Your Top Ten Works of Fiction
by Bud Parr on February 09, 2007
Someone once asked me what was my favorite book and I responded, “if I’m lucky, whatever I happened to be reading at the moment.” That’s pretty much my outlook on literature: Everything I read is potentially the best thing I’ve ever read, and since I think literature is cumulative - that is, what you’ve read in the past affects your consciousness and thus your current reading - what you bring to your reading biases what you’ve read more recently. That demands, as Italo Calvino said, “The classics are the books of which we usually hear people say ‘I am re-reading...’ ” because otherwise we would be hopelessly nostalgic. So my desire to re-read a book becomes my primary criteria for what is best.
Peder Zane, the books columnist at The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C. published a book called The Top Ten out of what we in the blogosphere would just call a meme. He posed the question of 125 writers, What are The Top Ten works of fiction? That’s pretty open ended and potentially includes plays, poems and short stories as well as novels. Too overwhelming for me, so I limited my list to novels and short stories of the modern era. I’ve read all of Zane’s top ten list except Middlemarch (and I haven’t yet finished In Search of Lost Time), so it’s no wonder that my list, even without much crossover, vaguely resembles what you might expect from a top ten list.
-
The Charterhouse of Parma, Stendhal -
The Recognitions, William Gaddis -
Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust -
Dreamtigers, Jorge Luis Borges -
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce -
Moby Dick, Herman Melville -
Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes -
Taras Bulba, Nikolai Gogol -
The Master & Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov -
Death and the Dervish, Mesa Selimovic
Naturally the difficulty is limiting yourself to just ten: I quite reluctantly left Ralph Ellison and Chekhov off my list, and how could I not include Beckett and Fitzgerald, both of whom I credit with initially making me the fanatic for literature that I am?
I resolved these issues by choosing books where my enjoyment factor was highest. To wit, I think Stendhal’s The Red and Black is a better book than The Charterhouse of Parma, yet The Charterhouse reads like a fairy tale and I could read it again and again. Likewise with Taras Bulba. I’ve read all of Gogol’s work and Taras Bulba is a trifle compared to Dead Souls, Diary of Madman and many of his stories, but Taras Bulba appeals to my inner desire to think about the nature of love, honor and family as well as having some of the best action scenes I’ve ever read.
Dreamtigers, of all Borges’s work, is the one I return to the most, which is how that unexpected (of his) work makes my list, but the pieces in Dreamtigers also capture beautifully his essence, despite missing The Aleph and so many other works Borges is known for. Joyce’s Portrait is again a secondary work and even though I do indeed read (or listen) to Ulysses every year around Bloomsday, it’s The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man that I am most enjoyably enamored with. Besides, it makes me want to be a Catholic (and Irish too) just so I could have so much great material.
Moby Dick makes my list as a proxy for Shakespeare (and the King James Bible). Don Quixote, the most recent read for me on this list, is infinitely and deceptively fascinating, while Blugakov’s Master and Margarita pushed out Kafka and Flann O’Brien in the outrageous category.
I think that Swann’s Way stands on it’s own as a great work of fiction, so I have no qualms with ranking that up there despite only reading two volumes of Proust’s six volume masterpiece. I suppose if anything, Selimovic’s Death and the Dervish is one that wouldn’t make any top ten lists and other people might have a choice for a book that plumbs the psychological depths of morality so subtly.
Lastly, The Recognitions was surprisingly not mentioned once in Zane’s entire list. I owe my reading of that book to the litbloggers of the “Gaddis Drinking Club” and despite it’s apparent difficulty, I eat it like a good lunch. The Recognitions is now what I judge all other novels by.
If my list reflects any diversity at all it’s geographic ( US -2, France -2, Russia - 2, Bosnia, Argentina, Ireland, Spain). I love Flannery O’Connor, Anne Carson and Virginia Woolf, what little I’ve read, but those weren’t the authors that, like the above, so readily came to mind when thinking of this list. With the exception of Don Quixote, my list is also fairly narrow in time. Had I broadened my list I would have to include Dante, but I feel that my reading of The Divine Comedy (which I’ve read three times) is somehow incomplete, and I dare not say like I have with some, that it’s just fun to read about Ugolino eating the back of Ruggieri’s head.
So what does your list look like?
