Watchmen? It was ok as far as it went, but if they needed to include a graphic novel I would have preferred The Dark Knight. Heck, why not include "Stranger in a Strange Land," "The Hunt for Red October" or one of my perennial favorites "From those wonderful folks who brought you Pearl Harbor"

"How many people have actually finished Gravity's Rainbow? Is it worth it?"

Yes. It's worth it. Long hard slog, but worth it. It's my favorite novel. Thus spake Knemon.

On the graphic tip, I prefer V for Vendetta to Watchmen. And then, of course, there's Cerebus ...

Any Stephen King? For some reason, TIME links always make my browser cranky. King ain't Proust, but I'd argue if Neuromancer is on there, The Shining should be as well. And/or something by Peter Straub.

"The fun part is just making sure you've read an acceptable number of them."

Hmm, I'm guess my 8.5 isn't really the number you were shooting for (yes, I read half of on eof those books & quit).

I read quite a bit actually, but very little "Literary greats". Unless, like me, you consider Terry Pratchett a genius. :)

This brings to mind a spot of verse.

While I read that list and kinda get the impression some of choices there were purposefully 'edgy' (like every damn list today), glad to see Chandler and Hammett recognized as literature greats, not just "detective fiction' greats.

I first read Gravity’s Rainbow when I was sixteen and heading off to a summer job where I knew I wouldn’t have access to any other books for a few months. The guy at the bookstore said he would give me a full refund if I came back and could prove I had read it.

You’re right; the first hundred pages are rough going. But after I got past that I really, really got into it and finished the book in about five days. I re-read it three more times that summer, and I’ve read it maybe nine or ten times since. It’s the book that made me decide I wanted to be a writer (something where I’ve had limited success—i.e., some but not much).

So, yeah, I guess you could say that I think it’s worth reading.

I've read seven of them. I wear my ignorance as a badge of pride. Which I guess makes me qualified for the Supreme Court.

I've read about 80% of them. Glad to see Catch 22 made the list, it's my all time favorite.

Dune is not on this list? How is that possible. LOTR is included and Neuromancer? Retarded list. Neither book is better than Dune.

Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret? They are shitting me right? There is no Dickens on this list. Amazing.

A book about a girl buying kotex pads makes the list but not Great Expectations? If you are gonna use Judy Blume at least use Forever. The one with the guy who names his cock Ralph. That was fine teenage literature.

Meh. Take it from an Anguish Major: lists like this are worthless. "100 Greatest Novels"...according to whom? What metric of "greatness" are we using here? And if we include works that were written in forms that pre-date the novel but are still fictional narratives (like Gilgamesh and Beowulf), then this whole "greatest" list falls flat.

I guess I've just got a problem with "Top nnn" lists in general. My own favorite novels tend to change over time, and some of the "greats" I've found tedious and impossible to finish (Anna Karenina and Finnegan's Wake, for example). Furthermore, lists like this one tend to contain a lot of topical junk. Neuromancer is not half the book Snow Crash was, and The Watchmen, while excellent, should not be on this list. And why use 1923 as the cutoff? (And I can't believe that Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel is not on the list!)

Lists like this are simply checkoff-lists for dilettantes who want to feel as if they have done something constructive with their lives. It's not like someone is going to present you an award on your deathbed for having read all 100 books that some unknown person or group of people determined to be the "best".

This brings to mind a spot of verse.

Which brings to mind that we still don't know the winner of the frickin' poetry contest.

Uh, jennifer, just a guess but I think Dickens was dead in 1923...

There is no Dickens on this list. Amazing.

It's a list of the 100 greatest novels since 1923. I.e., the best 100 novels since Ulysses was published.

yeah i read the after 1923 after i posted. i forgive dickens, but uhm Are you there god its me margaret? come on!

Why now Tales of the Fourth Grade Nothing?

This might make a good list for Oprah's middlebrow book club, but that shouldn't be confused with a list of great novels.

Well, the "in English," "since 1923" requirements do impose some limitations, but the list is still retarded in spots. If Judy Blume qualifies, why not Setephen King? And Monty's right: Snow Crash was better than Neuromancer (although The Diamond Age was better than both of them). So was Dune. So were several other sf novels.

The whole "top 100" concept is basically bs anyway; I'm never happy with other people's picks, and I hate being asked for my own "top x" anything--books, movies, you name it.

