But I'm not locking down a definitive shortlist or charting bestsellers: More simply, these are the books that, to my mind, have been the truest mirrors to American society in our time, or have attempted innovative forms of storytelling, or revealed new subject matter, or generated schools of imitators, or done all of these. I haven't read all the important fiction since 1972 - hardly - and am likely to miss any number of favorite writers and books. Still, on an anniversary, near the end of a century, it's fun to look back on 25 years of American fiction, to make a few guesses, cheerlead for the underappreciated, observe the trends. Will she stay there? Will Hemingway make a comeback? Wait and see. A front-runner like Hemingway now seems ready for the pasture, or even the knacker's yard, while a late-starter such as Zora Neale Hurston recently swept into the winner's circle of the Library of America. PICKING THE WINNERS in fiction's race for the canon really is a mug's game, especially since teachers and critics keep changing the track rules.
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