REEL POLITIK

Contrary Commentary

by James Reel

Who's Stuffing The Ballot Box?

Browse The Modern Library's Haute 100

I RECANT. Whatever criticisms I voiced in Reel Politik 14 about the Modern Library's list of the 20th century's 100 greatest English-language novels, I take them all back. The Modern Library's itemization is a work of keen cultural insight -- at least, when compared to the alternative list being compiled by the public at Modern Library's website.

Vox-pop features are all the rage these days. Anyone can now publish any opinion, however ill-informed, self-serving or delusional, in letters to the editor, Usenet newsgroups, e-zines and reader-response features in newspapers, magazines and Web pages. Even TW3, one of the saner and more curmudgeonly sites around, toys with interactivity. So the Modern Library folks, knowing they'd be criticized for the canonical stuffiness of their Top-100 list, dared to get jiggy with hipness and invited members of the hoi polloi to vote for their own top novels.

Polls opened July 20 and are due to close late this month. I've been checking the tallies, and I'm scared.

Here, as of Labor Day weekend, are (supposedly) the public's ten faves, followed by the number of votes they've received at the Modern Library site:

1. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (2726)
2. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (2284)
3. Anthem by Ayn Rand (1666)
4. We the Living by Ayn Rand (1662)
5. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein (876)
6. 1984 by George Orwell (854)
7. Ulysses by James Joyce (850)
8. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein (833)
9. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (829)
10. Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard (821)

Remember, these are supposed to be the greatest novels in English written during the 20th century, however greatness may be defined. I would expect greatness in a novel to have something to do with thematic distinction, compelling characterization and stylistic flair, among other things. Evidently my priorities are not shared by at least a couple of thousand Netizen voters.

Before I go on, I should point out that the list's next 10 items constitute a rather interestingly mixed book-bag: works by Nevil Shute (A Town Like Alice, not the expected On the Beach), Thomas Pynchon, William Faulkner, John Fowles, Flannery O'Connor, Joseph Heller, Jack Schaefer (Shane) and Malcolm Lowry, plus two more novels by L. Ron Hubbard.

The list continues in the same manner, mingling the standard texts of high school and college undergraduate English courses with the novels that Baby Boomers read on their own time when they were teenagers. Plus still more L. Ron Hubbard.

When I first looked at this lineup a few weeks ago, what disappointed me was not so much the list itself as the evidence it offered that the Net community hasn't really changed in the past few years. Judging from these selections, the Internet is still dominated by the same techno-geek Libertarians and pimple-popping hackers who wailed in the early '90s that the then-new online services like AOL and Compuserve would unleash hordes of Goths and Vandals who would bring down Internet culture. As if the still-paleolithic Internet culture had already achieved some sort of golden age.

But the list doesn't prove any such thing. It just demonstrates how electronic polls can so easily be manipulated by crusading believers.

How many people do you suppose are really out there pimping for 20th century literature's two oddest Messianic figures, Rand and Hubbard? Look at the numbers, and you know that even if Rand's holy ghost is not distributing loaves and fishes, something sure as hell is fishy. Just below the Rand bunker at the top of the list, items 5 through 10 each garnered 800-and-some votes; they're all in the same neighborhood. But there's that sudden, suspicious lurch from Tolkein's 876 enthusiasts to Rand's 1600-plus. In Modern Library's online forum, a couple of junior Objectivists openly admitted that they were orchestrating Rand's ascent through the list. So it's obvious that only a very few fans voted dozens if not hundreds of times for Rand's blandly-crafted didactic doodles. I believe this is called cheating, and only people who are stupid or up to no good need to cheat.

Could it also be that Hubbard's Church of Scientology issued a plea to its members to deluge the Modern Library site with votes for the sci-fi novels of its dead founder? What practicing Scientologists would refuse? They've sunk so much of their money into diuretic -- er, Dianetic -- therapy that getting Hubbard onto the Best of the Century list would surely make them feel that there is, indeed, some literary if not scientific regard for their founder, and so their investments haven't been totally wasted.

