Twenty “Perfect Tens”
(I was thinking about the idea of the “perfect ten”—a work of art that is both flawless and great—and what a rarity they are. There are many great works of art that misstep once or twice (imperfect tens, let’s call them) and many works of art that are, on their slightly reduced terms, pristine, irreproachable, and yet not quite great (perfect nines, let’s say, or perfect eights), but there are very, very few works of art that are not only great—truly great—but without blemish: both perfect and tens. If, for instance, you regard The White Album as one of the finest records ever made but are inclined to skip “Revolution 9,” then you might call the record an imperfect ten, and if you consider Revolver essentially flawless, but also inferior to The White Album, then you might call it a perfect nine. [A hypothetical illustration, this, since my own favorite Beatles album is Help!, which is obviously imperfect and also probably not a ten.] Below I’ve listed twenty works of art I consider both perfect and tens, along with several examples of tens I consider imperfect and several examples of nines I consider flawless. I’ve arranged my selections category by category and in alphabetical order: five albums, five movies, five novels, and five short stories.)
Albums
Architecture & Morality by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
Astral Weeks by Van Morrison
Melody Mountain by Susanna and the Magical Orchestra
My Life by Iris DeMent
Tin Drum by Japan
an imperfect ten: The Queen Is Dead by The Smiths [diminished in my eyes by “Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others”]
a perfect nine: For Your Pleasure by Roxy Music [flawless, but less engaging than Roxy Music’s Avalon, which for me is another slightly imperfect ten]
Movies
After Life (directed by Kore-eda Hirokazu)
Fantastic Planet (directed by René Laloux)
A Serious Man (directed by Joel and Ethan Coen) *
3-Iron (directed by Ki-duk Kim)
You Can Count On Me (directed by Kenneth Lonergan)
an imperfect ten: Ponette (directed by Jacques Doillon) [my single favorite movie ever, but there’s a key change at the very end that I sometimes accept but sometimes don’t]
a perfect nine: Matewan (directed by John Sayles) [never missteps, but his City of Hope (which does misstep) is better]
Novels
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez **
The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasm
The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati
an imperfect ten: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy [I think most readers would agree with me that the essayistic chapters near the end deplete some of the book’s narrative force]
a perfect nine: The Quiet American by Graham Greene [inferior to Greene’s The End of the Affair, which is yet another imperfect ten]
Short Stories
“Akhnilo” by James Salter
“The Briefcase” by Rebecca Makkai
“Emergency” by Denis Johnson
“Escapes” by Joy Williams
“Two Gentle People” by Graham Greene
an imperfect ten: “The Light-Years” by Italo Calvino [one of my very favorite short stories, but “tant pis” doesn’t work, I think, at least in English]
a perfect nine: “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury
* Yes, including the prologue.
** It’s kind of amazing that such a long and complicated novel could also be perfect, but I think it is.
— January 12, 2026