Best American Fiction, Last 25 Years

There's a great piece on contemporary American fiction in next week's NY Times (that's right, they've posted it online a full week early). A large, very impressive list of authors was polled to determine the single best American work published in the last 25 years. The winner? Beloved. I'm pleased to see Blood Meridian on the runner's up section--I finished McCarthy's Suttree yesterday, and it just reminded me how much more I liked the other book. Also interesting to note the number of Don DeLillo books nominated. Here's the list (titles I've read in bold):

THE WINNER:
Beloved
Toni Morrison
(1987)

THE RUNNERS-UP:
Underworld
Don DeLillo
(1997)

Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy
(1985)

Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels
John Updike
(1995)

American Pastoral
Philip Roth
(1997)

THE FOLLOWING BOOKS ALSO RECEIVED MULTIPLE VOTES:
A Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole
(1980)

Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson
(1980)

Winter's Tale
Mark Helprin
(1983)

White Noise
Don DeLillo
(1985)

The Counterlife
Philip Roth
(1986)

Libra
Don DeLillo
(1988)

Where I'm Calling From
Raymond Carver
(1988)

The Things They Carried
Tim O'Brien
(1990)

Mating
Norman Rush
(1991)

Jesus' Son
Denis Johnson
(1992)

Operation Shylock
Philip Roth
(1993)

Independence Day
Richard Ford
(1995)

Sabbath's Theater
Philip Roth
(1995)

Border Trilogy
Cormac McCarthy
(1999)

The Human Stain
Philip Roth
(2000)

The Known World
Edward P. Jones
(2003)

The Plot Against America
Philip Roth
(2004)