Best Novels of the Century

I'm not going to pay attention to a "Best" list that doesn't include TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and CATCHER IN THE RYE!

Hemmingway did write in English, right?

What were the criteria they used to determine the "best''?

(grasshopper) said:

1. Ulysses — James Joyce

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Yeah, right.

An academically safe and uncontroversial list - yawn.

caw.

list

(grasshopper) said:

I just thought I’d post this for review and comment.

In 1998 a panel of scholars and writers (members of the editorial board of the Modern Library) made a list of the top 20 best English-language novels of the century.



1. Ulysses — James Joyce
2. The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man — James Joyce
4. Lolita — Vladimir Nabokov
5. Brave New World — Aldous Huxley
6. The Sound and the Fury — William Faulkner
7. Catch-22 — Joseph Heller
8. Darkness at Noon — Arthur Koestler
9. Sons and Lovers — D. H. Lawrence
10. The Grapes of Wrath — John Steinbeck
11. Under the Volcano — Malcolm Lowry
12. The Way of all Flesh — Samuel Butler
13. 1984 — George Orwell
14. I, Claudius — Robert Graves
15. To the Lighthouse — Virginia Woolf
16. An American Tragedy — Theodore Dreiser
17. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter — Carson McCullers
18. Slaughterhouse Five — Kurt Vonnegut
19. Invisible Man — Ralph Ellison
20. Native Son — Richard Wright

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If I remember correctly, more than half of those who made this list admitted to either never reading Ulysses at all, or of being unable to finish it. Kind of makes the list meaningless, as far as I'm concerned.

Jamesaritche said:

If I remember correctly, more than half of those who made this list admitted to either never reading Ulysses at all, or of being unable to finish it. Kind of makes the list meaningless, as far as I'm concerned.

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HEY! What are you doing here? Get back to work!

Jamesaritchie said:

If I remember correctly, more than half of those who made this list admitted to either never reading Ulysses at all, or of being unable to finish it. Kind of makes the list meaningless, as far as I'm concerned.

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Well, it might make the judges less than trustworthy, but they did get it right. Ulysses IS the best novel of the twentieth century.

IMHO, of course. Oh, and in the humble opinion of a bunch of experts as well.

cleoauthor said:

I'm not going to pay attention to a "Best" list that doesn't include TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and CATCHER IN THE RYE!

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It was actually a "100 Best" list, and Catcher is on the longer list.
I didn't spot To Kill on that list, but it was #5 on the Reader's List (compiled by web polling). Don't get too excited though -- any list that contains two Ayn Rand titles and Battlefield Earth in the top 5 is not without problems of its own...

The complete lists are at www.modernlibrary.com

I was looking through a scrapbook a couple of years ago, and came on a clipping from a 1950 issue of Life magazine in which a panel of experts picked the 50 best books of the century so far. Some of the classics were there, but many were books and authors who are now almost totally unread and unremembered. These lists are more a product of the taste and standards of the time in which they're made than they are any sort of definitive judgment of literature.

- Victoria

Where are the women?

This is a 20thC list? The 20C where women were supposedly granted equality? Yet this list is almost all male. It's only correct in one aspect - no Hemingway.

book opinions

victoriastrauss said:

I was looking through a scrapbook a couple of years ago, and came on a clipping from a 1950 issue of Life magazine in which a panel of experts picked the 50 best books of the century so far. Some of the classics were there, but many were books and authors who are now almost totally unread and unremembered. These lists are more a product of the taste and standards of the time in which they're made than they are any sort of definitive judgment of literature.

- Victoria

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Amen! That's why I don't trust panels of experts, especially on something so subjective as what books are "best." They're just like many of us on these forums - we're inclined to state a personal opinion as absolute fact.

As I was scrolling through this list, I started to panic! I've only read 1 out of the top 20 best books?! And I'm an English major!! What have I been reading all these years??

But then I realized how many things were just so wrong with it. I've never even heard of 7 of them. (Though that may not speak well for me. ) They definitely left out some classics that are SO much better than the ones they listed. I am truly baffled at the people who made this.

