Below is a list of all of the titles nominated by our “Best Fiction of the Millennium (So Far)” panel that did not appear on our Top 20 or Honorable Mention lists.
Absurdistan, by Gary Shteyngart
American Purgatorio, by John Haskell
Among the Missing, by Dan Chaon
Atomic Aztex, by Sesshu Foster
Await Your Reply, by Dan Chaon
Be Near Me, by Andrew O’Hagan
The Beauty of the Husband, by Anne Carson
The Best of Contemporary Mexican Fiction, edited by Álvaro Uribe and Olivia E. Sears
The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood
The Book Against God, by James Wood
The Bridegroom, by Ha Jin
The Bright Forever, by Lee Martin
Brookland, by Emily Barton
By the Light of the Jukebox, by Dean Paschal
The Cave, by Jose Saramago
Censoring an Iranian Love Story, by Shahriar Mandanipour
Cheating At Canasta, by William Trevor
The Children’s Book, by A.S. Byatt
City of God, by E.L. Doctorow
The Cold Six Thousand, by James Ellroy
The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
Confessions of Max Tivoli, by Andrew Sean Greer
Contagion, by Brian Evenson
Dark Places, by Gillian Flynn
De Niro’s Game, by Rawi Hage (Our review)
The Death of Sweet Mister, by Daniel Woodrell
The Diviners, by Rick Moody (Our review)
Do Everything in the Dark, by Gary Indiana
The Dog of the Marriage, by Amy Hempel
The Dying Animal, by Philip Roth
The Echo Maker, by Richard Powers
Eclipse, by John Banville
Elizabeth Costello, by J.M. Coetzee
The Embers, by Hyatt Bass
The End, by Salvatore Scibona
The Epicure’s Lament, by Kate Christensen (Our review)
An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, by César Aira
Erasure, by Percival Everett
Europeana, by Patrik Ouredník
Everyman, by Philip Roth
Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living, by Carrie Tiffany
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, by Wells Tower (Our review)
Evidence of Things Unseen, by Marianne Wiggins
Falling Man, by Don DeLillo
The Farther Shore, by Matthew Eck
Fieldwork, by Misha Berlinski
Farewell Navigator, by Leni Zumas
The Gathering, by Anne Enright
God Says No, by James Hannaham
Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Our review)
The Haunting of L., by Howard Norman
The Horned Man, by James Lasdun
The Human Stain, by Philip Roth
I Looked Alive, by Gary Lutz
I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company, by Brian Hall
In Persuasion Nation, by George Saunders
Indecision, by Benjamin Kunkel
The Indian Clerk, by David Leavitt
It’s All Right Now, by Charles Chadwick
Jamestown, by Matthew Sharpe
Jane: A Murder, by Maggie Nelson
Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanisi, by Geoff Dyer
Jim the Boy, by Tony Earley
Last Evenings on Earth, by Roberto Bolaño
The Last Samurai, by Helen DeWitt
The Lazarus Project, by Aleksander Hemon (Our review)
Let The Northern Lights Erase Your Name, by Vendela Vida
Like You’d Understand, Anyway, by Jim Shepard
The Line of Beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst (Our review)
Love Creeps, by Amanda Filipacchi
Lush Life, by Richard Price
Magic For Beginners, by Kelly Link
Man Walks Into a Room, by Nicole Krauss
The Maytrees, by Annie Dillard
A Mercy, by Toni Morrison (Our review)
The Most of It, by Mary Ruefle
My Happy Life, by Lydia Millet
My Revolutions, by Hari Kunzru
The Name of the World, by Denis Johnson
Natasha and Other Stories, by David Bezmogis
Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill (Our reviews)
The Nimrod Flipout, by Etgar Karet
An Obedient Father, by Akhil Sharma
Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout
On Beauty, by Zadie Smith
P, by Andrew Lewis Conn
The People of Paper, by Salvador Plascencia
A Person of Interest, by Susan Choi
Personality, by Andrew O’Hagan
Pieces for the Left Hand, by J. Robert Lennon
The Pink Institution by Selah Saterstrom
The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth
The Question of Bruno, by Aleksandar Hemon
Runaway, by Alice Munro
A Seahorse Year, by Stacey D’Erasmo
The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, by Peter Orner
Servants of the Map, by Andrea Barrett
The Singing Fish, by Peter Markus
The Slynx, by Tatyana Tolstaya (Our review)
Snow, by Orhan Pamuk (Our review)
The Story of Lucy Gault, by William Trevor
The Surrendered, by Chang-Rae Lee
The Terror, by Dan Simmons
The Thin Place, by Kathryn Davis (Our review)
Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris
31 Hours, by Masha Hamilton
Brothers, by Yu Hua
The View from Castle Rock, by Alice Munro
Tree of Smoke, by Denis Johnson (Our review)
True History of the Kelly Gang, by Peter Carey
Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri
Vanishing Point, David Markson
Veronica, by Mary Gaitskill
Wanting, by Richard Flanagan
What is the What, by Dave Eggers (Our review)
What Was She Thinking? : Notes on a Scandal, by Zoe Heller (Our interview)
When the Emperor Was Divine, by Julie Otsuka
When We Were Orphans, by Kazuo Ishiguro
Yonder Stands Your Orphan, by Barry Hannah
You Shall Know Our Velocity, by Dave Eggers
Zeroville, by Steve Erickson
Of course this should be higher up the list, but it’s good to find it listed in any case. I chose a passage from Mortals to be read at my wedding; yes perverse and yes pretentious, maybe, but where else do you turn for love in this language?
