bellow’s
The Adventures of
Augie March
and could not feel
A Bend in the River
to be the equal of
A House for Mr Biswas
. For the rest, and for arguably greater writers, only one entry was necessary. It was often difficult to decide which work by a single writer to include: in the case of Nabokov, for example, between
Ada, Pnin
,
Pale Fire
or
Lolita
; in the case of Nadine Gordimer between
The Conservationist
,
July’s
People
and
Burgher’s Daughter
. We also chose to ignore the ghetto into which short stories are often placed.

Only books published in 1950 or afterwards and only books written in English qualified. We have included some collections of stories but mainly novels. We have included trilogies and single books from trilogies. There are no translations except those done by the author. We did not consider novels which were written in the earlier half of the century, but not published, for various reasons, until the second half. (These include E. M. Forster’s
Maurice
, Hemingway’s
The Garden of Eden
and Flann O’Brien’s
The Third Policeman
.) Many of the novelists we have chosen flourished also in the earlier half of the century – Faulkner, Waugh, Lehmann, du Maurier, Welty, Hemingway, Agatha Christie, P. G. Wodehouse, Patrick Hamilton, Graham Greene, Elizabeth Bowen: we hope to send readers back to earlier years and so trace an enduring tradition.

Why 194 choices, and not 200 as in the title of the book? As we chose and wrote, and agreed and disagreed, we came across novels, often famous novels, which we did not appreciate: Tolkien’s
Lord of the Rings
for instance, science fiction and fantasy novels, and most historical novels. We read and rejected them knowing that even two omnivorous readers cannot represent every taste. Indignation, as well as pleasure, will, we hope, be among the first reactions to this book. We are well aware of our omissions, and want the reader to spot them. This is a book which requires action on the part of the reader, and so six novels have been chosen by the book-reading public and added to this book for all future editions.

We have chosen these novels for readers, readers of every age and taste, for those who have never read a novel before and for experts who want to quarrel with our choice; for school students and undergraduates, grandfathers, priests and nuns, Antarctic explorers. There are short novels and long novels, each kind providing a different kind of pleasure. A twelve-year-old could read Harper Lee’s
To Kill A Mockingbird
, a ninety-year-old Anne Tyler’s
Breathing Lessons
and be very happy; Thomas Flanagan’s historical masterpiece
The Year of the French
and Thomas Harris’s startling
Red Dragon
offer other pleasures, as indeed do Hubert Selby Jr’s
Last Exit to Brooklyn
and William Burroughs’
Naked Lunch.

For surrealists, there is Henry Green and Ivy Compton-Burnett, for romantics Rosamond Lehmann, Louis de Bernières and Sybille Bedford, for wits Muriel Spark, J. G. Farrell, for murder fiends Agatha Christie and Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaasen and Donna Tartt, Roy Heath and P. D. James, not to speak of Bret Easton Ellis; for Cold War fanatics there is Graham Greene and Don DeLillo; for lovers of Dickens and Eliot there is Mistry, Byatt, Smiley, Storey. There are many crime novels and thrillers. Some of the greatest writers of the period are represented by their short stories – V. S. Prichett, Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, Mary Lavin, Raymond Carver. Most exciting was the discovery that some novels loved first twenty or thirty years ago have improved with age. For instance, Olivia Manning’s Balkan trilogy, B. S. Johnson’s
The Unfortunates
, Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy, John O’Hara’s
From the Terrace
feel ready for reassessment. However good we thought them before, they seem finer now.

There were no quotas for men, women or race in choosing these books. The only constraint on our choice was the lack of availability of books from certain countries. Otherwise, we began and ended with open minds, and the books we chose are here because we loved them.

We both have memories from childhood and adolescence of being wrapped up in books. Books were a way of escaping the world, and also of entering it in a way that was more intense; a way of discovering feeling; a working out of how to live. Both of us were constantly reminded, as we did our research, of moments from childhood and adolescence – finding a book we hadn’t read or had forgotten, and after a few pages, suddenly being enclosed, cocooned, absorbed and totally involved in its world; finding ourselves anxious and dispossessed until we took it up again.

Books were happiness. We were brought up in places where reading was a passion and a joy. It still is for us. And so here they are: books which we offer wholeheartedly to the reader as you would give to a friend going on a journey; 194 examples of the best novels and stories in English published during the last half of the twentieth century.

All entries are alphabetical under the name of the author. Sometimes we have chosen a novel within a sequence, sometimes the sequence itself: the full work is detailed in both cases.

Our readers, all over the world, sent us thousands of entries for the final six titles for this book. The four most popular are included here. In order of popularity they read as follows: Sebastian Faulks’
Birdsong
, Charles Frazier’s
Cold Mountain
, John Fowles’
The Magus
– which beat his
French Lieutenant’s Woman
by a whisker – and Vikram Seth’s
A Suitable Boy.

We used our rights as authors to choose the last two: William Maxwell’s
So Long
,
See You Tomorrow
because it was a grave omission and authorial mistake of ours in the hardback edition, and Helen Garner’s
The Children’s Bach
because she topped the poll outside the world of British and American writers, who seem to dominate our readers’ tastes.