I have no idea how to explain the seeming decline in culture that Grim has posted about, except for my persistent suspicion that it has more to do than I would like with my tastes having been cemented in early adulthood. I become more of a curmudgeon with every passing decade. I do think it's interesting to look at differences in opinion between lay readers and "expert" readers in compiling a "100 Best Novels" list, in this case one compiled by the Modern Library.
The expert list places a higher value on craft and the sophistication of ideas, while the popular list rewards sheer entertainment value. It pains me to admit that I am familiar with many titles on the expert list only because I've seen movie versions (The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The Wings of a Dove, The Golden Bowl, Deliverance, The Maltese Falcon, A High Wind in Jamaica, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Brideshead Revisited, Sophie's Choice, The Sheltering Sky, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Ragtime). Others I've read only because they were assigned to me, but found that they'll never be for me: any James Joyce, for instance, or F. Scott Fitzgerald. But there's a solid core of titles I agree with: Lolita, the Forster works, the Faulkner works.
The readers'-choice list is heavy on Ayn Rand and other speculative or ideological works such as science fiction. It includes some of my pulp favorites: books I actually like well enough to re-read, even if I would never try to defend my choice on purely literary grounds to a discriminating reader. Yes, I confess, I enjoyed both "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead" and I've at least read all of the several additional Rand entries. No, I won't try to defend the awful writing; I don't care. L. Ron Hubbard (three entries! Yikes!) and Frank Herbert and Lovecraft, not to mention Cormac McCarthy, will never be my cup of tea, but this list contains no fewer than six of my favorite Heinlein yarns, each of which I've re-read till the covers came apart. I was also happy to see some of my favorite Faulkner works on both this and the expert list. But who is this Charles de Lint guy, with eight winners? He's not even remotely familiar to me.
Reading lists like this always tempt me to go over to Amazon and order a bunch of stuff. Since I just did that last week with a pile of books about economics and social science that are still lying around in an accusing pile, I guess I'll have to defer my gratification. But I will put in a plug here for a recent fiction purchase, an early Patrick O'Brian coming-of-age romp called "The Road to Samarcand," the adventures of an orphaned young man traveling on the Silk Road in the 1930s with his adventurous, worldly-wise uncle and a scholarly dingbat of a cousin. (Hey, where's O'Brian on the popular list?)
In the meantime, I want to hear from all of you about all the books on these lists that I haven't read but should.
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