Mountains Made Low

All the caveats from before about not liking the literature/literary/popular divide still apply, of course. Also, it’s worthwhile to note that I think some of the writers (if not the specific works) on this list will survive the test of time and come to represent the late 20th and early 21st centuries in the canon of literature. Anyone who wants to think differently is welcome to. And welcome to stick it.

10. The Stand, Stephen King (1978; 1991). For some reason, I’ve been taking a lot of crap lately for being a Stephen King fan. I don’t understand it — mostly I don’t understand why people don’t like King’s writing. I’ll grant you: Hemingway he ain’t; but in my book that’s a good thing. The Stand is one of King’s longest books, and it’s an epic battle of good and evil set in 1990s America. What’s not to like? Especially when he went in, did some revisions, and made it fit the history of the late 80s and early 90s even better. And, yes, this is the first of multiple King entries on this list.

9. Your Heart Belongs to Me, Dean Koontz (2008). The other writer with multiple entries here is (probably again unsurprisingly) Dean Koontz. I can’t say much more about this book than I have already said (it’s reviewed here), other than I really like it.

8. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003). This was one I experienced as an audiobook last summer before I came to the conclusion that audiobooks: a) counted, and b) should be reviewed. So I didn’t. But this is an interesting story, as narrated by an autistic teenager, of the murder of a dog and the boy’s subsequent investigations. Which also includes him running away from home, to London where, he has learned, his mother lives. The mysteries here are not limited to the dog’s death, but include lies, jokes, train timetables, and divorce. The perspective Haddon provides is interesting, as is the fact that the chapters are headed not with straightforward cardinal numbers but with prime numbers, starting with 2.

7. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J K Rowling (2005). The best of the Potter books — hands down. Though Harry “comes of age” in the wizarding world in volume seven, this sixth entry provides us with the true beginning of Harry’s adult life — a life that begins with the loss of a mentor and friend, a serious betrayal of trust, and Harry’s somewhat over-dramatic declaration (he is only 16 after all) that he must face the world, and Voldemort, alone. The burden that builds on Harry throughout this novel leads him to embrace his orphaned state wholeheartedly: betrayed and bereft and without natural family, he turns his back on the family he has made, as well. It is the darkest of the Potter novels, to be sure, and it sets up the finale beautifully.

6. Beautiful Lies, Lisa Unger (2006). Unger has fast become a new favorite for me. This book is a mystery/thriller that introduces the character of Ridley Jones (who appears again in Sliver of Truth), and it’s the perfect blend of mystery and intrigue, questions and answers, love and hate, violence and sex. I wasn’t sure I’d like it when I picked it up, but having picked it up, I just couldn’t put it down. And I haven’t regretted any of Unger’s other work, either, which this one led me to.

5. Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris (2001). I like these books (though I’ve only read two, and I’ve chosen to include this one because it’s the first and introduces the concept and the series beautifully). This work is urban fantasy in that term’s broadest sense (Bon Temps, Louisiana, is pretty rural, but if you know urban fantasy you’ll know what I mean). And they’re funny urban fantasy in the Dresden Files sense — the fantasy itself isn’t all that dark, but the humor sure as hell is. Again, what’s not to like? Vampires on Oprah. Now, that’s funny. And the story is well-written and mildly allegorical.

4. The Tenth Circle, Jodi Picoult (2004). Picoult is another favorite, and this is her best work to date. It’s her lit-major novel, drawing heavily on the Inferno for imagery, though it takes place between New England and Alaska. There’s a murder mystery, the problems of teenagers and parents, teenagers and teenagers, and teenagers and their parents and the law. It also deals with the question of what happens when defending a child crosses to an illegal place. A thought-provoking read, in a contemporary setting, that still manages to do Dante proud.

3. The Dark Tower, Stephen King (1982-2004). Here’s my cheat on this list. This is a seven-volume series. It is King’s magnum opus, and it is the work of decades. The story of Roland Deschain and the Tower (in homage to Browning, whose own work did homage to Shakespeare) is a work defies genre: it is high fantasy, it is a western, it is a contemporary gothic tale (minus the horrific), it is science fiction, and just in case the horrific element was too far gone, it features the priest from ’Salem’s Lot. While The Stand may seem epic in scope, The Dark Tower is truly King’s epic tale, of good and evil where the face of not only the world, but every world that is or might be, hangs in the balance and rests on the shoulders of Roland Deschain, last Gunslinger of Gilead.

