Books of the Century: A Hundred Years of Authors, Ideas, and Literature

by Philip F. Turner

Books of the Century, modestly subtitled A Hundred Years of Authors, Ideas, and Literature, is a fine and firm rebuff to anyone who has ever thought the New York Times Book Review the stodgiest of institutions. Sifting through the archives, the editors have come up with a wealth of killer critiques, beginning with an ambivalent notice of The Spoils of Poynton and ending with Martin Amis's ecstasy over Underworld. Many of the reviews feature matches made in editorial heaven: Randall Jarrell on e.e. cummings, Welty on E.B. White's classic Charlotte's Web, and Joan Didion on John Cheever's Falconer. But the essays and interviews are just as enticing. Henry Bech interrogates his creator, John Updike; Isaac Bashevis Singer catechizes Laurie Colwin ("Are you trying to convince me that I'm a big shot?"); and Philip Roth asks Milan Kundera the burning question, "What does sex mean to you as a novelist?"

But Books of the Century is not just a greatest hits. It's also a priceless compendium of misses and major mortifications. Applause to whoever decided to include numerous admissions of error under the hilarious heading "Oops!" No one should feel guilty for seeking these out first. In the TBR's early years, for instance, Bloomsbury was twice a whipping boy: E.M. Forster gets slammed for Howards End in 1911 and nine years later Virginia Woolf's The Voyage Out has little "to make it stand out from the ruck of mediocre novels." And judging from the weak parody it's afforded, The Catcher in the Rye was not initially a critical darling: Salinger "should've cut out a lot about these jerks and all that crumby school." But what are we to make of the fact that as the decades draw on, there seem fewer and fewer Oopses? Apparently the Times Book Review is not just getting older, it's getting better. In any case, by making us aware of the exhilarations of reading and thought, Books of the Century more than lives up to its subtitle. --Kerry Fried

Genres: Reference, Books About Books, Nonfiction, Writing, Literary Criticism, Literature, Literary Fiction

647 pages, Hardcover

First published October 20, 1998

Reviews

[Sharon Barrow Wilfong · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book for a dime at a local library because it was a dime and who can resist a nice thick hardcover (eBay would describe it as "like new" condition) for that cheap. I mean if I hate it, I'm out a dime. Big deal.

But this is a case of serendipity because this was a wonderful book. It is a compilation of book reviews by critics that are as distinguished writers as the authors whose work they are critiquing.

The book starts with notable books that were published in 1896, reviewing books published each year after that until we arrive at 1997. Needless to say these are quite a few books, many I was not aware of and now I have quite a few books on my TBR list.

What I found most valuable, in addition to some really erudite critiquing, is that the reviews are contemporary to the year the book was written, so we get a special insight into how audiences and writers of past years responded to books that may have been novel or shocking then, but are old hat now. We see how people initially responded to works like "Lolita" by Nabokov, or Kerouc's "On the Road."

I also liked reading reviews of books I have read and loved or books I've hated.

Included in these reviews are essays of certain authors like John Updike, Doris Lessing or Alexander Solzhenitsyn, to name a few.

I enthusiastically recommend this book.

[Abyssdancer (Hanging in there!) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book as a gift when I graduated from the community college in 1999, from the women I worked with in the library … I’d leaf through it now and again, but I’d never read it all the way through until now … a very dense book … I feel like I’ve just finished two semesters worth of American literature in just four days …

This book contains reviews, interviews, and essays published in the New York Times Book Review throughout the 1900s … it also contains 25 years worth of Editors’ Choices from 1972 to 1997 … what struck me most was how obsolete many of these books are now … I consider myself a well-read person, but many of these books I have never read or even heard of (can you see me blushing?) … I’m glad to be exposed to these books and writers now, but it just saddens me to know how quickly literary greatness can dissipate and disappear … Especially the historical and biographical books … the causes celebre addressed in this book have long since faded from collective memory …

What struck me most after finishing this book was how important it is to constantly review books we read in order to keep these books alive in our consciousness … it made me appreciate Goodreads even more, how much I enjoy reading reviews written by friends and finding new books to add to my collection through word of mouth … I felt grateful for all the Goodreads members who rate and review books they’ve read, and how much I learn about the literary world by reading these reviews … keep the reviews circulating!

[William Schram · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any time you make a review or release anything to the world, you make a snapshot of a particular time and sensibility. The smallest thing can affect the mood of the reviewer; perhaps they did not have breakfast that morning, or maybe they never really liked a particular genre or idea. In any case, whenever something is published or printed, it becomes dated in several weeks. With the advent of the internet, this turnover rate has increased further, to the point where I don’t know what is hip with the kids of today.

Books of the Century is a collection of reviews, interviews, essays and short pieces called first impressions from the New York Times Book Review Column. The main thing that this shows is that no person or reviewer is infallible. They may dislike or hate something for little reason, or for a huge reason. Starting its coverage back on the date of February 20, 1897, with a review of The Spoils of Poynton by Henry James and ending on October 5, 1997, with a review of Underworld by Don Delillo, the book does indeed cover a century. This fact makes the book an interesting talking point. For instance, there are some reviews of books that were successful but not well received at the time of publication. These are headlined as “Oops.”

The other interesting thing about this book is that it covers reviews of things that I wouldn’t have seen fit to review. For example, one of the reviews is about a collection of Crossword Puzzles. It discusses this “fad” with an air of interest. I guess I just assumed that Crossword Puzzles always existed in newspapers. I never thought of it as having a beginning that one could record. However, given the rise of Sudoku puzzles as of late, I suppose it was naive of me to think in that manner.

