Here is a new list from The Guardian (I’ll second the call for Alasdair Gray’s Lanark). Here is an only slightly older list from New York magazine, I like David Markson too.
Underrated novels
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Maybe Flannery O’Connor is underrated in the U.K. I’ve seen that book on numerous lists of the best works on the 20th Century.
I wonder what the contributors’ evidence was for thinking their choices underrated. Even if one thinks a book very good, one does not necessarily ask everyone one knows if they have read it. (I think Peter Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor is a wonderful book; have no idea whether it’s well-known.) Literary journalism is confined almost entirely to new releases; the fact that a book is never mentioned in the press doesn’t tell one very much. If it’s out of print that still doesn’t show much: there may be a brisk secondhand trade, but that wouldn’t register with its publishers, who really have no way of knowing if there’s a market for the book.
“Far Places” by The Push Kings. Oh wait, that’s an album.
Interesting to see that Alasdair Gray’s Lanark has crossed the pond.
I am pleased to report that I was the first person to write a graduate thesis on ‘The Literature of Alasdair Gray’ (MA – University of Durham, UK; 1988) – some of this thesis was re-printed in The Arts of Alasdair Gray (Edinburgh University Press, 1991).
I would also recommend Gray’s Unlikely Stories Mostly, and 1982 Janine.
Wow, I’ve loved Markson’s books for a long time. GLad to see him getting a bit of recognition. But Wittgenstein’s Mistress, Reader’s Block and Springer’s Progress were better than the two works mentioned in the article, in my opinion.
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