Back in 1994, prompted by Harold Bloom's 'The Western Canon', James Wood presented Guardian readers with his own list of the best British and American writing since 1945. Wood says he sought to "avoid the 'representative', 'important' or 'influential' and chose, instead, books which I like, which seemed to me deep and beautiful, which aerate the soul and abrase the conscience ... "
BTW, I bet I won't be the only one who had to look up the meaning of 'abrase'. James Wood has been Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University since 2014.