2. The Good Guy, Dean Koontz (2007). I like this book because it shows Koontz’s range. There is no element of the supernatural to this one at all, but Koontz doesn’t need the supernatural to produce a thriller. This is about a stonemason and the interesting situation he finds himself in, saving a very self-sufficient woman from a hitman. She needs his help, but he’d never be able to save her without her. A great story, showing the chops of a great storyteller, outside the genres he normally works in.

1. Bag of Bones, Stephen King (1998). As much as I like The Dark Tower, Bag of Bones is the best novel King has written, and my all-time favorite (popular) novel, ever. It’s gothic at its best: spooky, dark, maudlin, and incredibly sexy. There’s absolutely nothing not to like here, either. I could gush on and on about it. Instead, I’ll just offer two words of advice: Read it.

Quite a title, eh? This list addresses a pet peeve of mine. I hate when people act like other people need some drastic, dramatic motivation to do things that are — in and of themselves — good ideas. I hate, when I do these things that I consider good ideas in and of themselves, when other people believe that they say something about me other than that I think the activity in question is a good idea. Seriously.

So here’s my statement: Some things, I just do because I think they’re good ideas. I’m not doing them because I think they make me a good person, I don’t look down on people who don’t do them, and I don’t think that me doing them is going to have a huge impact on life, the universe, and everything. They’re just good ideas.

(Also, there aren’t 10 of these.)

5. Being Nice. I’m a nice person, for the most part; I’ve even been described, recently, as “sweet.” But I’m nice in a cynical, sarcastic, often quite snarky sort of way. There’s really not much to this: as being nice tends to, by and large, be its own reward. People like nice people (in the main), and people are nice to nice people (again, in the main). And being nice doesn’t mean being a doormat — its entirely possible to speak my mind, get my point across, and disagree, but to do so in a polite, and nice manner.

4. Respect Nature. I like the outdoors quite a lot. I like to hike, and camp, and take pictures. I do my very best to respect nature when I’m out in it. This means being careful with trash and more careful with fire, among other things. But respect for nature also means, to me, both letting natural processes happen and not loving the natural world to death. Wildfire, for instance, is a natural process: In the state of nature, wooded areas collect dead wood and other organic (and flammable) debris, and nature’s method for cleaning that up and preserving the health of those areas is the occasional wildfire. We have spent too much time in the past century or so (as we’ve encroached more and more on these areas) suppressing the natural processes, so that when we can no longer suppress them, they’re worse. We need to stop that, and let the processes happen, conserving nature as it will be, not attempting to preserve nature as it is.

3. Recycling. We humans generate a lot of waste. Particularly we American humans. We buy things packaged for our convenience, and we throw a lot of that packaging away. Much of that packaging is unnecessary, which is bad; most of it, however, can be recycled, which is good. If we only take the time to do it. Do I get excited about the ways in which recycling reduces my carbon footprint? No. Do I worry about the energy I’m saving in terms of production of new packaging materials? Not really. But recycling is still a good idea, because it keeps whatever we can recycle out of our landfills. And the less waste we have to put somewhere, the better.

2. Alternative Energy. And here I’m talking about things like solar, hydro, wind, and nuclear power. These things are just a good idea. Because we’re going to run out of oil, coal, and gas eventually? We may, but that’s not the reason. Because we’re causing global warming? Not really, no. But let’s face it, the first three examples are all, by different mechanisms, powered by the sun, which is, itself, one gigantic example of the fourth. These sources are in their infancy, as are things like hydrogen power. And the less we come to depend on fossil fuels, the more we come to depend on these sources, the longer the supply of fossil fuels will last for the things we do use them for, and the more efficient and effective these other sources will become (as we begin to use them more, we’ll want more and better versions of them — and when we can make nuclear work in the sense of cold fusion…well, just think about the possibilities).

