SOURCE: "Booklists," in American Spectator, Vol. 31, No. 9, September, 1998, pp. 16-17.

[Tyrrell is a weekly syndicated columnist for Washington Times. In the following essay, Tyrrell estimates the status of late twentieth-century American novels on the basis of the Modern Library list.]

The Modern Library's editorial board has just announced the 100 best English-language novels of the century, as esteemed by its board members. Many of the novelists mentioned are not actually English-language novelists. They are Americans.

They wrote in American. That should make the patriotic juices flow in all of us, save for one lamentable detail: Most of the American novelists are dead or pretty much in retirement—more evidence, that, of the unhealthy condition of the American novel.

No, this is not going to be another column on the Boy President and his cadre of slippery extenuators. You Clinton-haters out there arc going to have to repair to some...