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Well, I’ve got 1 out of 10 in common with you. Revisiting a list I made years ago, I find that not much has changed:
1) Moby Dick by Herman Melville
2) The Castle by Franz Kafka
3) The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
4) On The Road by Jack Kerouac
5) Couples by John Updike
6) Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
7) Where I’m Calling From by Raymond Carver
8) The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker
9) Washington Square by Henry James
10) The World According to Garp by John Irving
How to fit more recent books into this list? That is something I’m not sure of. It’s easier to choose sentimental favorites ... in another ten years I’ll add some books from the last ten years, I bet.
– Levi (02/09 at 9-Feb 12:41 -05:00)
1. Ulysses, James Joyce
2. Middlemarch, George Eliot
3. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
4. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
5. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
6. The Plague, Albert Camus
7. Howard’s End, E.M. Forster
8. A Portrait of the Artist As Young Man, Joyce
9. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
10. Herzog, Saul Bellow
Yes, that makes two Joyce in the top ten. What can I say? I worship at the shrine.
– edwardhenry (02/09 at 9-Feb 15:20 -05:00)
In no particular order, but these stand out for some reason whether it was to make me think, awe me with writing skill, or because they’ve pushed the envelope in literary content.
1. Blood Meridian
2. 100 Years of Solitude
3. The Borzoi Poe
4. Frany and Zoee
5. Watership Down
6. As I Lay Dying
7. Cannery Row
8. Suttree
9. The Consolation of Philosophy
10. Wuthering Heights
11. Candide...oh, that’s eleven.
– susan (02/09 at 9-Feb 16:15 -05:00)
Great post. For me, there are no ‘ten best’ lists--I’m not fond of that kind of competition. However, off the top of my head, I can come up with SOME of the novels which I have most enjoyed, and doubtless I will forget many:
The Maltese Falcon
Moby Dick
Of Mice and Men
Catcher in the Rye
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (please see my poem about masturbation)
Double Indemnity
The Invisible Man
Pride and Prejudice
Mother Night
– Victor Schwartzman (02/10 at 10-Feb 10:40 -05:00)
Employing a “fond memory” rather than “systematic analysis” approach, and in no particular order, here are my TEN:
Pale Fire
Don Quixote
Dead Souls
The Fermata
V.
The Emigrants
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
In Search of Lost Time
Extinction
Candide
Some classics, some more recent...all good fun.
– antoine (02/10 at 10-Feb 14:29 -05:00)
It’s so great to see someone else listing “Candide”—I wonder if I would have ever read it had it not been a history assigned text, but I absolutely loved it!
On the other hand, the other assigned book was Robert Graves’ “Goodbye to All That” which I dragged my mind through.
– susan (02/10 at 10-Feb 14:37 -05:00)
Yeah, Susan, it’s funny. I didn’t read everyone else’s until I’d submitted my list and I was pleasantly surprised to see Candide in your top 10!
And to see Nicholson Baker on Levi’s list.
– antoine (02/10 at 10-Feb 14:43 -05:00)
Just a note that Peder Zane, author of The Top Ten, dropped by Chekhov’s Mistress and left a comment that he was excited to see people making their own lists (and particularly writing about their choices). He also mentioned that you can put your list on his site too: www.toptenbooks.net
Also, Derik Badman wrote to say he posted his list at his site:
Madinkbeard
– Bud Parr (02/10 at 10-Feb 19:05 -05:00)
Having given it a bit more thought, I also am quite fond of:
Tristram Shandy
Grapes of Wrath
Most anything written by Robbe-Grillet, B. Traven
David Copperfield, Oliver Twist
Candide was pretty good, yes
So was Les Miserables
– Victor Schwartzman (02/10 at 10-Feb 20:39 -05:00)
As Sven Birkerts noted in his essay “The Top Top Ten” any response one comes up with will be “terminally subjective.” So here goes:
The Inferno by Dante
The House of Fame by Chaucer
Paradise Lost by Milton
Notes from the Underground by Dosteovsky
The Castle by Kafka
Ulyssess by James Joyce
Crime and Punishment by Dosteovsky
Dubliners by James Joyce
Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
The Garden of Forking Paths by Borges
Some heavy hitters in there, but I’ve just never gotten over them.
– Mike (02/11 at 11-Feb 15:48 -05:00)
Here are my ten (in no particular order):
•Milosz’s ABC’s
•To the Lighthouse
•Tender Buttons
•Leaves of Grass
•Running in the Family
•The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
•Love in the Time of Cholera
•The Colossus of Maroussi
•Pride & Prejudice
•Justine from the Alexandrian Quartet by Durell
These are the ones that I refer back to time and again.