The Corrections?

Sure, it's okay, but one of the best novels of all time? When Of Mice and Men was left off the list?

And has anyone actually tried to read Beloved? I tried, and failed.

Go ahead and try, if you dare.

Eighteen. And I have to argue for Watchmen over either of the other GNs brought up here, because of the depth and richness of the visual language it used.

I'd probably have given the GN nod to Maus, anyway.

And I think you can have either Neuromancer or Snow Crash on the list, but not both. I'd replace one of them with Ender's Game.

Hey. . . what's wrong with naming your cock Ralph? Not that I would do such a thing.

He's already got himself a name. . . El Matador.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Augh! One Summer when I was about 15, I sat down with one of these lists and tried to cement my smarty pants cred by reading the lot. The ship of my good intentions foundered on the shoals of THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS FRICKIN' REY. It always makes the damn list.

I will have to quote Maxwell Smart again after looking at this list.

Other Agent : The book or the movie?

Maxwell Smart: There was a book?

I'm for including Neuromancer. Gibson can write.

As for Stephenson, I'd go with Cryptonomicon as his best rather than Snow Crash, but in my opinion neither is as good as Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix.

And as good as Neuromancer? Surely, Monty, you jest. Neuromancer was published in 1984. Snow Crash came out in 1992. Gibson invented the genre. Stephenson followed. I enjoy his writing, but he's not Gibson.

Another problem I have with this list is that it's saying that the novels must be in English. This rules out excellent novels like 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe. Or Solaris by Stanislaw Lem.

I personally think that so-called "literary fiction" of the kind practiced by Joyce Carol Oates et. al. has been pretty much a wasteland for the last thirty or forty years. Modern literary novels are aimed primarily at women, are predominately (or completely) Leftist in both intent and tone, and are almost completely devoid of motivating action or plot. (In fiction as in life, for the Left it's all about how you feel.)

There are some other obvious omissions: John Gardner's Grendel; Absalom! Absalom! by Faulkner; Alas! Babylon by Pat Frank; A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr., and many others. (Funny how my own list is so tilted towards fantasy and sci-fi, but there you go: it's about personal preference, not an abstract "greatness".)

I usually hate these lists, but ... I kinda liked this one. I was happy to see Light in August; Husekeeping by Marilynne Robinson; A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul; Pale Fire and Lolita by Nabokov; Tropic of Cancer by Miller; White Noise by Delillo; Wide Sargasso Sea by Rhys.... even Lucky Jim by Amis made the list.

So I'm usually a kvetcher about novel lists, but not this time.

...and Colossus, I gotta disagree: Gibson in his early ways as at best only an okay stylist; his later works are just horrible. I bought Pattern Recognition and couldn't even finish it; Gibson was phoning it in, and just barely at that. His last decent book was Count Zero, in my view. Stephenson is a far better writer, and has a sly sense of fun and an ear for dialogue that Gibson sadly lacks.

I will accept Cryptonomicon as a substitute for Snow Crash; I loved 'em both. And The Baroque Cycle novels may yet turn up on some 21st century best-of list (if anyone besides Stephenson himself has finished wading through all three volumes yet...).

And I feel that people like Philip K. Dick ought to get some kind of mention here, although I don't know which of his books I'd pick. Ditto Heinlein (maybe The Moon is a Harsh Mistress?).

El Matador? do you special order sequined condoms or just have a Paso Doble playing when you unveil El Matador for effect

Time Enough For Love. Without question. Fuck that "Stranger in A Strange Land" shit - it's Lazarus Long or it's CRAP, as far as I'm concerned.

Watchmen is visually innovative, which keeps me coming back for readings and re-readings, but Vendetta is clearly superior. It creates an oppressive atmosphere and a convincing alternate present ... Watchmen is amazing, but it's basically a series of postmodern conjuror's tricks.

Plus all that stuff with the pirate comic ... oy.

Cryptonomicon put me to sleep. I got halfway through it, realized it would be a better-- and shorter-- movie than a book, and set it aside. I might pick it up again one year, when I'm sick of some wasting disease.

