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mld, July 1, 2002 at 6:36:00 AM CEST

The 100 Greatest Novels

I got this email today from a list I'm on, and there's this bookstore pimping their list of the novels every adult should own. (or at least read, one presumes) It's here.

Needless to say, there are a few selections with which I have to disagree.

They got some things right. There are the Classics - The Oedipus Trilogy, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Canterbury Tales, etc. Given my tastes, no problemo. But I don't know that if I had to pick one Shakespeare, that it'd be Lear. And I'm not sure Candide would make my cut.

Moby Dick and Huck Finn, the two novels that vy, in my mind, at least, for the title of Greatest American Novel, along with all the other Greatest Hits, the novels that you learned to hate in high school, Great Expectations, The Scarlet Letter, Pride And Prejudice, yatta-yatta...

But there are some selections there that I don't understand at all. It may be my elitist classical leanings or just plain ignorance of most of the stuff written after WWII, but c'mon...

The Wapshot Chronicle? July's People? If Not Now, When? A Lesson From Aloes? The Moviegoer? The Scarlet Mandala? Their Eyes Were Watching God? Things Fall Apart?

These may be fine works, but are any of them more important than oh, say, The Grapes of Wrath, or 1984?

Seems to me that a work needs to have aged a few decades before it gets to be called one of the best of all time, but again, my tastes are obvious and my ignorance considerable. It looks to me like the list has as a hidden agenda the need to move some slow moving titles out of a warehouse somewhere, or as if the publisher is underwriting this. Some of the selections positively reek of PC affirmative action, but that's a whole 'nother issue.

There are a few glaring holes (no Hemingway?) and a complete lack of any sci-fi or fantasy - not even a Fahrenheit 451 or The Hobbitt to appease fans of the genre.

I know Kipling is out of favor these days for being an imperialist racist pig, but how do you leave out Kim, or the Jungle Books? (unless you are considering the latter to be kid's fiction)

Anyway, the polls are open. Now taking nominees for the 100 Greatest Works of Fiction...

I'm thinking of this as the list I'd hand to my kid and tell her this is what she needs to have read before she leaves home for college. Other than Shakespeare and Sophocles (and the rest of the ancient Greek playwrights), I'm leaving all dramatic works aside, maybe for their own list.

I'll get started by listing some classics that I think will be consensus picks. In no particular order:

  1. Shakespeare - Complete Works (cheating, I know, but this is my poll)
  2. Homer - Iliad & Odyssey
  3. Dante - Divine Comedy
  4. Chaucer - Canterbury Tales
  5. Sophocles - The Oedipus Cycle
  6. Cervantes - Don Quixote
  7. Twain - Huck Finn
  8. Melville - Moby Dick

And my personal selections, again in no real order, and limited to books that I've actually read. There are lots of books that would be consensus entries, as an example, Pride And Prejudice, that I've left off for the latter reason. Another would be that I didn't really like them, which is why I've not put obvious works such as The Great Gatsby (soap opera) and The Catcher In The Rye (I wanted to shoot that whiny twerp Holden Caulfield by the fifth page) on the list. I'm going to let someone else do that - they're not getting my Seal of Approval. :-)

  1. Twain - Connecticut Yankee
  2. Huxley - Brave New World
  3. Conrad - Heart of Darkness
  4. Conrad - Lord Jim
  5. Vergil - The Aeneid (I know, Roman GeekFreak tastes showing)
  6. Orwell - 1984
  7. Orwell - Animal Farm
  8. Rand - The Fountainhead
  9. Hemingway - A Farewell To Arms
  10. Remarque - All Quiet On The Western Front
  11. Steinbeck - The Grapes Of Wrath
  12. Steinbeck - Of Mice And Men
  13. Burgess - A Clockwork Orange
  14. Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451
  15. Card - Ender's Game (with the sequels)
  16. Steakley - Armor
  17. Heinlein - Starship Troopers
  18. Heinlein - Job
  19. Heinlein - The Number Of The Beast
  20. Heinlein - Just about everything else he wrote...
  21. Frank - Alas, Babylon
  22. Dickey - Deliverance
  23. Wilder - The Bridge Of San Luis Rey
  24. Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse V
  25. Graves - I, Claudius
  26. Heller - Catch-22
  27. Joyce - Ulysses (man, I hate to do that to her, but...)
  28. Dickens - Great Expectations
  29. Nabokov - Lolita
  30. Lawrence - Lady Chatterley's Lover
  31. Golding - Lord Of The Flies
  32. Adams - Watership Down
  33. Tolkien - The Hobbit & the LOTR trilogy
  34. Adams - Hichhiker's Guide and sequels
  35. Twain - Letters From Earth
  36. Pressfield - Gates of Fire (a sleeper, I know)
  37. McMurty - Lonesome Dove
  38. Burroughs - Tarzan Of The Apes
  39. Defoe - Robinson Crusoe
  40. Lee - To Kill A Mockingbird
  41. Baum - The Wizard Of Oz
  42. Twain - Tom Sawyer
  43. Rice - Interview With A Vampire
  44. Wells - The Time Machine
  45. Sinclair - The Jungle
  46. Swift - Gulliver's Travels
  47. Ovid - Metamorphoses
  48. Boccaccio - Decameron
  49. Unknown - The Epic of Gilgamesh
  50. Rabelais - Gargantua And Pantagruel
  51. Kazantzakis - Zorba The Greek
  52. Various - The Bible (it is fiction, you know)
  53. All the extant tragedies of ancient Greece