1. Alternative Transportation. Again, the whole “carbon footprint” thing is not a huge concern to me here, but minimizing pollution is also not a bad thing. But think about it: if we walked or biked everywhere we were able in every circumstance, the world would be a healthier (exercise), happier (endorphins) place. I know that when I walk or bike for transportation, I feel better — physically and emotionally — before anything that might or might not be doing for the planet, the atmosphere, or the climate crosses my mind. I’m saying that, for me, this is a good idea.

If I wanted to further subdivide this list, I would cast this as a network v. premium issue. But I don’t care to, in part because, in my opinion, the networks have held their own in the creation of great comedy over the years. Hold on to your hats, though, because some of the shows that are here probably won’t surprise you, but their ranking on my list might….

10. Cheers (NBC; 1982-1993; 273 episodes, 2 specials). The first long-running network sitcom that I remember the entire run of. Yes, I remember the very beginning with Coach and Diane—a time when Ted Danson actually had Sam Malone’s hair. Cheers was a staple in my life, throughout my formative years, and it ended about ten days before I graduated from high school. I can’t imagine what my generation of young men learned from idolizing the womanizing Sam Malone, except that I know in my case, it’s a lot of what not to do.

9. The Vicar of Dibley (BBC; 1994-2007; 20 episodes, 4 shorts). The first BritCom entry in this list, but not the last, is the tale of the Rev. Geraldine Granger, who is assigned to the quaint English country parish of Dibley. At its best well-crafted, tongue-in-cheek, and faithfully sacrilegious, the series features the incomparable Dawn French as Granger and a cast of rural characters not to be missed. And, in my opinion, if there were more parish pastors like Geraldine in the world, there would probably also be more butts in the pews every Sunday.

8. Absolutely Fabulous (BBC; 1992-1996, 2001-2005; 36 episodes). The second BritCom in the list features the other half of the French/Saunders comedy team—Jennifer Saunders. It tells the tale of two friends—Edina (Saunders) and Patsy—trying to live the glamorous high life of sex, drugs, alcohol, and high fashion, through their middle-age, when they were only marginally successful in these endeavors in their youth. They are scolded along the way by Edina’s prim, proper, and prudish teenage-to-20something daughter, who is embarrassed by her mother’s behavior, but whose heart always ends up in the right place.

7. M*A*S*H (CBS; 1972-1983; 251 episodes). If Cheers was the first long-running sitcom that I remember the full run of, M*A*S*H is the first one that I remember the big deal with its final episode. I remember watching the finale when I was 8; but I also remember that I didn’t remember many of the details until I saw it again as an adult. An eleven-season TV show about a three-year war is something amazing to pull of, and the way this show touched on the issues surrounding modern warfare with compassion, humor, and grace is unmatched, and—really—astounding. Thanks to the Hallmark Channel for running M*A*S*H reruns all the time.

6. Weeds (Showtime; 2005-present; 50 episodes). I’ll be honest, I like this show: I find the concept hilarious, the characters well-drawn, and the writing brilliant; it features one of my favorite SNL alums, Kevin Nealon. But while I’m being honest, I’ll say too that this one would not have appeared this high on this list (on the merits I’ve mentioned so far, it would probably rate #9 or #10) except for the fact that it stars Mary-Louise Parker. Yum-my! But even if you don’t share that opinion, all the other things I’ve mentioned, including the fact that you can say and do things on Showtime that you can’t on network TV, make this one very worthwhile, and damn funny.

5. Sex and the City (HBO; 1998-2004; 94 episodes). And I bet you thought this one would be higher. But, you know, we have entered the land of the sitcoms of which I own every episode on DVD. Have I mentioned that I like strong women? That I like TV shows that get relationships “right”—both of the romantic and friendship varieties? And the fact that this sitcom is laced with so many dramatic moments and tackles some serious issues (cancer, having kids, marriage, divorce) again with style, humor, and grace. Well, let’s just say that it’s earned its place in the top 5.