RE: El Matador, do not taunt the powerful Spaniard.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

A CHRISTMAS CAROL,UNCLE TOMS CABIN,GONE WITH THE WIND

Oh, PLEASE, Valentine Michael Smith has it ALL OVER Lazarus Long, thank you very much, and Juan Rico can beat the crap out of both of them...

...but I'm thrilled Heinlein isn't on this POS list. I feel badly enough that they're soiling Lewis and Tolkien in this o so politically correct selection.

PC or not, I'm thoroughly surprised Atlas Shrugged isn't there.

Okay, I will agree with Monty and Colossus that Cryptonomicon is Stephenson's best, but it's not really genre fiction. If you're comparing Stephenson and Gibson, then I'll stand by The Diamond Age.

Pattern Recognition wasn't really genre fiction either, but it's so pathetic that it's probably kinder not to make comparisons. It's better than Judy Blume, I guess, but that's also what I say about the Miers nomination.

bbeck:

If you've got to have Rand on that list, it should be The Fountainhead. Atlas Shrugged is execrable fiction -- stilted, silly, and badly plotted. At least The Fountainhead has an actualy story floating in all the rhetoric.

I think Atlas Shrugged was kind of like Peyton Place: a watermark 1950's event, but not of much significance as time goes by (at least in literary terms).

bbeck, don't make me take a switch to you, as I'm pretty sure Lazarus would say.

My favorite Judy Blume (besides her "mature" fiction, of course) was always "Then Again, Maybe I Won't." Runner-up: "Blubber."

Wow, that's queer.

Anyone else prefer "Something Happened" to "Catch-22?"

I rather prefer erotic fiction such as A Tale of Two Titties, One blew over the cuckolds nest, Necro-romancer, and Snow Bunnies Crash a Frat Party #23.

Snow Crash? Top 100 all-time? A novelty cross-over hit is more like it. And it's only 15th on the "Internet Top 50 Sci-Fi Novels" list.

ss, don't forget "A Portrait of the Artist as Hung Man."

ss, don't forget "A Portrait of the Artist as a Hung Man."

Monty and Knemon,

I'm for either Time Enough For Love or Moon Is a Harsh Mistress in place of Stranger in a Strange Land -- but the two of Heinlein's I always go back to will never make anyone's Top 100 list -- Glory Road and Starship Troopers. Those are two great books that don't try to pose as literature.

And the Baroque cycle -- heh. I'm with you on that one, Monty. After Crypto, my guess is the editors couldn't tell him anything. Self-indulgent as hell. Snow Crash is -- again in my opinion, others may differ without me going crazy -- better plotted, because Crypto kind of falls apart at the end. But Crypto is better written and far more interesting.

Philip K. Dick was a great idea man, but I picked one of his at random to read (Valis), and I have to say, his books are probably better after 30 years and revisions by a team of Hollywood script writers. Wild, bong and acid-trip ideas, but bong and acid-trip execution also. Undisciplined. Crazy as hell.

Gibson is an acquired taste, we'll have to agree to disagree. His writing is clean, spare and economical. He must edit the hell out of it to get it that simple. Plus, no one does paranoia better.

Monty, if these people were concerned with QUALITY, 90 percent of those books wouldn't even be on that list. These novels evidently have more to do with social impact than with content.

And Knemon, go grok yourself. ;)

Hey, I liked Pattern Recognition.

Gibson had me when he called the Michelin Man "maggoty".

I always hated him, too.

"Glory Road" is a good'un.

What about "Hello America" by J.G. Ballard?

"And Knemon, go grok yourself. ;)"

Waaaaay ahead of ya.

I read 41 and started many of the others. But, big deal. I would hardly call it a list of great novels. Maybe, this is why I haven't read fiction in years.

I didn't finish Gravity's Rainbow but did finish "V" --does that count?

Any list that lacks "Dragons of Summer Flame" by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman MEANS NOTHING TO ME.

Waaaaay ahead of ya.

Well, that's a first, har de har har.

I was glad to see Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian on the list. Everybody raves about All the Pretty Horses, but Blood Meridian is like a shot of acid right to the eyes. Brutal, elgaic, and excellently-written.

Richard Ford has done some seriously good novels over the past two decades; I'd recommend The Sportswriter to new readers. Nobody's Fool is also good.

