Time magazine: the 10 greatest books...

[fajrdrako]

maaseru sent me this link, knowing it was just the kind of article that I love to pounce on, for several reasons.

For one thing, it starts out talking about lists. You know how I love lists, especially literary lists. It says:

Let's not mince words: literary lists are basically an obscenity. Literature is the realm of the ineffable and the unquantifiable; lists are the realm of menus and laundry and rotisserie baseball. There's something unseemly and promiscuous about all those letters and numbers jumbled together. Take it from me, a critic who has committed this particular sin many times over.

I suspect he is rather proud of his sin, and so he should be. Menus and laundry, indeed! Lists are a literary achievement of a very particular type.

I think I need to read The Top Ten even if just to scream and grumble about it. As might be predictable, at first glance the lists look rather pretentious to me. Writers who are fashionable among the literati, but who are not necessarily good - meaning that I don't necessarily like their style. Or I do like their style, but I am suspicious of their reputation. Nabokov, for instance. A brilliant stylist. But also fashionable, and that makes me look askance at him. I love Dickens, and since he is not fashionable, he seldom makes these lists. But why, or why not? Is he too popularist, too inclined to humour? What makes a writer great? Why is Dorothy Dunnett not on everyone's lists? I heartily approve of the inclusion of Scaramouche, of course.

Of the ultimate Top Ten list I am faintly (but only faintly) ashamed of how few I have read:

1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
   
2. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
   
3. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
   
4. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
   
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
   
6. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
   
7. The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
   
8. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
   
9. The Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov
   
10. Middlemarch by George Eliot

I have read Madame Bovary (it bored me), 1/4 of War and Peace (read that first part three times before giving up, I just can't get past the Battle of Borodino), Lolita (loved it), Huckleberry Finn (meh), Hamlet - many times, unquestionably the best of the best and then some, and The Great Gatsby (liked it a lot but it isn't on my top ten lists, not even my top 100). I must admit, the list doesn't make me want to run out and read Anna Karenina or Middlemarch, which sound boringly schoolteacherish to me. Am I misjudging? Reacting to prejudice? Under an erroneous impression? Why does the rest of the world like Tolstoy more than I do?

Ever since seeing Little Miss Sunshine, though, I've been thinking I should read Proust. People talk about Proust in the abstract - I can't recall any of my friends actually ever saying they've read him. Is it their guilty secret, or has he just not come up in conversation? Or is he one of those writers who is universally admired and universally unread?

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not a logical thinker (at best intuitive) so I know I seldom make sense.

Okay. Emotion is the stuff of literature, absolutely. But emotion that resonates as true. Checkmate in particular (imo, always imo) falls down on two levels: we're supposed to believe that Lymond is insightful and sophisticated yet he whines (in beautiful language, but still he whines) rejecting Philippa "Ough, I'm just not gooood enough...."....meanwhile he edges ever closer to Mary Sue in that everybody, simply everybody seems to not only be fascinated with him, but his emotion problems are so central to everything. Lymond, like Mary Sue, ends up being kind of "the world is all about me" which is squarely in the heroic tradition. But I think it warps the romantic tradition, small r.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I'm not a logical thinker (at best intuitive)

Me too. I think it shows particularly in my writing. Which is one reason I like emotive works more than cerebral works. (In contrast to much of the reading world.)

we're supposed to believe that Lymond is insightful and sophisticated

No, no, no, that's where you miss the point. Lymond is intellectually insightful and mature, but emotionally he's a desperate adolescent. So things fall apart. I've known people like that; you can't say this pattern doesn't exist in real life.

