What literature do we study from the 1990s?
What literature do we study from the 1990s?SourceURL: https://pudding.cool/2023/01/lit-canon/ |
- New York Times Best Seller: was a book commercially successful when it published?
- Goodreads Ranking: is it widely read today?
- Literary Prizes: was it acclaimed by academics and critics?
Best Seller, Goodreads, Prize Data- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #5,403 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Pulitzer Prize Finalist; National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #52,311 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Notable book of the year by The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle.
"Before 1970, Zora Neale Hurston was the primary subject author in just 4 MLA articles, and all of her novels were out of print; none had sold more than 5,000 copies. It was famously the efforts of prestigious scholars and writers, especially Alice Walker, that recuperated her.And it worked: Today Hurston has over 700 MLA articles, and she has more Goodreads ratings than authors ranging from the canon that predated her…No doubt much of the public familiarity with her work derives from its now-common presence in classrooms, but this is precisely the point...a boost in prestige, driven by scholars and practitioners, and mediated through the classroom, led to a boost in popularity. The arc of escape from obscurity pulled her not just up but away."
- 31 weeks as a New York Times Best Seller
- 19th-longest streak as a Best Seller in the 1990s
- #5,696 most-frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Booker Prize Winner, 1997
- 77 weeks as a New York Times Best Seller
- 10th-longest streak as a Best Seller in the 1990s
- #1 most-frequently rated book on Goodreads
- A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1998 and a New York Public Library 1998 Best Book of the Year
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #8,519 most-frequently rated book on Goodreads
- PEN America winner, 2000; Pulitzer Prize winner, 2000
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #12,988 most-frequently rated book on Goodreads
- The Booker Prize 1999
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #763 most-frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Newbery Medal, 1994
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #38,931 most-frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Tony Awards Best Play, 1993; Pulitzer Prize for Drama, 1993
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller when published
- #16,524 most-frequently rated book on Goodreads
- New York Times Notable Book of the Year, 1994; Nebula Awards Best Novel Nomination, 1994
"Parable of the Sower is a novel narrated by a young Black woman living in a future America where systems are collapsing, the president is a demagogue, climate change is wreaking havoc, there’s a substance abuse epidemic, and other things that feel just a little contemporary…it has gotten better over the last 30 years because it helps us understand that much of our now wasn’t just foreseeable, it was foreseen. Its explorations about how to unify polarized communities and collaborate across difference are profoundly instructive for us."
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #29,952 most-frequently rated book on Goodreads
- PEN-Hemingway Best First Book of Fiction Citation Winner, 1993; Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, 1994
- 31 weeks as a New York Times Best Seller (the 45th longest-streak of the 1980s)
- #4,420 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Pulitzer Prize winner, 1988
- Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, 1988
- 14 weeks as a New York Times Best Seller
- #913 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Governor General's Award for English-language fiction Winner, 1985
- Booker Prize Nomination, 1986
- Nebula Award Nomination, 1986
- Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction Winner, 1986
- Arthur C. Clarke Award Winner, 1986
- Prometheus Award Nomination, 1986
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #10,059 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- The American Book Awards, 1985
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #27,939 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Book Critics Circle Award nomination, 1983
- O. Henry Award, 1983
- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Nomination, 1985
- 3 weeks as a New York Times Best Seller
- #2,899 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Pulitzer Prize winner, 1983
- National Book Award winner, 1983
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #5,377 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Nebula Award for Best Novel, 1985
- Philip K. Dick Award, 1984
- Hugo Award for Best Novel, 1985
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #3,043 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Hugo Award for Other Forms, 1987
- Harvey Award for Best Writer, 1988
- Eisner Award for Best Writer, 1988
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #13,325 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- National Book Award winner, 1985
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #45,545 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Commonwealth Writers' Prize, 1989
- 35 weeks as a New York Times Best Seller (the 53rd longest-streak of the 1980s)
- #2,612 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- National Book Finalist winner, 1989
- National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, 1989
- Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize Finalist, 1989
What literature do we study from the 1990s?SourceURL: https://pudding.cool/2023/01/lit-canon/ |
What literature do we study from the 1990s?
What literature do we study from the 1990s?
Swipe Right
The first Harry Potter book was published 25 years ago. I wonder if it will go the way of To Kill a Mockingbird or The Great Gatsby: a literary classic that’s required reading for American students.
If Harry Potter ends up on English 101 syllabi, it’s the epitome of its legacy, especially considering it was written for young adults. It would mean that educators think it’s important enough for each generation to read.
Here’s an attempt at the turn-of-the-century literary canon (using data from college syllabi)
By Matt Daniels
Using Open Syllabus, which archives university-level syllabi, we identified 1.9 million entries from English Literature classes since 2010. We looked at which books from the 1990s are, today, widely assigned in college-level English Literature classes.
Here’s the #1, most-assigned ’90s book, which appears on 2,050 syllabi.
The Things They Carried (1990)
Tim O'Brien
appears in 2,050 syllabi
The Things They Carried wasn’t mega-popular when it was published; it wasn’t even a New York Times Best Seller.
