Friday, May 26, 2006

Still more on the best American novel

In line with earlier posts (here, here, here) on the New York Times Book Review's project to identify "the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years," I alert you to a week-long forum by some of the poll's participants.

To discuss the survey and the state of American fiction, the Book Review invited the novelists Jane Smiley and Michael Cunningham, as well as Stephen Metcalf, a critic, and Morris Dickstein, an author and critic who teaches English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Gregory Cowles, an editor at the Book Review, moderated the discussion.

The result is more interesting than the original poll.

--Marshal Zeringue