Any list that doesn't include Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" or Jack Keroack's "On The Road" is a crap list to me.

(grasshopper) said:

12. The Way of all Flesh — Samuel Butler

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Wow. Should I be surprised to see this one here?

The BBC did a top 100 books list a couple of years back. What was interesting about this was the list was put together by the general public, who voted over the internet for their best books. Once they had the top 100, the BBC showed them on tele, going through them in order until they got to the top twenty. At that point they said, "right, here's the top twenty, as voted by you lot, so let's put them in order" and each title was given a twenty minute slot with a celebrity going over the plot, why they want this particular novel to win and what the novel means to them. Then came the public phone in vote.

The interesting thing about this is that we got a reflection of what the general public likes to read, or considers the best of the books they've read. The top twenty was as follows:

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

interesting to see so many children's books in there. Perhaps lots of people in the UK stop reading when they leave school.

GreyMalkin

Just as a little footnote, more than one of the "Harry Potter" books made the top twenty, but the Beeb decided to limit the list to one auther per entry, knocking her other books down the list, but all four that were released at the point made the top 25. Which makes me wonder if this is a good way of judging books, ie, did people vote for Harry Potter genuinely think it has real merit, or is it the only damn book they've read? Likewise, when the Beeb did a similar list of "The Best Britons", a list of the most influencial and important characters from British History (so, we're talking several hundred years), many of them are contemporary artists, including David Bowie, Robbie Williams and David bloody Beckam!

luxintenebrae said:

As I was scrolling through this list, I started to panic! I've only read 1 out of the top 20 best books?! And I'm an English major!! What have I been reading all these years??

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Exactly my feelings when I saw the list! I've only read 1984 out of all of them, and I read that one on my own (in 1984, when I was in ninth grade) and not as an assignment.

I agree with everyone who wonders why To Kill a Mockingbird isn't in the top 20. I also wonder why on earth Ulysses made the top spot--is it because everyone is still laboring under the impression that a book that difficult to read must be brilliant? Or because reading Ulysses for fun makes you cool so everyone wants people to think they read Ulysses for fun? Bah! A "best book" should be something many people will read and be changed by.

I don't know if it belongs in the top 20, but I'd say Toni Morrison's Beloved belongs on a top 100.

Saanen said:

I agree with everyone who wonders why To Kill a Mockingbird isn't in the top 20.

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There were quite of few of these "best books of the century" lists done around 1990/2000. To Kill a Mockingbird was left off of some of them because of the controversy over just how much Truman Capote contributed to the book. If I remember correctly, The New York Times left it off their list for just that reason.

Still, I'd agree that it should be included in just about any list of the best books of the century.

ac

Grey Malkin said:

The interesting thing about this is that we got a reflection of what the general public likes to read, or considers the best of the books they've read.

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Which underscores the fact that lists like these are popularity contests. It's an unpopular sentiment here, but I prefer a popularity contest that has editors, writers and academics as its demographic over a popularity contest the voters of which would put two Ayn Rand books and L.Ron Hubbard in the Top 5. Or that BBC list which purports to claims that Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is 'better' than Ulysses.

As to why some people think Ulysses is the best novel of the 20th century? Well, speaking personally, I think it IS a novel that "people will read and be changed by", as one poster suggested. I think it is a profound statement not only on the human condition but on literature, on the history of western thought. It is a varied textual masterwork, at once relentlessly modern and rooted firmly in the most esteemed of classics. It's funny, dirty, thought-provoking, and moving. There are times -- the end of Molly Bloom's soliloquy is the most obvious -- where Joyce's insight into the human condition brings me to tears.

I understand people not liking Ulysses. I understand people finding it difficult. It's certainly no Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, or Atlas Shrugged...

For the record, I think we as writers largely of mainstream, commercial and genre fiction evaluate novels using a different set of criteria than those or academics, capital L Literary writers, literary editors and the like. There's nothing wrong with that -- it's unavoidable -- but I think it's important when criticizing the prejudices and tastes of others to acknowledge our own.

