The New York Times Book Review has named "Beloved," a 1987 novel by Princeton Professor Toni Morrison, the best work of American fiction published in the past quarter century.
In an article posted on the Times' Web site and slated for publication
in the May 21 edition, Book Review Editor Sam Tanenhaus reports the
results of a survey he conducted of prominent writers, critics, editors
and other literary figures. He asked them to identify "the single best
work of American fiction published in the last 25 years." A total of
124 people are on the list of judges, including Russell Banks, Michael
Chabon, Don DeLillo, Jonathan Safran Foer, Henry Louis Gates Jr.,
Nadine Gordimer, Jim Harrison, John Irving, Stephen King, Wole Soyinka,
William Styron, Studs Terkel, Anne Tyler and Tom Wolfe as well as
Morrison's colleagues on the Princeton faculty, Chang-rae Lee and
Edmund White.
"The best works of fiction, according to our tally, appear to be those
that successfully assume a burden of cultural importance," writes Times
film critic A.O. Scott in an accompanying essay. "They attempt not just
the exploration of particular imaginary people and places, but also the
illumination of epochs, communities, of the nation itself. America is
not only their setting, but also their subject."
Set in post-Civil War Ohio, "Beloved" tells the story of Sethe, an
escaped slave who is haunted by the spirit of a murdered child. It won
the Pulitzer Prize in 1988.
"… Morrison's novel has inserted itself into the American canon more
completely than any of its potential rivals," Scott writes. "With
remarkable speed, 'Beloved' has, less than 20 years after its
publication, become a staple of the college literary curriculum, which
is to say a classic."
Morrison, the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities at
Princeton, was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1993. She was
the first African-American winner and the first woman to win since
1938. She was honored with the National Humanities Medal in 2000 for
her contributions to American cultural life and thought and with the
National Book Critics Award in 1977 for "Song of Solomon." Her other
novels include "Love," "The Bluest Eye," "Sula," "Tar Baby," "Jazz" and
"Paradise." She has served on the Princeton faculty since 1989.