If you want an absolute gut-buster hilarious read, read A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley. It's either a "ficitonal biography" or "biographical fiction", but Exley can be by turns funny and sad and sometimes both at the same time. This was one of the few books I was assigned in my "Modern American Lit" class that I actually liked and returned to later.

John Fowles' The Magus is excellent, as is The Collector.

...and I cannot believe I've got this far without complaining about the absence of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. That's an absolute travesty. (Although I personally favor The Maritan Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes.)

I agree Monty, There definetly should be some Bradbury (I prefer Something Wicked this Way comes myself)
No Brave New World? That in itself is a crime!
LoTR is way to plodding- the pacing just sucks frankly. The first Dune would be a better geek pick.

And Watchmen just doesn't qualify. While a good read with many layers, its entire premise has been proven false by history! (My problem with the oft promised movie is the same)
V for Vendetta would have worked much better without getting to much into superhero universes, or possibly Gaiman's Sandman (though that wasn't truly a standalone maxiseries)

Still I clocked in at a 9 at least.

Got a little into Ford's Sportwriter a while back. Not much further.

Nobody's Fool, however, is Richard Russo, whose Straight Man I enjoyed.

couldn't finish Blood Meridian. I kind of liked the style but I was confounded about who was who and such. He'd introduce a new character without saying so and I thought he was still talking about an earlier-introduced character until details showed them to be different.

Was that just me?

The watchmen is good reading, but...

...okay, as someone said, the pirate shit. For the love of Pete. What the hell was that doing in there? Just some meta-homage to popular comics in the 50's? Who knows. And it went on and on and on.

Rorschach was cool, though.

Always figured that Dr. Manhattan should have a bigger schlong.

Colossus, if Valis is the only Dick you've read, I'd give him another shot. Try A Scanner Darkly, Ubik or a short story collection.

In the early '70s PKD had a religious epiphany/psychotic break with reality and most of what he wrote after that was an attempt to deal with what he'd "seen."

Any list that doesn't inclued Infinite Jest can just kiss my ass.

Toughest book I've ever read, but well worth the effort.

Dr. Symes,

You are correct: Russo and not Ford was the author of Nobody's Fool. I am duly chastised.

And for graphic novels: Garth Ennis' Preacher series was some serious shit.

And yes, Ace, Rorschach did indeed rock. I've always hoped for/dreaded a Watchmen movie. CGI has gotten good enough to do this as a decent live-action movie, but I fear the Hollywood curse. (I'll know for sure when I see how bad they fucked up V For Vendetta.)

What a ridiculous list. It's a nice group of the best novels... If by "best" you mean "has been turned into a movie".

Incidentally, is a Watchmen movie really going to work post-9/11? What about the ending(!)?

Monty: Not to chatise, just a fan of Russo's.

Also, I share your take on modern writing, being geared toward the plot eschewing female, foggy-headed lefty librarian type.

You ever go over BR Myers' A Reader's Manifesto? I think you'd have a 'It's like he's reading my mind" experience, though he does slag on McCarthy quite hilariously.

Doh, how could I forget about Preacher! Not bound by a comic book universe (like Sandman barely was) It definitely was better (If only for the "Whats Wrong, feelin' old?" line before Custer kicks Jodies ass). OR even Ellis' Transmet.
Still both are actual full series (even if finished) rather than self contained Maxi/Mini Series.

Dr. Symes,

The problem with modern lit (i.e., "chick lit") is that plot and action seem to have been turned into dirty words. It's all about meaning and feelings now, of constipated, emotionally-fraught people dealing with issues. In other words, the kinds of books Oprah slaps her insignia on and flogs at Barnes and Noble.

That's why I have gravitated towards "genre fiction" (a bottom-feeder line of thought, that, since much of the work there is superior to the "literature" being shoveled out): sci-fi and detective novels. I'd put Ellroy's L.A. Confidential or Blue Dahlia up against any novel written in the last thirty years. Likewise Eric L. Harry's Arc Light (which is sadly out of print now as far as I can tell). Or Pressfield's Gates of Fire.

But these are novels in which men act manly, and in which there is violence, and in which things actually happen, so they are ignored by the lit'ry set. Bah. Let the ladies of idle hours rhapsodize about the latest literary "find" -- the real quality stuff will still be around long after this stuff rots in the local landfill.

Monty if you want manly fiction I recommend Dirty White Boys by Stephen Hunter and Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield.

