The American Scholar is reprinting an article published in its Spring 1970 edition, “Comments on Neglected Books of the Past Twenty-Five Years,” in the hope of making “a small impact” on American literary history, just as the original article’s publication did by celebrating the then-neglected Call It Sleep by Henry Roth. If not for the books themselves, and updates added by Stephanie Bastek as to where they are now, the list is worth going through for the commentary by the likes of Isaac Asimov and Samuel Beckett.
