When you work at a library, some literary trends aren’t that hard to spot: you tend to trip over them. A while back we started seeing lobsters everywhere, which last year were replaced by tigers. We’ve done whole book displays over covers featuring just feet, or headless women. (One avid reader in Montreal is especially gifted at keeping an eye out for similar (or identical) covers, such as this bevy of skirts.)
The latest trend that’s becoming hard to resist is the current proliferation of titles sporting the same sibillant suffix. Not sure when it began: it might have been Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist, or maybe it dates back to Caleb Carr’s The Alienist, but suddenly on a stroll through the aisles one is likely to be accosted by resurrectionists, somnambulists, imperfectionists, informationists, and lonely polygamists.
Not only that: they’re having children, though strictly along X-chromosonal lines. Imagine the lively conversations that must ensue at any gathering of The Optimist’s Daughter, The Abortionist’s Daughter, The Alchemist’s Daughter, A Bigamist’s Daughter, The Artist’s Daughter, The Communist’s Daughter, and The Narcissist’s Daughter. I wonder if they talk about their dads?
Here’s some of what we’ve spotted; can you think of others?
- The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho
- The Algebraist by Iain Banks.
- The Alienist by Caleb Carr.
- The Ambidextrist by Peter Rock.
- The Anarchist by John Smollens.
- The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker.
- The Archivist by Martha Cooley.
- The Archivist’s Story by Travis Holland.
- The Little Balloonist by Linda Donn.
- The Catastrophist by Lawrence Douglas.
- The Catastrophist by Ronan Bennett.
- The Dramatist by Ken Bruen.
- The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips.
- The Espressologist by Kristina Springer.
- The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty.
- The Fabulist by Stephen Glass.
- The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid.
- The Futurist by James Othmer.
- The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler.
- The Illusionist by Françoise Mallet-Joris.
- The Immoralist by André Gide
- The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman.
- The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead.
- The Miniaturist by Kunal Basu.
- The Merry Misogynist by Colin Cotterill.
- The Monstrumologist by Richard Yancey.
- The Perfectionists by Gail Godwin.
- The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall.
- The Preservationist by David Maine.
- The Psychiatrist by Machado de Assis.
- The Good Psychologist by Noam Shpancer.
- The Resurrectionist by Jack O’Connell.
- The Serialist by David Gordon.
- The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes.
- The Stylist by Cai Emmons.
- Terrorist by John Updike.
- The Tourist by Olen Steinhauer.
Now, what -ists have we missed?
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