Well, that makes up almost half the list - I suppose I need to leave room for the rest of you. :-)


 
place your comment!  
sunny, 8/27/02, 12:14 AM
c'mon!!!

ok, im with you on brave new world, 1984 and to kill a mockingbird (as well as some others), but LOTR?? (and i say that as a brit)...can we please find room for: the remains of the day, midnights children, war and peace, the god of small things (a huge favourite of mine), something by paul auster (you can choose), a fine balance, 100years of solitude (another must), the house of mr. biswas, a bend in the river.... cheers, hope maybe one of these will make the cut! thanks.

... Link

mld, 8/27/02, 12:51 AM
I suppose...

we could, but the only problem is I haven't read a one of those books, other than War and Peace, and that was so long ago as to leave me only a vague recollection of the work. There are some books you just can''t appreciate as a kid.

But hey, you wanna nominate 'em, fine with me. If we get a few more votes for them, I'll add them to the list.

I will stick by my guns on the LOTR issue. Remember, I postulated this list as the 100 books I'd like my kid to have read. I think it's hard to argue that you're culturally literate, if you haven't read the trilogy. (Or at least tried to. :-) 'Course. now that it's a movie, you can always fake it, like Moby Dick. :-) At least after the next two movies, anyway.

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mld, 8/27/02, 12:55 AM
And I forgot to mention...

Sunny, when you signed up as an antville user, you should have gotten an email confirming your username, etc. You didn't, as it bounced to me, with a unknown user error. Check your user info for typos. Send me a private mail if you have any questions or problems.

... link

somebuddy, 1/12/03, 6:10 PM
How 'bout Graham Greene?

Among my list for the ten (I'll keep it short) greatest novels that i have read (and that has been many) sit four, if not five Graham Greene novels. How could you neglect such a talented writer and such interesting theologico-moral plots? Whoever decides to add to this list and subsequently vote, i suggest first reading The Heart of the Matter, and then going about the process. I have complete confidence in this case it will be named. And if you have time I recomend The End of the Affair, The Tenth Man (or the Third Man, essentially the same though the first is better), and The Power and the Glory. Even if they don't get added, they should be read nonetheless.

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mld, 1/12/03, 9:56 PM
Graham Greene?

I suppose the reason I didn't mention him before is that I've never heard of the guy before your message. :-)

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jane95, 1/21/03, 12:15 AM
Re: c'mon!!!

Okay - I'll bite:

Of the above listed books, I can't really disagree.

I will say that I love 100 Years of Solitude, but prefer Love in the Time of Cholera.

Maybe Creed for the Third Millenium, by that Thornbirds lady - meant something to me when I read it at 18.

Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson - no, really

Ihappen to LOVE Things Fall Apart and would include it but would shudder to include Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre or anything by Thomas Hardy.

Though, I might include Middlemarch.

If Iwas gonna pick a Heinlein - and I am not saying I definitely would - it would be Job: A Comedy of Injustice - but if I was going to pick SciFi it would be anything Phillip K. Dick.

Did Ulysses make the list? The Joyce book. Can't admit to getting all the way through it, but I didn't get all the way through anything Pynchon either. Shrug.

Um...There are probably others...I'll get back to you.

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somebuddy, 2/13/03, 11:14 PM
How About Les Mis?

Les Miserable really needs to be on the list. It was truly one of the greatest books I've ever had to pleasure to have read. (maybe needed a little editing but still...)
And how about Stoker's Dracula? That book was so creepy and excellent and not too long! If you havent read it, you must!
By the way, even tho I don't get all the Heinlein (where is Stranger in a Strange Land?) any list that leaves off On The Road is OK in my book!
I think a Hardy is needed too...Tess was a great book!

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mld, 2/14/03, 1:57 AM
Le Mis

Never read it, or saw it. Insufficient Data.

As for Dracula - it was certainly influential, but great? Doesn't seem so to me - more like a groundbreaker for the genre, the comman great grandaddy of stuff like Anne Rice's novels and Blacula, more important for what it inspired than what it is.

Heinlein's "Stranger" got in by my cheat of saying "everything else he wrote." :-)

Tess bored me to tears, but I was still in high school when I tried to wade through it...

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... Comment
xxb2w, 8/23/03, 1:05 AM
Catcher In The Rye

Rice, I dont know

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bad, 11/30/03, 8:01 PM
Catcher in the Rye

"If you sat around there long enough and heard
all the phonies applauding and all,
you got to hate everybody in the world."
- Catcher in the Rye

... link


... Comment
somebuddy, 2/7/04, 2:59 AM
The time of Dwell

I applaude your distain for the list of 100, I also laughed at the commercial implications of their choices and was sadened to think that great works are being replaced by commercial statistics. I agree with most of your selections, especialy the esteem you hold for Mr conrad, but we must have the catcher, war and peace and dare I say it, I do, the Alexandrea Quartet. Others may call me a radical but it is time that Lawrence Dwell received the credit he so justly deserves. Thank you for your time, sincerly yours ......

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