4. Coupling (BBC; 2000-2004; 28 episodes). I don’t own these all on DVD; used to, will again someday, but this BritCom’s greatest weakness was that its run was so short. Given the abbreviated nature of television series in the UK in the first place, and given that this only ran four seasons, it’s easy to watch them all, and love them. But there’s not enough. Imagine, though, Friends where the characters start out in the their 30s, are English, and can (again thanks to the magic that is the BBC) say things that NBC could not allow. And, now that I think of it, the end of its run was much like that of Friends at roughly the same time: the stable couple has a baby; the on-again-off-again couple get engaged; and the weird woman finds a man who appreciates her. Hmmmm…. Which leads us to….

3. Friends (NBC; 1994-2004; 236 episodes). The first long-running sitcom of my adult life that held my interest throughout its 10-year run (okay, season 9 lost me a little, but I’ve now developed an appreciation for it). What can I say? I identified so much with the issues that these characters faced in their lives, that I can’t help but love them all. The only thing I had a problem with, throughout the run of the show, was the three-way friendship among Monica, Rachel, and Phoebe—I’ve noticed that women tend to form close friendships in groups of two, while the show got the guys exactly right: men like groups of three for close friendships, and Ross, Chandler, and Joey captured that perfectly. This one flaw is why Friends places just a quarter step behind…

2. How I Met Your Mother (CBS; 2005-present; 83 episodes, through 3/30/2009). Another ensemble sitcom about 20/30somethings in Manhattan, this one gets right the one thing that Friends got wrong—its regular ensemble is three men and two women. Ted, Marshall, and Barney are, again, perfect as the masculine trio, while I really believe Lily and Robin’s feminine friendship much more. What makes the relationships on this show even more fun is that in interesting ways, both Robin and Lily can function, and have, as the third “bro” in the guys’ friendship, when they need to. Definitely the best comedy currently on TV.

1. I Love Lucy (CBS; 1951-1960; 194 episodes). There’s just nothing to say about this. It just is. Call it campy, corny, cheesy, or just plain old. It’s still the best comedy show ever made. Period. (But I don’t have the DVDs, here, either….)

It was difficult here to pick the ten best books, with the only criterion being that they are nonfiction, from the whole of the tradition of the written word, but here we go.

10. Candace Bushnell, Sex and the City. What can I say? I loved the TV show, and when I found out that the book it was based on was nonfiction, well that just added something enormous to the whole thing for me. I particularly like that the writer is Candace Bushnell, the TV character is Carrie Bradshaw, and that many of the pieces included in the book focus on the authorial-I’s friend, Carrie. It’s a strange blurring of the boundaries, and it’s definitely worth it.

9. Jeff Gordinier, X Saves the World. I’ll admit that I haven’t quite finished this one yet, but it’s awesome enough without having finished it to make the list. No question. Gordinier’s argument, made through popular culture references and sarcastic, at times utterly caustic, wit is that GenX is the only thing that keeps the entire world from sucking. The Baby Boomers are a bunch of shallow sellouts and the Millennials are lock-step dancing spotlight seekers. GenX as a whole, and individual Xers in particular, do it all their own way, not for money or fame, but just for their own gratification. Now if we could only get some freakin’ respect.

8. St. Augustine, Confessions. An odd juxtaposition, to be sure. The Confessions is Augustine’s spiritual autobiography, most of which is devoted to a discussion of all the terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad things he did before he converted to Christianity, became a priest, and later a bishop. (Not to mention founding an order of monks and bringing Platonic Idealism and Aristotlean Rhetoric to the study of theology and the practice of homiletics.) My favorite passage is when the bishop pretty much names the two greatest (and equally to each other in horrificness) sins as, in no particular order: shacking up with a woman, and being a teacher of rhetoric.

7. Andy Clark, Being There. A study in posthuman phenomenology. Or Heidegger for the 21st century. Clark is a philosopher who’s work is lucid and accessible, and with this volume he updates a thoroughly (late-)modern philosophical position for our postmodern and posthuman age. It, simply put, defines the there (the da of the Heideggerian dasein) as: in our time, in our space(s), and particularly in our bodies. No more are phenomena only of the mind, but our bodies as media for living mediate all phenomena.