Sorry Monty I overlooked you had listed Gates of Fire. My all time favorite.

Dman:

Hunter writes great thrillers. His Point of Impact is my favorite, followed by Black Light and Pale Horse Coming. Not a great stylist, but he knows how to spin a yarn.

Richard Price wrote a book about ten years ago called Clockers (which was made into a shitty movie), and that book is still the gold standard in terms of cops, drug dealers, and addicts. The first season of HBO's The Wire seems to be loosely based on this book as well. If any book deserves the title of "Classic", Clockers is it.

I have this urge to put Henry Miller into the list somewhere. I smuggled a copy of Tropic of Capricorn out of the library when I was like twelve to read the "sex parts", and ended up reading the whole book. He might have been a nasty old man, but he could write. (And I could say the same for Charles Bukowski.)

Incidentally, is a Watchmen movie really going to work post-9/11? What about the ending(!)?

My question is would a Watchmen movie work post Iron Curtain. The entire premise of the GN is that nuclear confrontation between East and West was inevitable. While I fear some "talented" sort is retrofiting it to TWOT as we speak, it just doesn't seem to work without the threat of world destroying holocaust (which terrorism doesn't seem to promise) I suppose they can use TWOT as a replacement for the aliens, implying that its a false but neccesarry threat since thats what moonbats are claiming anyway)

Monty boy: Love the Ellroy, especially that early stuff. The newer fiction, he seems to have drifted into some sorta overstylized hard-boiled caricature. (also agree on Fan's Notes - great book)

Your overall problem with lack of plot, I can only say I agree with. Totally.

I wonder if it's not a problem with Grad-school culture. Nowadays,t he biggies all went to Iowa, spent their time impressive teachers who advanced by impressing their grad teachers with verbal cleverness and the post-modernist emphasis on breaking form and convention (and what's more conventional than tired ol' plot/story and their bourgaisse 'limitations.')

And that ties into my big beef with it too. Not just that they refuse to tell a story, but the way they tell it. The only thing that counts are 'pretty sentences.' Ugh. I'll take a boring, not going anywhere tale over the same story told in moist adverby-worshipping lit-circle aren't-I-clever imagery. Just sucks so much.

Anyway. Check out "Reader's Manifesto." Unforgiving and says it all so well

Right on about Clockers.

Gravity's Rainbow: excellent first sentence, downhill from there. Sure, it had its moments bit V. and The Crying of Lot 49 are much better. Especially Lot 49.

Re: manly fiction - can't recommend highly enough Dogs of God by Pinckney Benedict.

Michael Chabon's fiction is a good example of the kind of novels I would gladly go my whole life without reading. His Wonder Boys is a case in point: a pointless meander from beginning to end, where nothing much happens and not much is changed. So what the hell was the point of the whole thing? It's like hearing some long and involved joke with no punchline.

I like to pick on Joyce Carol Oates because I actually had to sit through a seminar she taught lo these many years ago. Her fiction is a damp wad of listless stream-of-consciousness (usually in the feminine voice), with little apparent point or direction. I can remember her exhorting us to "get at the heart" of our fiction, but this seemed to mean writing about young women who were victims of male oppression, or something.

Give me a good dose of Mickey Spillane or Ellis Peters (the Cadfael mysteries) any day.

Read waaay too many of these, or ar least started to - in another age I taught high school English. Yes, Bradbury should be on the list. (Met him a few years ago - my Dad had "introduced" us when I was 10 and now my son has read everything Bradbury's written. Check out his novel about filming "Moby Dick"!) Gekkobear - Pratchett should be there; when he was in Denver a couple of years ago, my son had him sign a hat, as well as a few books - you should get the connection!

Henlein: "Glory Road" - which I used as the basis for a grad paper and - just by chance - is sitting here right now. My LLL brother-in-law left the country (Baldwin, are you listening?) and left behind a large box of sci-fi, which I'm working through. Shouldn't take more than about 3 months; the local library gets what doesn't get kept!.

"V for Vendetta" is already in post-production; they filmed it earlier this year. In Berlin. The Wachowski (sp.?) brothers adapted it into a screenplay, and they're producing.

Their a.d., who also a.d./set designed the Star Wars prequels and a bunch of other stuff, directed it - his first job at the helm.

