Is this a silly list? I see it has "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret."
Why "since 1923"? There must be some book from then -- "A Passage to India" (1924)? -- that they were hot to include and then drew the cut-off at that point so they wouldn't have to be bothered with anything else.
Most of these books you'd have to pay me a lot of money to read. I have read some of them. Some I've read parts of and always meant to finish. Some I've read parts of and then flung aside, most memorably "The Golden Notebook," which contained a preface by the author saying life is too short to read books that fail to engage you. If you find yourself reading such a book, you ought to fling it aside! Great advice, from Doris Lessing!
Ah, isn't it obvious? I just don't like novels very much. I've wasted too much time trying to be the sort of person who loves novels.
UPDATE: A former student of mine writes:
I saw your post on novels today, and I feel compelled to give you one of Austen's great defenses of novel reading, this from her early novel "Northanger Abbey."I'm very aware of the reasons given for the importance of reading novels, and I've been influenced by this sort of thing for most of my life. I've never snobbily turned up my nose at novels, like Mr. Collins. I've always had the impression that the best people read novels. That has motivated me to try to be the sort of person who reads a lot of novels. Great mental powers, knowledge of human nature, and wit and humour are also displayed in well-chosen language in works of nonfiction and even in blogs or in live conversation. And novels also contain plenty of foolish notions, tedious observations, phony depictions of human nature, and awful writing. I'm most interested in learning about things that are true and hearing great ideas, and I have never found novels to be a particularly rich source. Of course there are the emotion-stirring stories, but for that, there are so many movies to see, nearly all of which are fiction. But I find I don't have much interest in stories -- all those personal problems with relationships! Even for a film, I'd rather see a documentary.
"Oh, it is only a novel!" ... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language."
"Pride & Prejudice" also contains a great but more subtle defense of novels--the fantastically preposterous Mr. Collins declares to his shocked cousins how he, unlike the ladies, never bothers with novels and only reads books with a more serious stamp.
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25 comments:
1. FWIW (not much), I've read 17 of these and enjoyed about half.
2. Should be on the list: Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey.
3. Snow Crash is exciting, but Neal Stephenson's best is Cryptonomicon.
I may be the only Jack London fan here
Aw, Chris is puncturing a hole in my cynicism! And Xenuphobe's!
I'm impressed. This is a rare example of a non boomer-centric list. Hooray!
Any list of novels that includes both "The Death of the Heart" AND "Red Harvest" is ok in my book.
Even if does include "White Noise".
See, my cynicism was that they wanted to keep public-domain novels off the list, since anything copyrighted after 1922 that had its copyright properly renewed is still under copyright in the U.S. until 2018, while everything from 1922 or earlier is public domain.
I like London, too.
These days, I mostly, though not exclusively, am reading non-fiction. But I was surprised to see that I have actually read well over half of the books on the list.
That includes "Are you there, God? It's Me Margaret" (cut me a break here--I read it right when it came out and I was within the exact target demographic at the time). What the Sam Hill is THAT doing there? I wish I had the time spent reading that back!
Its presence does seem to confirm your take on the list, Ann, even though there are also lots of good books there. (That's assuming one likes or loves novels to begin with, of course, which one should not feel compelled to do!) Especially when that novel appears but not such books as the Kesey novel that Bill mentioned. Does the article actually explain the criteria?
Maybe ALL of these top 100 list type of things are inherently silly.
Allicent: "There Eyes Were Watching God" is on the list.
And given what they DID choose, I'm a little surprised not see any Iris Murdoch or even, perhaps, Robertson Davies.
I'm glad to see "Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthy on the list. I read it in August 2001 and it did more to explain what happened the next month than any political/historical analysis piece I've read. The depiction of evil in the book was chilling.
Biggest surprise for me was not seeing Fahrenheit 451 on the list.
They definitely didn't want to be seen as elitist and went out of their way for some non-traditional choices. The movie list that inspired this list was similar.
The biggest debate that I've seen on the net so far is the inclusion of Watchmen on the list with some arguing that as a "graphic novel" (i.e. big comic book) it belongs in its own category. I tend to think that they were just being inclusive, but it is an interesting debate. I give them points for choosing Watchmen, which is a superhero deconstruction book, over the much safer Maus.
Thanks, MD. Don't worry, though. I don't feel bad about not getting into novels (or classical musice) the way the seemingly best people do. I achieved a sort of personal enlightenment about 15 years ago, in which I realized vividly how much I combined the perception of what other people valued/loved/enjoyed and what I did. Since then I've had a strong sense of aesthetic autonomy. It's quite amazing. I don't (feel that I) enjoy anywhere near as many things anymore, but I save a tremendous amount of time, which is now available to do the things I genuinely want to do.
