Tomorrow’s Classics: Literature

The Voice reminisces about it’s favorite books of the decade.

Cormac McCarthy, The Road, 2006
No character names? No punctuation marks? No society? No problem. The Road is Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece. A story about a man and his boy in post-apocalyptic America sounds dreary, but the novel is only bleak for lazy readers. McCarthy’s prose is tender and intimate, even more impressive considering his curt style. The Road is the literary equivalent of Field of Dreams for both fathers and sons—there’s no game of catch at the end, but be warned: you will get misty when you read it. Make sure to read it before the film adaptation comes out this Thanksgiving.
—Chris Heller

Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, 2000
There is more to the origin stories of superheroes than the destruction of Krypton or radioactive spider bites. Chabon delves into the psyche of these insecure and marginalized comic book writers, looking to conjure Golems to defend themselves in an evil world. Shortly after the outbreak of World War II, the two eponymous Jewish cousins create The Escapist, a superhero capable of protecting the weak and the innocent from the big bad world, where the Nazis are taking over Europe and murdering countless populations. Try as they might, paper and ink prove to be an inadequate defense against the violent intrusions of reality.
—Dan Newman

James Ellroy, The Cold Six Thousand, 2001
“We popped our cherry on the boat over,” James Ellroy wrote of the United States in his first novel, American Tabloid, which chronicled that seedy underbelly emerging from the shadows to build contemporary America in the late 1950s. Tabloid’s sequel, The Cold Six Thousand, takes the first book’s cue and shows that America was anything but idyllic in the early 1960s. It’s a country propelled by Cuban exiles, FBI snitches, and alcoholic triple agents. If the great men of history were actually junkies and philanderers—and the modern world rests on a shifting horde of amphetamines and Mob money—what does that make us?
—Will Sommer

Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves, 2000
House of Leaves came out almost a decade ago, but its impact is still felt. The narrative finds a way to combine some of the most difficult-to-get-through prose with one hell of a horror story. It might not be our generation’s Ulysses, but Danielewski created an entire universe within this book: there are fictitious footnotes to real footnotes to a story within a story. It may seem like a full-time job to get through sometimes, but all the best epics are, and the plot never gets stale. It makes you wonder how you might react if endless hallways appeared in your closet, in that neo-existential way.
—James McGrory