I suspect, having browsed through this, that Bloom did Vidal and Vonnegut and then realized that he was remarkably underquota. Does he actually expect us to believe that those five Jay Wright novels are better than Slaughterhouse-Five, Ulysses, Bleak House, or Steinbeck's East Of Eden? In my humble opinion, he got to W, recognized that he was far, far away from his magic number of 278, and, not wanting to go back, tossed in as many authors whose last names begin with that letter as he could.
I am working on pipe-linking the authors' names; I've completed through K....
This list is taken from http://www.io.com/~beckerdo/books/sqrlst.txt
The list by Harold Bloom that starts off this node is perhaps the most pretentious and self-absorbed list of its kind that I've ever seen. While most of the books in it are good, to call it a list of books you should have read by now and include six titles by John Ashbery smacks of a world of self-absorbed cultural irrelevance. These aren't 278 books you should have read by now, these are 278 books that a pretentious literary twat should have read by now.
Books you should have read by now should be engrossing, but at the same time have some degree of cultural relevance. Books you should have read by now shouldn't involve seven titles by the same tired author, but should include a huge amount of diversity, both topical and authorwise.
I could make a much better list... and in fact, I have.
278 Books You Should Have Read By Now the 18thCandidate version
If you think a book should be on this list... That's wonderful and all. I'm sure you've got a wonderfully written book there, one of great prose and of wide interest. The problem is... this is my list, not yours.
If you think a book shouldn't be on this list... Too bad. The point of this list is to cross-cut as much of English letters as can be done in a list of this size. Some are fiction, some are non-fiction; some are genre-based, some are not; some are highbrow, some are decidedly lowbrow; some are expected, some are quite surprising. Read them all if you want to be a well rounded human being.
If you'd like to read some of these, but don't know where to start... Pick one completely at random. If that scares you, read some of the linked writeups for the books. If you still can't make up your mind, ask me by listing some of your favorites and I'll see what I can come up with.
And now, the list... (with some commentary below)