But it was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. NPR said it’s "now a staple of college and high school English classes, celebrated as one of the most important books about the experience of war."
Today, The Things They Carried is pervasive in English literature curriculum. But understanding how it got there is even more important.
How does a book become a present-day classic, enthusiastically assigned by educators? Among the things I considered were: was it heavily awarded? Did it have an outsized impact on culture? Does it pertain to a topic that the next generation should know (in the case of The Things They Carried, an account of the Vietnam war)?
Let’s add these data points as context for each book:
- New York Times Best Seller: was a book commercially successful when it published?
- Goodreads Ranking: is it widely read today?
- Literary Prizes: was it acclaimed by academics and critics?
And here’s that data for The Things They Carried:
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #5,403 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Pulitzer Prize Finalist; National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
Here's the #2 most-assigned book.
#2
Woman Hollering Creek (1991)
Sandra Cisneros
appears in 891 syllabi
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #52,311 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Notable book of the year by The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle.
When we look at Woman Hollering Creek’s popularity on Goodreads, it’s far less popular than The Things They Carried. It has 9,900 ratings—compare that to The Things They Carried’s 286,000 ratings!
Woman Hollering Creek is ranked #52,311 in quantity of Goodreads ratings, the lowest among the 10 most-assigned ’90s fiction.
For Stanford’s Literary Lab, Digital Humanities scholar J.D. Porter points out a number of books that were never commercially popular, but have, over time, grown into a dominant force in the literary canon. One important example is the 1937 classic Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.
"Before 1970, Zora Neale Hurston was the primary subject author in just 4 MLA articles, and all of her novels were out of print; none had sold more than 5,000 copies. It was famously the efforts of prestigious scholars and writers, especially Alice Walker, that recuperated her.
And it worked: Today Hurston has over 700 MLA articles, and she has more Goodreads ratings than authors ranging from the canon that predated her…No doubt much of the public familiarity with her work derives from its now-common presence in classrooms, but this is precisely the point...a boost in prestige, driven by scholars and practitioners, and mediated through the classroom, led to a boost in popularity. The arc of escape from obscurity pulled her not just up but away."
This story of Zora Neale Hurston ends with an important point by Porter, "We do not merely study what people read; people read what we study."
Let’s continue on with the rest of the top 10.
#3
The God of Small Things (1997)
Arundhati Roy
appears in 801 syllabi
- 31 weeks as a New York Times Best Seller
- 19th-longest streak as a Best Seller in the 1990s
- #5,696 most-frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Booker Prize Winner, 1997
#4
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Book #1, 1997)
J. K. Rowling
appears in 788 syllabi
- 77 weeks as a New York Times Best Seller
- 10th-longest streak as a Best Seller in the 1990s
- #1 most-frequently rated book on Goodreads
- A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1998 and a New York Public Library 1998 Best Book of the Year
Books like Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone are cultural touchstones. In theory, when a book is this widely-read and culturally important, it’s bound to be assigned by educators. Yet that’s rarely the case.
With the exception of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, few of the top ’90s New York Times Best Sellers end up assigned in English Literature syllabi.
In 1951, Pulitzer Prize-winning The Caine Mutiny, by Herman Wouk, began its historic run of 2.5 years as a New York Times Best Seller. Around the same time, Catcher in the Rye would spend 7 months as a New York Times Best Seller as well.
But today, Catcher in the Rye is widely assigned by educators, which might surprise 1950s literary scholars, as the book was neither the most-awarded or widely-read of the era.
There are countless examples of Caine Mutinies: a mega-popular book that eventually enters obscurity. This occurs with all media: few musical hits will be remembered by younger generations. Only a handful of Oscar-winning films will remain classics.
Yet with literature, high school and college-assigned readings buoy a book that would otherwise fade into obscurity.
#5
Interpreter of Maladies (1999)
Jhumpa Lahiri
appears in 773 syllabi
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #8,519 most-frequently rated book on Goodreads
- PEN America winner, 2000; Pulitzer Prize winner, 2000
#6
Disgrace (1999)
J.M. Coetzee
appears in 593 syllabi
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #12,988 most-frequently rated book on Goodreads
- The Booker Prize 1999
#7
The Giver (1993)
Lois Lowry
appears in 575 syllabi
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #763 most-frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Newbery Medal, 1994
When I ask people about 1990s books that are widely-assigned in school, most people bring up The Giver, which just might be the closest thing we have to a "modern classic."
I looked at ’90s books on Goodreads, determining which ones were most often classified in the "classics" genre by users. The Giver, in 2022, is tagged by users as a "classic" more than any other ’90s book (see also Melanie Walsh’s study of Goodreads classics, across all decades).
Seeing The Giver on "classics" lists is a bit like hearing Nirvana on classic rock radio: unnerving but also comforting. Every era will have a set of anointed "classics." Put simply by McGurl and Algee-Hewitt, "Of the many, many thousands of novels and stories published in English in the 20th century, which group of several hundred would represent the most reasonable, interesting, and useful subset of the whole?"