Natalie Portman as the heroine. The guy who plays Agent Smith (!) as the antihero.

Coolest of all, Stephen Fry!! as the talk-show host character. And I think John Hurt is playing the dictator, but I could be wrong.

Troubling sign: the tagline apparently is "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." Rah yeah for libertarianism and all, but something about that in this current context screams "MOONBAT" to me.

Big surprise, right? It's Hollywood. Best approach will be to get drunk, or high, or whatever floats your boat, go for the coolness and grit your teeth through any sermonizing.

*

Monty: Wonder Boys was a great novel.

Any list that lacks "Dragons of Summer Flame" by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman MEANS NOTHING TO ME.

I had blissfully forgotten about that book.

Damn you.

*wanders off to read the Legends trilogy*

Knemon:

Sorry, but Wonder Boys sucked like those Thai hookers Ace is so fond of. It was a complete nullity of a book, and will end up like Wally Lamb's I Know This Much Is True: a forgotten toenail clipping.

What? No "Through the Looking Glass"?
Not that I would put it there, but Saul Bellow made the list twice. The list is crap.

Where's Conrad, Melville, Hawthorn, Twain, or Dickens?

Sorry, but Wonder Boys sucked like those Thai hookers Ace is so fond of.

Hate to pick nits, but the Ace O Spades Lifestyle™ involves Vietnamese hookers. There's a difference.

*Guilty look*

BTW, some chick lit is pretty good. Did anyone else here read The Shipping News? Or Snow Falling on Cedars?

Say what you will about "Wonder Boys" the book. Hell, say what you will about "Wonder Boys" the movie.

All I know is that Dylan won an academy award for the movie's theme song ("Things Have Changed").

So, for having inspired that song, I will give the book and movie a free pass.

"Where's Conrad, Melville, Hawthorn, Twain, or Dickens?"

Even Conrad is too early for this post-1923 list. Conrad died in 1924. I liked Nostromo a lot.

For Bernard Malmoud I would have gone with "The Natural". My all time favorite story.

Malmoud is underrated. Few authors read as easily. I second Stephen King getting at least one on the list, but I think "Salem's Lot" or "The Stand" are his best work.

Neuromancer in the top 100, but no Dune or The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress? Proof that no one actually reads great scifi, let alone appreciates it. Or appreciates great literature, regardless of genre.

Loved seeing I, Claudius on the list--and of course, of course, Sound and the Fury--Faulkner is spectacular. Crying of Lot 49, too. As for a lot of the others, well. . .when I read fiction, I tend to avoid most of anything written since the latter half of the last century, science fiction excepted. And as to that--no Dune?

Absolutely agree with Monty on Ellroy (pre- White Jazz, anyway, when he started getting carried away by the sound of staccato fragments) and on Bradbury. I don't think Rand should be on any list, though. Too heavy handed an a poor sense of character, however you feel about the philosophy she was allegorizing.

I'd also take Eco over Fowles, good as some of Fowles's novels were before he lost himself in the house of mirrors. (I mean, A Maggot just flat out sucked for the pretentious meta-metaness of it all.)

I'd guess The Watchmen is on the list more for innovation than anything else. Sort of like Hammett who, whatever his other strengths, had an ear of tin rivaled only by Theodore Dreiser or Sinclair Lewis. The fact that Watchmen's plot was undermined by subsequent history doesn't strike me as relevant to its literary merits at all, though. Great GN, but superior to Brave New World? It wasn't THAT frikkin good.

Re: Melville - The Naked and the Dead would have been an acceptable substitute that could actually have qualified for the list. Like Keesey, Mailer had exactly one good novel in him. Luckily, also like Keesey, it came out between only one set of covers.

Kerouac doesn't belong on the list at all. We all read it and it was a fun trip, but great lit? WTF?! Same thing with Things Fall Apart. I assume this is some kind of multi-culti affirmative action thing. It was either Achebe or they'd have to try slipping I, Rigoberta Menchu in. Heh, heh.

Then again, I only remember finishing about 14 on the list, so what do I know?

I notice that Jerzy Kosinski's "The Painted Bird" is on the list. As an experiment, after "The Painted Bird" had become established as a Great Novel, Kosinski submitted the manuscript to a bunch of publishers under a fake name. They all rejected it, mostly with form letters.