As with any list of "the best" in some category is that no definition of "best" is supplied. That makes it impossible to view the list as in any way objective. Especially since it leaves room for different people voting to use completely different standards.

Person A thinks best must mean having literary merit. Person B just votes for what he most enjoyed reading. Person C thinks "best" books must be thought provoking. Most people probably use a combination of these and any number of other criteria everyone attaching different levels of importance to each criterion.

So in the end calling something "the best" has become almost completely meaningless. It sort of works if you ask a whole lot of people, like the BBC efforts mentioned above, in which case it's partly a popularity test and partly motivated by the same individual criteria which average out because of the number of people taking part.

willietheshakes said:

Which underscores the fact that lists like these are popularity contests. It's an unpopular sentiment here, but I prefer a popularity contest that has editors, writers and academics as its demographic over a popularity contest the voters of which would put two Ayn Rand books and L.Ron Hubbard in the Top 5. Or that BBC list which purports to claims that Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is 'better' than Ulysses.

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What worries me about lists put together by academics is the unavoidable "snobbery" that will result in a list of books they think they should list, rather than their true feelings. What I mean by this, is that an academic might avoid a more "popular" novel because they don't want to support something their peers might consider crass, common and shallow. Take the Harry Potter series, for example. Personally, I'm not too keen on them, but I can't deny the impact they have had on getting people, who normally steer clear of fiction, to pick up a book and read, therefore, I'd say those books have an important place in any list of books of the twentieth centure because of the sheer impact they have had on the public. In that vein, then yes, popularity has a place in these lists.

GreyMalkin

Grey Malkin said:

What worries me about lists put together by academics is the unavoidable "snobbery" that will result in a list of books they think they should list, rather than their true feelings. What I mean by this, is that an academic might avoid a more "popular" novel because they don't want to support something their peers might consider crass, common and shallow. Take the Harry Potter series, for example. Personally, I'm not too keen on them, but I can't deny the impact they have had on getting people, who normally steer clear of fiction, to pick up a book and read, therefore, I'd say those books have an important place in any list of books of the twentieth centure because of the sheer impact they have had on the public. In that vein, then yes, popularity has a place in these lists. GreyMalkin

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And I disagree. I think popularity is unavoidable when a list is made up of an aggregate of the votes of many parties -- it is, in fact, the very definition. As far as making popularity the de facto criteria, well, that's how you get lists with two Ayn Rands and an L. Ron Hubbard in the top five.

Further, you're concentrating on the 'academics' in the equation, and overlooking the writers and editors involved in the process. I think it's pretty clear that there is an anti-academic sentiment on this board -- the Modern Library board also includes people like Caleb Carr, a popular/commercial writer who is hardly esconsced in an ivory tower.

Third, while it is clearly problematic that the criteria for inclusion on the list haven't been publicized, "best" does mean something. It is different and distinct from "favourite" or "most popular". There is a move toward objectivity and away from mere popularity (else why not just use bestseller lists). By that token, I wouldn't even include any Rowling titles on a Best Ten Fantasy Books of the Twentieth Century, let alone an overall list. Call me an elitist, but in attempting to measure the "best" books, I tend to have more faith in a group of people -- writers, editors, academics -- who live within the world of books than I do in a broader base of people whose chief claim for inclusion is that they can log onto the BBC website.

Fourth and finally, in the top twenty of the ML list, we have such books as
2. The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. Lolita — Vladimir Nabokov
7. Catch-22 — Joseph Heller
10. The Grapes of Wrath — John Steinbeck
13. 1984 — George Orwell
14. I, Claudius — Robert Graves
17. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter — Carson McCullers
18. Slaughterhouse Five — Kurt Vonnegut
which enjoyed significant commercial success. Actually, none of the books on the top twenty list are particularly obscure... I don't think books are being excluded on the grounds of popularity.

The list is ridiculous. While I like several of the books listed, I refuse to believe that nothing worth reading has been published in the last 40 or 50 years. It smacks of pretentious scholars trying to impress each other with their ability to recall books that other scholars have said were the only ones that mattered.