– xine (02/11 at 11-Feb 16:18 -05:00)
In no particular order here, but all of these marked turning points for me in my own reading life and inspired me (then) or inspire me (now) as a writer. For me, that’s how they make the top 10. Otherwise, how could I reduce an otherwise long list? I love reading!
Can I just generally add Shakespeare (Hamlet, MacBeth*, The Tempest, King Lear, The Merchant of Venice, in particular) as an aside? I read all of these by the age of 25.
Also, I read these* before age 18.
1. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
2. Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau
3. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
4. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood*
5. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
6. Watership Down by Richard Adams*
7. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien*
8. The Vintage Bradbury by Ray Bradbury*
9. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
10. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte*
11. (Bonus!) The Pearl by John Steinbeck*
– Tamara Kaye Sellman (02/15 at 15-Feb 13:56 -05:00)
My ten classics, in no particular order:
Dickens, Bleak House
Tolstoy, War and Peace
Eliot, Middlemarch
Premchand, The Gift of a Cow
Mahfouz, Midaq Alley
Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma
Mann, The Magic Mountain
Conrad, Nostromo
James, The Ambassadors
Esa de Queiros, The Sins of Father Amato
– ither (02/18 at 18-Feb 17:26 -05:00)
Abridged from my blog... The top five or soare without doubt the most important novels in my life. I let the unquestioned masterpieces pass without comment. They are, to me, sacred texts. As Henry James (who came in thirteenth or so) said, one does not defend one’s god; one’s god is, in himself, a defense. (I doubt he foresaw that being applied to Leslie Stephen’s bluestocking daughter Virginia….)<ol> <li>Pride and Prejudice<li>Mrs. Dalloway<li>Another Country by James Baldwin. It changed my life. It’s not close to being in the top twenty-five best books, but it does something incredible...:<li>Invisible Man<li>Great ExpectationsLittle makes me happier and more connected to my girlhood and my father than Dickens.<li>Anna Karenina<li>Anne of Green GablesD. H. Lawrence wrote a gorgeous essay on the hymns of his youth as the lifeblood of his poetry. Nothing, he wrote, could touch him more deeply than “Oh Galilee, sweet Galilee / Where Jesus loved so much to be.” L. M. Montgomery was that to me.<li>Women in LoveI came to Lawrence late. What a thunderclap. And, when I turned briefly away from Woolf to work on Lawrence--just for a little testosterone break--I met my husband. <li>Ulysses<li>Wizard of the Crow I love what Bud said--that if he’s lucky, the book he’s reading now is his favorite. I’m still living in the spell of this one: a great, great epic of African literature with a marvelous romance, lots of humor, and biting satire.
– Anne (02/18 at 18-Feb 21:03 -05:00)
Another meme about books and ranking has been making its way around the blogosphere, so to put a Caribbean twist on the meme, here are my Top Ten Caribbean Novels:
10. In the Castle of My Skin (Ann Arbor Paperbacks) by George Lamming
9. The Dragon Can’t Dance by Earl Lovelace
8. Brother Man (Caribbean Writers Series; 10) by Roger Mais
7. The Duppy (Anthony C. Winkler Collection) by Anthony C. Winkler
6. The Dew Breaker (Today Show Book Club #23) by Edwidge Danticat.
5. Children of Sisyphus (Longman Caribbean Writers Series) by Orlando Patterson
4. Divina Trace by Robert Antoni.
3. The Palace of the Peacock by Wilson Harris
2. A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul. See also Miguel Street.
1. Love in the Time of Cholera (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
– geoffrey philp (02/24 at 24-Feb 06:18 -05:00)
I’m late to the party, but here’s my list, subject to change in the next five minutes (and in no particular order):
1. The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake
2. The Recognitions by William Gaddis
3. The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth
4. The Book of Revelation by Rupert Thomson
5. Mulligan Stew by Gilbert Sorrentino
6. Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov
7. The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
8. Absalom! Absalom! by William Faulkner
9. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Doestoevsky
10. Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
And now a few minutes later, the list is entirely different!
– ed (03/21 at 21-Mar 01:17 -05:00)
Ah, top ten lists.
Well, I don’t think I can quantify the books, but these are the ones I read again and again.
Stone Junction, by Jim Dodge
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Crash of Hennington by Patrick Ness
A Clockwork Orange by Aldous Huxley
– Shelf Monkey (04/11 at 11-Apr 17:19 -05:00)
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Don’t know that I can define ten, but these would have to be on my list:
Madame Bovary
Dubliners
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Lolita
War and Peace
A Good Man is Hard To Find
– Bosco (02/09 at 9-Feb 12:36 -05:00)