Alongside the reviews and all of that are little asides that describe events that happened in the years covered. It mainly covers things that happened in the world of literature. Did you know that 1949 was the first time the reviewer’s name was printed alongside the review? I didn’t, but now I do.

So this book is pretty good. It is not even flawed in the sense that it is printed material since it is a printed collection of reviews on printed material. The meta goes deep with this one. While I wouldn’t be interested in buying it new, I would get it from the library or purchase it secondhand.

[Cynthia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this book is fascinating. Anyone interested in the sociology of reading/reviewing books will enjoy this. I enjoy it as a reference not infrequently.

This is a chronological collection of original book reviews, interviews and essays from the New York Times spanning the 20th century. You can find such things as the original NYT Reviews of Mein Kampf, Gone With the Wind, Ulysses, Catcher in the Rye (this one in the section called "oops").

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I opened this book up, it was not quite what I expected. The New York Times Review of Books culled their archives for their hundredth anniversary book reviews, interviews with authors, "missed opportunity" moments (books slammed originally but have become critical or popular successes) and all sorts of goodies. Not a book one would read start to finish, but a great reference book. It was incredibly interesting to read contemporaneous reviews of books. Many of the reviews (and interviews) were done by notable authors.

[Ted Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

As readers write, this is glorious and delightful find. You can enjoy hour wandering across decades of the 20th Century of. literature. I recently stumbled over my copy and started browing and reading again.

[Chris Wharton · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the title suggests, a collection of book reviews, essays, interviews, and the like from the New York Times Book Review from the last years of the 19th century through 1999. This edition (edited by Charles McGraith and book review staff) is updated from the original 1996 edition edited by Philip Turner to include the annual “Editor’s Choice” selections and brief descriptions of them from 1972 to 1999. Many, and mostly great, authors are covered, from the opening reviews of Henry James’ The Spoils of Poynton (1897) and Conrad’s Lord Jim (1900) to the last of the 1999 editor’s choices, Roddy Doyle’s A Star Called Henry, with much in between—a sampling of names follows: Conrad, Forster, Cather (through the 1910s); Wharton, Joyce, Fitzgerald (1920s); Dos Passos, Faulkner, Steinbeck (’30s); Hemingway, Camus, Orwell (‘40s); Mailer, Malamud, Baldwin, Kerouac, Nabokov (‘50s); Salinger, Heller, Pynchon, Bellow, Roth (‘60s); Garcia Marquez, Doctorow, Cheever, Morrison, Naipaul (‘70s); Updike, LeCarré, Rushdie (‘80s); Solzhenitsyn, DeLillo, Coetzee (1990s); many of these luminaries of course appear across multiple decades. Less luminous, more popular forms are not ignored—James Bond, Agatha Christie and other mystery and detective writers, Dr Seuss, Forrest Gump, The Bridges of Madison County, etc, nor are touchstone nonfiction works: The Jungle; Middletown; In Cold Blood; The Autobiography of Macolm X; Fire in the Lake; Dispatches; works by Freud, Margaret Sanger, Rachel Carson, Hunter S. Thompson, Francis Fukuyama; seminal works of feminism, economics, science, popular culture (the first Boy Scouts of America handbook, The Cross Word Puzzle Book, Roger Tory Peterson’s A Field Guide to the Birds), etc, etc, so it’s really as much a historic and sociocultural tour as a literary one (just as the weekly issue of the NYT Book Review often is). These mentions here are of course just a (hopefully) representative smattering—the 664-page volume of course holds much, much more than just these names. Amidst it all, my single favorite piece: the 1987 essay “William Styron on James Baldwin,” or as the Virginia-born Styron puts it, “the grandson of a slave owner” on “the grandson of a slave,” in which Styron describes the near year from fall 1960 to the following summer that Baldwin lived in Styron’s Connecticut studio, the two talking “night after night … drinking whisky through the hours until the chill dawn” and Baldwin telling the spellbound Styron “exactly what it was like to be denied service, to be spat at, to be called ‘nigger’ and ‘boy’.” Styron (working at the time on The Confessions of Nat Turner, which I read as a teenager) concludes the experience and relationship “helped me shape and define my own work and its moral contours … the most appropriate gift imaginable to the grandson of a slave owner from a slave’s grandson.”

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of New York Time Book Reviews is one of those dive in and dive out books. The review is interesting – Eudora Welty reviewing Charlotte’s Web for instance – but most fascinating are the Oops side bars. Wait until you read what they said about Anne of Green Gables. Also included are various letters – such as Tim Leary defending Joplin – and essays. Editor’s choice list from 1972-1997 are included as well.


Crossposted at Booklikes.

[Vincent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nearly 100 years of Book reviews from NY Times, with numerous book reviews by decade, but also, essays, letters, first impressions, and interviews, all either confirming some of my future reading selections, or revealing new ones.

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this right out of grad school, thinking that I would be a proper intellectual. Still waiting for that to kick in...

[Bap · Rating 4 out of 5]

The New York Times Book Review is the gold standard. Here is a compilation of reviews fron the pages of the NYTBR from 1897-1997. This is a must for any serious bibliophile.

[Alex]

Books of the Century : A Hundred Years of Authors, Ideas, and Literature (2000)

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

it was ok but there was one chapter i thought was gd

[Diane Barnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great fun to browse, lots of books to add to the must read list, like I need that.