6. Plato, Phaedrus. The basic articulation of Platonic philosophy, this dialogic treatise features discussions of the nature and practice of persuasion, the nature of the human soul, and the nature of reality itself. Surprisingly, it’s not one of Plato’s longer works, and covers all that ground pretty rapidly and in a way that is expanded upon in some of his other works. If you want to know what Plato’s all about, read this one first.

5. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The writings of John Locke may well have been the greatest single influence on the shaping of American Republican Democracy. This is not the work that (along with Thomas Hobbes) did that shaping, however. This work laid the foundation for much of Western philosophy, including the philosophy of science, from 1700 onwards, arguing, though an empiricist philosophy, for the totally experiential acquisition of knowledge. Locke introduced, in this volume, the nurture side of the now infamous nature/nurture debate, and argued vociferously that only experience, only nurture, mattered at all in shaping the blank slate of mind with which all humanity is born. True, Locke almost certainly overstated his case, but where would we be without that case having been made?

4. Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture. Information wants to be free. But free information is not like free beer. This is Lessig’s central argument in this volume. He points out that we must focus on access where information is concerned, not possession. Information must not be locked up in its material instantiations; instead, it must be freed from those instantiations to make it as broadly available as possible. This emphasis on availability, this de-emphasizing of material, must not and cannot be construed, however, as license to copy and distribute creative content, culture, without compensation to the creators of that content. Information’s freedom is not about P2P networks, it’s about developing new ways of thinking about ownership and licensing that allows the content to be made available as widely as possible. This new thinking is happening, but it’s not happening fast enough, because the first thought was not to adapt, but to lock down. Now that’s changing, in part thanks to Lessig and his ideas.

3. Karl Marx, Das Kapital. I know—I can’t be serious, right? Well, I am. Marx has gotten a bad rap. Leninist communism, Stalinist pogroms, and the Cold War have done for Marx. But has anyone actually read it? What he proposes is not the antithesis of capitalism, but its progression. It reflects the understanding that the workers can, should, and by nature do, control their means of production, and that such conditions as slavery and feudalism, in particular, coopt workers’ means and their natural freedom to control those means and trade them as they wish, by open agreement. His critique of free markets lies in the fact that those with jobs can, differently, coopt the labor of the worker; but this is a call for reform, not schism, the kind of reform that organized labor brought to capitalist economics even as Leninism and Stalinism festered alongside in the 20th century.

2. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations. As much, though, as Marx has been misrepresented, Smith’s articulation of free market principles remains much more important, and much more necessary to the generation of wealth. And here, too, even though most people see some form of capitalism as preferable to Marxist ideals, Smith has been misrepresented, because he is not about completely free markets. And this has been our mistake—to paint capitalism and socialism as mutually exclusive (which they are not), and to paint “pure” capitalism as a system in which the market corrects all errors. Smith never says that the market should be so open, that regulation should be so laissez-faire, that the system is subject to every abuse, to all exploitation. Still, Smith’s general ideas form the basis of most modern systems of economics, and even calling Marxism, socialism, and/or communism capitalism’s polar opposite (if we must), we must acknowledge that pretty much all of today’s economic theories are dependent upon, reactions to, derivatives of, or reforms of the general principles that Smith articulated in the 18th century.

1. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time. The primary articulation of Heidegger’s philosophical phenomenology. A discussion of what it means to be in the world, as a human being. Heidegger tells us here that we are the sum, not only of our experiences, but of how we experience them—how we go about being in those places, times, and moments; intimately and immediately, or as immediately as mediated existence will allow. Our mere (way of) being in the world both shapes and reflects both the world and our character in it. And it just gets deeper from there.

More novels. As promised, this list includes some books that predate my arbitrary 1950 dividing line. As planned, this list includes those books (or authors) that many lit snobs think will (read: should) join the canon someday—because they’re “smart” (read: snobby, at least can be read snobbily). I don’t mean this as any disparagement on the writers or their works: These are, after all, all books I like.

10. Umberto Eco. The Name of the Rose (1980; Italian). A murder mystery set in a monastery. In the Middle Ages. With an Inquisitor as the leading “detective.” Eco raises a typical genre form to a whole new level through his understanding of history, cultural history, and Church history, without turning the tale into a dry treatise on the Middle Ages, the Inquisition, or monasteries. Perhaps, not a Herculean task, but not one that just any old writer could pull off, either.

