But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking about the Present as If It Were the Past

by Chuck Klosterman

When The New York Times released its 2014 “100 Notable Books” list, several readers noticed how there were exactly twenty-five fiction books by men, twenty-five fiction books by women, twenty-five nonfiction books by men, and twenty-five nonfiction books by women. Do I have a problem with this? I have no problem with this. But it does reflect something telling about the modern criteria for quantifying art: Symmetrical representation sits at the center of the process. It’s an aesthetic priority. Granted, we’re dealing with a meaningless abstraction, anyway—the list is called “notable” (as opposed to “best”), it’s politicized by the relationships certain authors have with the list makers, it annually highlights books that instantly prove ephemeral, and the true value of inclusion isn’t clear to anyone. Yet in the increasingly collapsible, eternally insular idiom of publishing, the Times’ “100 Notable” list remains the most visible American standard for collective critical appreciation. This is why the perfect 25:25:25:25 gender split is significant. Does it not seem possible—in fact, probable—that (say) twenty-six of the most notable novels were written by women? Or that perhaps men wrote twenty-seven of the most notable nonfiction works?