Deciding what should be in the canon is both debated and controversial (e.g., see this 1990 paper about the reading list for Stanford University’s course on Western culture, required of all undergraduates). Who’s on the list (and importantly, who’s not) is fraught with dilemmas, as detailed in this pamphlet by Mark Algee-Hewitt and Mark McGurl.
And in the past, that list was predominantly determined by white men in academia.
#8
Angels in America (1992)
Tony Kushner
appears in 508 syllabi
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #38,931 most-frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Tony Awards Best Play, 1993; Pulitzer Prize for Drama, 1993
#9
Parable of the Sower (1993)
Octavia E. Butler
appears in 505 syllabi
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller when published
- #16,524 most-frequently rated book on Goodreads
- New York Times Notable Book of the Year, 1994; Nebula Awards Best Novel Nomination, 1994
John Green discusses Parable of the Sower in a December 2022 vlog about books that get better over time.
Parable of the Sower (1994) wasn’t a New York Times Best Seller when it was published. But Green makes a great point: as this book gets older, "it feels more contemporary."
"Parable of the Sower is a novel narrated by a young Black woman living in a future America where systems are collapsing, the president is a demagogue, climate change is wreaking havoc, there’s a substance abuse epidemic, and other things that feel just a little contemporary…it has gotten better over the last 30 years because it helps us understand that much of our now wasn’t just foreseeable, it was foreseen. Its explorations about how to unify polarized communities and collaborate across difference are profoundly instructive for us."
Parable of the Sower, like many books on this list, were ahead of their time. It explains why books that were never megahits, when published, can take on a new life decades later.
#10
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993)
Sherman Alexie
appears in 405 syllabi
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #29,952 most-frequently rated book on Goodreads
- PEN-Hemingway Best First Book of Fiction Citation Winner, 1993; Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, 1994
This ranking gives us a glimpse into the legacy of books from the recent past. Many will be colloquially known as "classics" in years to come.
This top ten ranking is also notable because of how diverse it is: 5 are authors of color and 6 are women.
This is in contrast to the existing Western canon. When students read The Grapes of Wrath, it seems like a rite of passage, but it’s also now socially acceptable to challenge the status of such books, particularly if higher quality work from diverse authors could take its place. The data from university syllabi is a bellwether to the broader shift in what should be both read and remembered.
What follows are the most-assigned fiction and non-fiction books from the ’80s and ’00s, along with the list from the ’90s we just explored.
Beloved (1987)
Toni Morrison
appears in 1836 syllabi
- 31 weeks as a New York Times Best Seller (the 45th longest-streak of the 1980s)
- #4,420 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Pulitzer Prize winner, 1988
- Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, 1988
The Handmaid's Tale (1985)
Margaret Atwood
appears in 1255 syllabi
- 14 weeks as a New York Times Best Seller
- #913 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Governor General's Award for English-language fiction Winner, 1985
- Booker Prize Nomination, 1986
- Nebula Award Nomination, 1986
- Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction Winner, 1986
- Arthur C. Clarke Award Winner, 1986
- Prometheus Award Nomination, 1986
The House on Mango Street (1984)
Sandra Cisneros
appears in 1208 syllabi
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #10,059 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- The American Book Awards, 1985
Cathedral (1983)
Raymond Carver
appears in 1153 syllabi
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #27,939 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Book Critics Circle Award nomination, 1983
- O. Henry Award, 1983
- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction Nomination, 1985
The Color Purple (1982)
Alice Walker
appears in 724 syllabi
- 3 weeks as a New York Times Best Seller
- #2,899 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Pulitzer Prize winner, 1983
- National Book Award winner, 1983
Neuromancer (1984)
William Gibson
appears in 567 syllabi
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #5,377 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Nebula Award for Best Novel, 1985
- Philip K. Dick Award, 1984
- Hugo Award for Best Novel, 1985
Watchmen (1987)
Alan Moore
appears in 521 syllabi
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #3,043 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Hugo Award for Other Forms, 1987
- Harvey Award for Best Writer, 1988
- Eisner Award for Best Writer, 1988
White Noise (1984)
Don DeLillo
appears in 493 syllabi
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #13,325 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- National Book Award winner, 1985
Nervous Conditions (1988)
Tsitsi Dangarembga
appears in 487 syllabi
- Never charted as a New York Times Best Seller
- #45,545 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- Commonwealth Writers' Prize, 1989
The Joy Luck Club (1989)
Amy Tan
appears in 485 syllabi
- 35 weeks as a New York Times Best Seller (the 53rd longest-streak of the 1980s)
- #2,612 most frequently rated book on Goodreads
- National Book Finalist winner, 1989
- National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, 1989
- Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize Finalist, 1989
Check out more stories from The Pudding:
Methods
All syllabus data was obtained directly from Open Syllabus.
Goodreads Rankings was obtained via Kaggle and indexed using this notebook