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

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

"One of the saddest, keenest, most beautifully written ironic novels of the time. Saying so much one is forced to say much more, for Mr. Forster's quality is unique."

Dick Schaap's 1969 first impression of Mario Puzo's The Godfather (page 266)

"There are strong similarities between Michael Corleone and Alexander Portnoy. Neither . . . wishes to enter his father's line of work. Each . . . falls for a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant girl. Of course, there are some differences, too. When Alexander Portnoy's father is frustrated, he gets constipated; when Michael Corleone's father is frustrated, he gets someone killed."

From Leslie Fiedler's 1974 essay on Tarzan (page 286)

"It is hard to think of Tarzan without thinking of one's own childhood. Yet that immortal myth of the abandoned child of civilization who survives to become Lord of the Jungle was not written for children at all--as I keep explaining to my 9-year-old son whenever he snatches from my desk the volume I am currently reading."

A segment of Philip Roth's 1984 interview with Edna O'Brien (page 380)

PR: "What has Joyce meant to you . . . how intimidating is it for an Irish writer to have as precursor this great verbal behemoth?"

EO: "In the constellation of geniuses, he is a blinding light and father of us all. . . .Ulysses is the most diverting, brilliant, intricate and unboring book that I have ever read. I can pick it up at any time, read a few pages and feel that I have just had a brain transfusion."