Rush’s talent is obscene, which means, I suppose, that he’s the right man for an obscene job. Christ, what a book.
Thank you, Garth. This is a wonderful book.
Congratulations to this blog for promoting Norman Rush’s work — he is the most neglected major writer in America. Like Garth Hallberg, I definitely hear echoes of Bellow; but Rush is unclassifiable, as you also suggest, and I think his next book — his first to be set in America — will be unlike anything he has written before.
James Wood
For those playing along at home, Rush’s next has been in the works since 2003. Set in the Catskills on the eve of the Iraq War, it’s got the working title Subtle Bodies, and examines friendship, as Mortals looked at marriage, and Mating examined…well, mating.
Three years ago, I was lucky to attend a reading at the 92nd Street Y, featuring Martin Amis and–hooray!–Norman Rush. Rush read from “Subtle Bodies,” and, while I have loved every one of his sentences I have read, and while, like Mr. Wood, I think his work is unjustly neglected, there was indeed something different about this new work–something fresher, more poignant, more human (if that is in fact possible, given the great humanity of Rush’s previous novels). While other so-called “major” writers have written themselves into self-aggrandized corners (and I think we all know who I’m talking about here), Rush has held back. I like to think of him as a kind of American JM Coetzee, if such a thing is possible: a public intellectual who has, in only the most interesting ways, rebuffed the role of the public intellectual; a novelist who draws emotional power from restraint, and who is capable of locating the being in the nothingness that surrounds us.
You all have to be kidding or retarded regarding Mr. Rush. He is a dreadful
writer. As the NY Times critic said about , “Mortals”:
”Mortals” is a long, tedious and thoroughly haphazard production — a kitchen sink of a book that possesses none of the pointillist detail of ”Whites,” the author’s haunting debut collection of stories (1986), and all the flaws of his 1991 novel, ”Mating” — and more. Though ”Mortals” gradually gathers speed and focus near its conclusion, only the most persevering of readers are likely to slog through the book’s 700-odd pages to get there.
Despite (or perhaps because of) all this bad Lawrentian writing, their marriage never seems like a real relationship. It’s hard to believe that after 17 years of marriage, Iris and Ray discuss their feelings about religion for the first time — ”so you were a believer for how long?” — or that they say things like ”I just wanted to touch voices” when she calls him at the office to say hello.
Despite (or perhaps because of) all this bad Lawrentian writing, their marriage never seems like a real relationship. It’s hard to believe that after 17 years of marriage, Iris and Ray discuss their feelings about religion for the first time — ”so you were a believer for how long?” — or that they say things like ”I just wanted to touch voices” when she calls him at the office to say hello.
I read Mating for the first time a few weeks ago. It had been on my TBR list for awhile and life had simply gotten in the way. I was blown away and purchased Morals right away. NOw I am about 100 pages into Morals and loving it – expansive- I am expanding into its world – and with pleasure. Still not sure why this writer is under the radar – so smart, so funny, I am enjoying it so much and dreading getting to the end.
And Rick, remember who said it was a “long, tedious and thoroughly haphazard production”. If Michiko Kakutani likes a book I know to run the other way!
Does anyone care, can anyone care, what Kakutani says in any of her recent reivews? If any other reviewer’s works were so inconsistent and lacking in understanding of the books under review then they would have been fired long ago. She works hard at getting noticed but deserves to be ignored.