Ooh, and that would lend support to Rand's philosophy that people are selfish, period, and that unless they're idiots they act solely in their self-interest, and greed is therefore not only rational but necessary. Ronald Reagan played Rand's character John Galt on the world stage, and we all remember how swell the 1980s were.

Rand's form of Objectivism -- which is completely unrelated to the Objectivism known to most philosophers and literary critics -- is really just an intellectualized virulent anti-Communism developed by a second-rate writer who, as a young woman, had been traumatized by the Russian revolution. Today the anti-Red angle is superannuated, and Rand is championed mainly by socially-cognizant (distinct from socially-conscious) Libertarians looking for a philosophy, an intellectual platform, that will distance them from the tax-dodging, gun-hoarding sociopaths who also call themselves Libertarians. Their sotto-voce mantra, "Freedom Without Responsibility," is justified by Rand's ready-to-wear philosophy, which in terms of literary art is creepy polyester compared to J.D. Salinger's durable corduroy and Vladimir Nabokov's soiled silk.

I mention Salinger and Nabokov because they appear high on a list that provides much more reliable evidence of what Netizens consider to be important fiction: the best sellers at amazon.com.

Here's a recent list of amazon.com's best sellers in the "classic fiction" category. Yes, Atlas Shrugged is here, but it's rubbing shoulders with works of infinitely greater literary value than The Fountainhead and We the Living. I'll take it through the top 13, to get in 10 that were originally written in English:

1. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
2. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
3. Lolita by Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
4. The Odyssey by Homer
5. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
6. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
7. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
8. Ulysses by James Joyce
9. 1984 by George Orwell
10. The Iliad by Homer
11. The Catcher in the Rye by Jerome David Salinger
12. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
13. The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers

That last item, if you don't recognize it, is a science-fiction novel; it barely edges out Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. The next books are the usual American lit things -- largely Hemingway and Steinbeck.

Perhaps we'd begin to have an even better idea of what Net readers believe to be the greatest (or at least most desirable) English-language novels of the 20th century by shuffling the "classic fiction" list, above, with the "literary fiction" best sellers:

1. A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
2. The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
3. Damascus Gate by Robert Stone
4. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
5. Beloved by Toni Morrison
6. Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
7. Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
8. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
9. Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut
10. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

These are followed by recent works and old favorites by Phillip Roth, Joseph Heller, Pete Hamill, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon and the like. In other words, it's a combination of titles favored by book-discussion groups and the more intelligent recent fiction on the terraspace best-seller lists.

Of course, sales lists record popularity, not quality. Yet it's difficult to argue that many of these titles are wholly unworthy of consideration as "great" in some way. (I grant that even Atlas Shrugged must be recognized as a reasonably influential novel, if not a well-crafted one.)

So if you want to know what the online reading public really treasures, trust amazon.com, not Modern Library. Amazon.com's customers have voted with their credit cards, not their political agendas. Even Ayn Rand, that lackey of Mammon, should understand this sort of self-interested integrity.

Reel's Archive

Reel Politik 1: On The Future Of Reading

Reel Politik 2: How Not To Read A Book

Reel Politik 3: Plagiarists Of Experience

Reel Politik 4: Logolingus: A Private Pleasure

Reel Politik 5: A Community of Dreamers

Reel Politik 6: The Sensuous Bibliophile

Reel Politik 7: A Divine Madness

Reel Politik 8: Show Me The Books!

Reel Politik 9: The Argument

Reel Politik 10: Literacy & Community

Reel Politik 11: Real Writers Need Real Editors

Reel Politik 12: How To Read For Yourself

Reel Politik 13: Lies, Damn Lies & The MFA Novel

Reel Politik 14: The Merchant-Ivory Connection (ML 100, Round 1)

Reel Politik 15: Who's Stuffing The Ballot Box?

James Reel's new book, Tucson: A CitySmart Guide is published by John Muir Publications. Reel is the arts and entertainment editor of The Arizona Daily Star, a contributor to Fanfare, and the author of The Timid Soul's Guide to Classical Music.

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