My problem with this list is that there seems to be a little too much genre fiction on the list. The token comic book, the token sci-fi novel, the token hard-boiled detective novel . . .
I would have put the John le Carre Smiley/Karla trilogy on the list, its just incredible. I agree with the other readers that Absalom, Absalom! is one of the best novels of the 20th century and, if the books were ranked, would be in my top five, so how it didn't make the top 100 blows my mind!
The list has a very glaring omission. Mark Helprin is arguably the greatest living novelist writing in English. His books routinely top the New York Times best seller list. However he committed the unpardonable sin of coming out against Clinton during the Lewinski imbroglio. He has not been reviewed or nominated for a single award since that event.
And yet his novel "a Soldier of the Great War" is easily better than 90 plus of the titles on the list.
His books sell because they are great. He will never make a list like this because he is conservative.
And where is Charles Williams?
Two words, to echo two previous comments: "Absalom, Absalom!"
I was pleasantly surprised that I had read 26 of them, or just over 1/4. I generally don't like this type of fiction at all. Maybe it is my anti-elitism coming out. I never wanted to be one of the "better" people. Probably due to all those English Lit majors snearing at my SciFi/Fantasy reading. I do plan to ask my father though how many he and my mother read - I expect that they read over half of them. Comes from belonging to book groups.
I much prefer science fiction/fantasy and non-fiction. I think I have somewhere around 1,500 of the former (paperbacks mostly) sorted by author and lining the walls in one bedroom. Some day, I intend to get bookshelves. I have probably read at least another 500 or so, either in hard back, or have lost the books in all my moves since college 30+ years ago. But 1,500 really isn't that many, if you figure one book a week for thirty years - a lot of them on airplanes or in airports.
I don't know why though, but I have moved decidedly towards non-fiction in the last five years. I used to hate history. Way too subjective. But now I read at least one history book a month. When you add in all the others, I am probably nearing one a week now.
I've read eight of them and tried to read a couple more, all more than 30 years ago in high school. I much prefer history, biography and natural science books. I've never been inspired to read because its a "great book"
Missing: Larry McMurtry.
we shouldn't forget the Hardy Boys either, Dana....
The Sot Weed Factor is wonderful and the Crying of Lot 49's one of my all time favorites.
It's nice they put John Cheever on the list, but he wrote better short stories than novels.
I love all the high school English books: Catcher, 1984, Slaughterhouse-Five, Mockingbird, and especially Gatsby but not The Lord of Flies. I didn't like that one.
I don't care for Faulkner, Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Henry Miller, Don DeLillo, or Virginia Woolf.
I've never heard of Richard Yates or Maryilynne Robinson.
Saul Bellow--very east coast!
White Teeth sucked, imo.
The Corrections was hilarious, but went by too fast--"the difficult first chapter" withstanding.
The Sheltering Sky--great book (I like all of Paul Bowles), terrrrrible movie.
I've always meant to read Iris Murdoch and Ralph Ellison. Invisible Man's sat unread on my bookshelf for over a decade. Ragtime too.
I'm delighted they included Watchmen.
I didn't like Blood Meridian. My McCarthy vote would go to The Crossing. I loved that book!
Is John le Carre supposed to be serious reading? Really?
Just noticed Day of the Locust made it on the list. That was a great movie! Anyone read the book?
Instead of one token SF novel, there are actually two genre SF novels on the list, Neuromancer and Snow Crash. Odd choices -- I'd be surprised if many actual SF fans would list those two as the top two even if you limited it to SF written since 1980.
I'm not sure what my top five list would look like, but certainly The Demolished Man, The Stars My Destination, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Lord of Light, and A Fire Upon the Deep would all rank well above the two they chose.
Certainly neither of their two SF choices is anywhere near the stature of The Lord of the Rings.
And The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe?!? I know it's a "classic", but there must be at least a dozen better fantasy novels AND a dozen better children's novels. Quite possibly a dozen better children's fantasy novels.
Makes me wonder about their choices in the genres I don't know so well...
PS I'm disappointed they left out Patrick O'Brian, though I guess it would be hard to single out a specific book...
ditto, Troy. "Lonesome Dove" has to be one of the best novels ever written. Cormac McCarthy gets all the attention, but Larry McMurtry's is the *definitive* western.
Jult52, I totally hear you about the Crossing. I really fell into that book tho', and relished the long middle.
In general too, I don't like quick reads...WIth McCarthy, I usually have to read the first 20-30 pages at least twice before I have any idea what's going on.
I've read 26. Any list that includes both Hammet and Chandler is legitimate, although The Long Goodbye is better than The Big Sleep. Of course, they made their lives easier by starting when Time did, to omit the tedious arguments in favor of or against Ulysses. Personally, I'm in favor, but then again, I've read it, so I have to say it's great to justify time spent.
Commenting on blogs is great, too!
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