his emotion problems are so central to everything

Is that not true also of Hamlet? Humbert Humbert? Rodyon Romanovich Raskolnikov? Okay, I know I'm the only one who has suggested Dostoyevsky as worthy of the list of greats, but I wanted to put him in there. Maybe that's why he isn't on the list. Hmm. I do tend to like or prefer books that are about individualized emotion.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Humbert is only able to influence one or two people, and those badly....Lymond can rise up from a megabeating and lead hordes. Exaggeration; I'm not articulating my objection at all well, your points are excellent, and yet I still feel the story falls just a notch below greatness. So I just think I'm simply going to have to sacrifice and reread it all again, just to see what's what. Mostly, though, my case will rest on Checkmate. I do think the other books build beautifully (though Queen's Play is by far the weakest, replaying the motifs of Game of Kings on a bigger scale, yet I don't think as successfully. Robin Stuart is less interesting than Will Buccleugh; Oonagh is an incredibly boring heroine, all posy angsty without a scrap of interest; the court is okay--but too easily conquered. She even does the rooftop chase again later--and far, far better.

I think think the middle ones are the best.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I just think I'm simply going to have to sacrifice and reread it all again, just to see what's what

Heh. I think I'm due for a reread, too. It's been a while.

Mostly, though, my case will rest on Checkmate.

Fair enough. Mostly my case rests on The Game of Kings.

though Queen's Play is by far the weakest, replaying the motifs of Game of Kings on a bigger scale

Does it? There was a time I would have said it was the weakest book; I don't think so now. (I now think Checkmate is the weakest.) I don't think Oonagh O'Dwyer was any kind of a heroine - she was a villain, a terrorist who was willing to kill children - and Lymond only cut her slack because he was in lust with her. (While pretending otherwise.) I love the rooftop chase scene - where is the instance you think it's done again, and better? Lyons?

Pawn in Frankincense may be my favourite, though I'm not sure I could say why. Or The Game of Kings.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I wasn';t clear (so what else is new) I mean that Queen's Play takes the key tropes of Game of Kings (central being a guy follower ambivalent about Lymond, in the first Will, but it's about questions of loyalty, morals, and ethics) and Robin Stuart in the second (just lust and greatness, eh) which makes QP feel like it's a repeat of some aspects of GOK but on a bigger (and less successful) scale. Yeah, Checkmate is weak, though I think overall it's better written. Both QP and Checkmate have the escape over the rooftops, but the traboules one is smashingly brilliant, the other a test pancake.

I think my favorite is Fawn in Frankinsense.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I think the key is not so much 'ambivalent guy follower' as 'viewpoint character with conflicted views of Lymond' and the theme follows through in the later books with Jerott Blyth and Austin Grey. Will becomes a hero; Robin becomes a villain; both of them love and hate Lymond at the same time, but resolve their feelings in a positive way. Austin is the failure in the bunch, seeing himself as a hero but falling into the role of accidental villain.

I like the rooftop scene in Queen's Play better than the one in Checkmate, I think, though I love both, particularly, "Francis, Francis, this is what you should be!"

Yes, Pawn is amazing and almost flawless - in my opinion. I think the chess game is brilliant and the increasing tension of emotional themes unparalleled. Though oddly, Pawn in Frankincense has the only chapter of all the Lymond novels that it don't like. Which seems to contradict my comment that it is 'flawless'. Catching myself in an inconsistency. Possibly because I never quite worked out why I don't like that chapter. Maybe I'll just hide behind that useful word, "almost".

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Which one is that?

Yes on the other guys--I feel the author's hand shoving Austen Grey into villainy, which makes me impatient.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Which one is that?

I don't have the book to hand and I don't recall its number. It's the one where... hold on, I can look on amazon.com. No, I can't find it quickly enough.... It's the section where they're in the boats underground in Constantinople, and Marthe is going after the treasure. It may be the chapter called "Constantinople: The French Embassy" but if so, I think that's also the chapter that has some of my favourite scenes - where Philippa agrees to marry Lymond and they have that wonderful conversation arguing about it, and then he has nightmares about Eloise.

I feel the author's hand shoving Austen Grey into villainy, which makes me impatient.

I find Austin totally convincing and totally annoying. He's a twit.