We asked Michael Dirda to select books of the past 50 years that will be remembered a half century from now. “I suspect that these, for the most part, strike us today as strange, idiosyncratic,” he says. “But in 50 years, they will have done something new that the next generation will appreciate in ways we can’t predict. Leaving out the more usual suspects such as Saul Bellow, John Updike, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, or Joyce Carol Oates—all of whom I admire—here are some books or bodies of work that seem quite magical to me. Some of these writers may be new to Washingtonian readers. I hope so. What’s the point of a list if it doesn’t lead you to new work?”