9. Joyce Carol Oates, Man Crazy (1997; American). Oates has more honorary degrees than you can shake a stick at. In part this means that she’s never met a speaker’s fee she doesn’t like, and it part it means that she is quite literally a giant in contemporary American letters—at least as far as colleges and universities are concerned. Man Crazy is, in my opinion, her best work, bringing incisive commentary on turn-of-the-(21st)-century American culture, into a mix with strong female characters, and making age-old coming-of-age story new again.

8. Julian Barnes, England, England (1998; English). A year before the Wachowski brothers brought Jean Baudrillard’s ideas about simulation and simulacra to the screen in the readily consumable form of Keanu Reeves, Julian Barnes enacted those ideas in England, or in England, England. In Barnes’s tale, a Disneyesque theme park is constructed on an island off the coast of England, recreating all of the country from the chalk cliffs to Hadrian’s Wall. In time this recreation comes to be accepted in lieu of the real thing, up to and including the royal family relocating to the replica Buckingham Palace. In the end, the theme park becomes England—more real than real—and England becomes Anglia, where the people can get on with the business of living, without having to worry about being English.

7. John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969; English). As was probably clear from the literature list, I have a soft spot in my heart for the Victorian novelists. It should come, then, as no surprise that I like this novel, which Fowles writes using the conventions (though in an absurdist sense) of the Victorian novel. It’s all here: The wild landscape, the “fallen” woman (or perhaps “‘fallen’” is more appropriate because of the levels at work), the ultra-intrusive narrator (who at one point walks past the characters on the street). Though clearly a novel, Fowles’s work also has footnotes—mostly dealing with narrative insertions and the plot, or the narrator’s additional thoughts on the story. What’s not to like? There is, after all, a certain amount of comedy there.

6. Don DeLillo, White Noise (1985; American). If you’ve seen the Michael Keaton movie, this ain’t that. This is DeLillo’s commentary on the way in which all we see, do, and experience in our contemporary culture is filtered through the fragmentary and fragmented haze that is our media culture and disjointed existence. It’s also a story of family angst, and all the things we miss in life because we do not take the time to look for them, instead paying the most attention to the things in life that matter least. Because it’s DeLillo, however, nothing is—or can be—straightforward.

5. Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly (1977; American). If you’re ever looking for evidence that the “War on Drugs” is failing, look no further than this scifi masterpiece. In it, the top local drug enforcer is also the local dealer, and one of his best clients is both his girlfriend and a federal agent. Neither knows that the other is in law enforcement, and the local has been so programmed that when he’s dealing, he doesn’t really know that he’s a cop, either. Dick’s storyline is prescient not in the technology (or the far-out drugs) it includes, but in the fact that, beyond the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing in the War on Drugs, the left hand can’t even be sure of itself. Sound familiar?

4. Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca (1938; English). Now for something completely different. Rebecca is the story of the second Mrs. de Winter, though its title is the name of the first. A wealthy widower marries a very young girl, who finds that she must somehow live up to the idea and ideal of Rebecca, the first wife. But, of course, all cannot be as it seems. This is an early—and masterful—instantiation of the contemporary gothic, where despite appearances to the contrary all of the hauntings and demons are entirely personal.

3. Nadine Gordimer, July’s People (1981; South African). When Gordimer wrote this book, it was a clear care of fictionalizing what might yet be. Now, thankfully, we can look back and see it as what might have been. It is the story of the uprising of South African Blacks against Apartheid, an upheaval with violence devastating to both sides of the struggle, and (as the ray of hope) the story of one Black man, July, who saves his white employers from the violence by hiding them in his rural village. It is the confrontation that South Africa, in reality, avoided, and I for one will always wonder how narrowly.

2. Audrey Niffinegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003; American). The most recent book on this list, this tells the disjointed tale of a man who lives his life out of order. Told from the perspective of a the woman who becomes his wife. While she experiences life in the run-of-the-mill linear fashion, he knows her from her birth to her death, long after his own demise, in the out-of-time moments in his own life. Both a testament to the enduring nature of a love always taxed by “being in different places in life” and a profound thought exercise in its own right, this, Niffinegger’s debut novel, is not to be missed or overlooked.

