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clear to anyone. Yet in the increasingly collapsible, eternally insular idiom of publishing, the
Times
’ “100 Notable” list remains the most visible American standard for collective critical appreciation. This is why the perfect 25:25:25:25 gender split is significant. Does it not seem possible—in fact, probable—that (say) twenty-six of the most notable novels were written by women? Or that perhaps men wrote twenty-seven of the most notable nonfiction works? 6 I suppose it’s mathematically possible that an objective, gender-blind judging panel might look at every book released in 2014 and arrive at the same conclusion as
The
New York Times
. Perfect statistical symmetry is within the realm of possibility. But no impartial person believes that this is what happened. Every rational person knows this symmetry was conscious, and that this specific result either(a) slightly invalidates the tangible value of the list, or (b) slightly elevates the intangible value of the list. (I suppose it’s also possible to hold both of those thoughts simultaneously.) In either case, one thing is absolutely clear: This is the direction in which canonical thinking is drifting. Díaz’s view, which once felt like an alternative perspective, is becoming the entrenched perspective. And when that happens, certain critical conclusions will no longer be possible.
    Let’s assume that—in the year 2112—someone is looking back at the turn of the twenty-first century, trying to deduce the era’s most significant writers. Let us also assume Díaz’s opinion about the present culture has metabolized into the standard view; let’s concede that people of the future take for granted that the old evaluative criteria were “unfairly weighted towards whiteness, maleness, middle-class-ness, straightness, [and] monoculturality.” When that evolution transpires, here’s the one critical conclusion that cannot (and will not) happen: “You know, I’ve looked at all the candidates, consciously considering all genders and races and income brackets. I’ve tried to use a methodology that does not privilege the dominant class in any context. But you know what? It turns out that Pynchon, DeLillo, and Franzen
were
the best. The fact that they were white and male and straight is just coincidental.” If you prioritize cultural multiplicity above all other factors, you can’t make the very peak of the pyramid a reactionary exception, even in the unlikely event that this is what you believe (since such a conclusion would undoubtedly be shaped by social forces you might not recognize). Even more remote is the possibility that the sheer commercial force of a period’s most successful writers—in the case of our period, Stephen King and J. K. Rowling—will beviewed as an argument in their historical favor. If you accept that the commercial market was artificially unlevel, colossal success only damages their case.
    This is not a criticism of identity politics (even though I know it will be taken that way), nor is it some attempt at diminishing the work of new writers who don’t culturally resemble the old writers (because all writing is subjective and all writers are subjectively valid). I’m not saying this progression is unfair, or that the new version of unfairness is remotely equivalent to the old version of unfairness. Such processes are never fair, ever, under any circumstances. This is just realpolitik reality: The reason something becomes retrospectively significant in a far-flung future is detached from the reason it was significant at the time of its creation—and that’s almost always due to a recalibration of social ideologies that future generations will accept as normative. With books, these kinds of ideological transfers are difficult to anticipate, especially since there are over two million books published in any given year. But it’s a