1. J R R Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (1954-5; English). I, with the author, consider this a single book, though it is customarily bound in three volumes (as determined by the original publisher, to save on printing and binding costs). Tolkien’s epic tale of good versus evil, in which it is not always certain which side of that coin some characters will come down on, and which lauds the strength of will to keep moving toward a goal no matter what the setbacks or obstacles, has been both the inspiration of an entire genre and the standard by which that genre is measured for more than half a century now. Most enlightening, I think, is that the world is saved and the good guys win, but not through Gandalf’s wisdom, Aragorn’s heroism, or Frodo’s cleverness. Though these characters and these traits are important, it is Sam’s determination that wins the day.

While I dislike the distinction that people make between literature, literary fiction, and popular fiction, I’m using those distinctions as categories here. There are two reasons for this: 1) so that I can include 30 novels in my Top Ten lists (I’m a cheater); and 2) because I don’t so much dislike the distinctions as the reasons that many people make them (exclusivity, snobbery, various other kinds of literary ass-hat-ness). I’m using them (as a cheat) for purposes of inclusivity and to campaign for the greatness of (recent) literary fiction and popular fiction as equal to the greatness of those representatives of the sacred cow, “literature.”

On this list are those great works that most would (likely) agree are part of the canon, and I’ve used 1950 as a rough dividing line for literature and literary fiction (though there will likely be one or two earlier works on the “literary fiction” list when it comes out later).

10. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891; Irish). The one famous work of fiction written by this master of comedic stage-craft, Dorian Gray is a fanciful adaptation of the Faustian bargain to the 19th century in which the protagonist does not age, but a portrait of him grows ever-more decrepit. The degeneration that is not visited on Gray’s body, however, seems to be visited on his soul, and we are given a cautionary tale about the quest for eternal youth.

9. Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers (1844; French).The tale of D’Artagnan and Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, this novel was historical fiction when Dumas wrote it in the mid-19th century, being set roughly a century previous. It is a tale of high adventure and romance, though narrated in the particularly drawn-out 19th century style. The fact that these characters have continued to capture the popular imagination speaks to Dumas’s flair for both the dramatic and the romantic, capturing a swashbuckling spirit in characters who are truly heroic.

8. Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865; English).It’s a crying shame that we tend to think of this one as a children’s story, when it’s clearly a story about growing up, and growing up too fast. It’s another cautionary tale, this one (I think) for parents, warning that they ought not too soon expect their little ones to fit into adult company or adult society. Wonderland is allegorically the world we adults inhabit daily, replete with hurry, madness, and decisions made at a whim but with no whimsy. Seriously…read it again.

7. Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859; English). Perhaps the best of Dickens’s novel-length work. In it, he succumbs less to the tendency of serialized novels in his day: to become protracted and bloated (The Pickwick Papers is among his worst examples of this). This story of a love triangle between Charles Darnay, Lucy Manette, and Sidney Carton, set against the backdrop of the French Revolution reminds us that that there are some things worth dying for, and that true love—both that which we feel and that which we would see survive—is certainly among them.

6. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment (1866; Russian). Of course, I have only recently read this one, and reviewed it. If Dickens’s Carton reminds us that true love is worth dying for, Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov (and Sonya) remind us that it’s worth living for, too, in any situation. Crime and Punishment is, additionally, a morality tale, reminding us of the psychic toll that acting against one’s own morality can take and that the truth will, ultimately, out. All of that combined with the fact that it could well be considered the first truly psychological novel earns it this spot.

5. D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow. (1915; English). Probably no one’s surprised to see Lawrence on this list, but the fact that the entry is not Lady Chatterly’s Lover or Women in Love may be a little surprising. Is it, perhaps, that I’m not a fan of Edwardian porn? In The Rainbow, Lawrence develops his characters much better, brings the same keen awareness of sensuality to the writing, but leaves the overt sexuality at the gate. This last is perhaps the most important in the Edwardian period, when society seems to have fully bought into the Victorian moral hype, in a way that Victorians themselves did not. The Rainbow is, to me, Lawrence’s best work, and perhaps the quintessential work of Edwardian fiction.

4. Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897; Irish). Speaking of the Victorians, it takes one to romanticize, even sexualize (though not as much as a lot of film versions of Stoker’s story have), the pre-Victorian and utterly monstrous conception of the vampire. Anyone who is a fan of the modern vampire (in its many, and variously praised and panned, forms) owes a debt of gratitude to Stoker. Even were the story not well-told and excellent in its own right (it is!), Stoker’s is probably the biggest single contribution to our modern, popular vampire mythos, whether you like that contribution or not.

3. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus (1818; English). If it took a Victorian to romanticize vampires, it took a Romantic to make monsters fashionable. Though it is really not the monster’s story. It is the story of human hubris that creates the monster, as embodied in Victor Frankenstein (also not a doctor). Shelley’s argument is that pride truly goeth before a fall, a moral made more interesting by the fact that this novel was reportedly her entry in a private contest involving a number of more famous competitors—Shelley’s husband and Lord Byron among them.

2. William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (1936; American). In my view, the quintessential American novel, as it probes Quentin Compson’s (also a character in The Sound and the Fury) descent into madness, a madness that ultimately leads to his suicide. It explores, at a time when its insights were more prescient than journalistic, those particularly American paradoxes: work versus family, intellect versus strength, and the juxtaposition of rampant sexuality with puritanical mores in terms of what it means to be a man.

1. Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented (1891). Speaking of puritanical mores, or the Victorian moral hype that the Edwardians bought, Tess his Hardy’s late-Victorian indictment of the hypocrisy inherent in those values—an indictment that seems to have gone largely ignored for years. How, other than hypocritical, after all, are we to describe a culture in which virile potency to the point of committing rape is excused, even condoned, while feminine chastity is so prized that being the victim of that rape is considered worse than being the rapist? Hardy, then, highlights and showcases this disparity in Tess, and there is little question whose side he’s on though he presents the story faithfully for his time. While the issues may have changed, Hardy’s indictment and conviction of hypocrisy and double-standards rings true across history and across issues.

Honorable Mention:
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (c. 1400; English). This would easily have made the list, if it were a novel. It is, however, probably the first single-author short-story volume published in English, which make it worthy of note. It is a strange mix of poetry and prose, of story and verse, and there are clear parallels to later works of all genres and modes in literature in English. Hence, honorable mention.

William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929; American). Faulkner’s other novel featuring Quentin Compson (and his siblings), this deserves honorable mention because even if not as good, in my opinion, as Absalom, Absalom!, it is synonymous with Faulkner in a way that the latter is not—in a way perhaps matched only by “A Rose For Emily” among Faulkner’s short work. And it’s still great.

I was inspired to this by something that JDZ did at his blog, Res Judicata: Providing his opinion of the “Ten Best _______” there. I have mapped out a slightly more ambitious project for myself. Over the coming days and weeks, look here for my own Top Ten lists of:

• Books (Literature). These will be canonical works of fiction, written before 1950.
• Books (Literary Fiction). These will be books written since 1950 that seem to fall in to a more literary vein—that may well, that is, one day be included in the canon, without a great deal of squelching from literature snobs.
• Books (Popular Fiction). These will be great books that are considered less literary, and therefore more trashy and unworthy of (much) consideration by those same literature snobs.
• Films. With apologies to the film snobs, I will make no distinction between “films” and “movies”—I’ll just talk about my favorite cinematic entertainment.
• Books (Nonfiction). Nonfiction books (monographs, treatises) from throughout the ages.
• Plays (Non-musical). Comedies, tragedies, and histories from the history of dramatic writing.
• Plays (Musical). Opera, light opera, and operetta, through the ages.
• TV Shows (Comedy). The best comedic television programs of all time.
• TV Shows (Drama). The best dramatic television programs.

I may, of course, add others, more or less entertainment-related, as the mood strikes me.

And, fair warning: These will be my personal favorites. And while I may believe that the fact that I love them relates to their greatness, well…as the saying goes, there’s no accounting for taste.