The Greatest Books of All Time, as Voted by 125 Famous Authors

The Atlantic ^ | Janaury 30, 2012 | Maria Popova

[huckfillary]

No Atlas Shrugged? No Fountainhead? The list is a big joke.

[allmendream]

What would we catogorize the plot and “action” of the ‘feely’ that Leena and John Savage went to?

From “Brave New World”....

The house lights went down; fiery letters stood out solid and as though self-supported in the darkness. THREE WEEKS IN A HELICOPTER . AN ALL-SUPER-SINGING, SYNTHETIC-TALK1NG, COLOURED, STEREOSCOPIC FEELY. WITH SYNCHRONIZED SCENT-ORGAN ACCOMPANIMENT.

“Take hold of those metal knobs on the arms of your chair,” whispered Lenina. “Otherwise you won’t get any of the feely effects.”

The Savage did as he was told.

Those fiery letters, meanwhile, had disappeared; there were ten seconds of complete darkness; then suddenly, dazzling and incomparably more solid-looking than they would have seemed in actual flesh and blood, far more real than reality, there stood the stereoscopic images, locked in one another’s arms, of a gigantic negro and a golden-haired young brachycephalic Beta-Plus female.

The Savage started. That sensation on his lips! He lifted a hand to his mouth; the titillation ceased; let his hand fall back on the metal knob; it began again. The scent organ, meanwhile, breathed pure musk. Expiringly, a sound-track super-dove cooed “Oo-ooh”; and vibrating only thirty-two times a second, a deeper than African bass made answer: “Aa-aah.” “Ooh-ah! Ooh-ah!” the stereoscopic lips came together again, and once more the facial erogenous zones of the six thousand spectators in the Alhambra tingled with almost intolerable galvanic pleasure. “Ooh …”

The plot of the film was extremely simple. A few minutes after the first Oohs and Aahs (a duet having been sung and a little love made on that famous bearskin, every hair of which–the Assistant Predestinator was perfectly right–could be separately and distinctly felt), the negro had a helicopter accident, fell on his head. Thump! what a twinge through the forehead! A chorus of ow’s and aie’s went up from the audience.

The concussion knocked all the negro’s conditioning into a cocked hat. He developed for the Beta blonde an exclusive and maniacal passion. She protested. He persisted. There were struggles, pursuits, an assault on a rival, finally a sensational kidnapping. The Beta blond was ravished away into the sky and kept there, hovering, for three weeks in a wildly anti-social tête-à-tête with the black madman. Finally, after a whole series of adventures and much aerial acrobacy three handsome young Alphas succeeded in rescuing her. The negro was packed off to an Adult Re-conditioning Centre and the film ended happily and decorously, with the Beta blonde becoming the mistress of all her three rescuers. They interrupted themselves for a moment to sing a synthetic quartet, with full super-orchestral accompaniment and gardenias on the scent organ. Then the bearskin made a final appearance and, amid a blare of saxophones, the last stereoscopic kiss faded into darkness, the last electric titillation died on the lips like a dying moth that quivers, quivers, ever more feebly, ever more faintly, and at last is quiet, quite still.

[Califreak]

I love The Brothers Karamozov.

My 13 y/o son and I read it together.

He thought some parts of the story were hilarious.

[struggle]

>>No Atlas Shrugged? No Fountainhead? The list is a big joke.

Almost all the concepts of Rand’s books are covered in Nicomachean Ethics.

[Flycatcher]

9. The complete stories of Flannery O'Connor

I'm very surprised - but delighted - that this made the list.

She was a very devout Christian, and all her stories reflect this -- in a shocking, sometimes visceral way.

My favorite is "A Good Man is Hard to Find."

It is truly one of the most shocking short stories I have ever read in my life. She was a brilliant, original artist, and a true Southern lady.

[varina davis]

George R.R. Martin’s epic tomes starting with Songs of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones). Pure fiction with a nod toward ancient Celts.

[struggle]

>>It is truly one of the most shocking short stories I have ever read in my life. She was a brilliant, original artist, and a true Southern lady.

And she loved her peacocks.

I loved “Good Country People” but all of her stories show the contradictory nature of human beings.

Eudora Welty was a great author as well. I loved “Ponder Heart,” “Delta Wedding,” and “The Optimist’s Daughter.”

[daler]

Surprised Jack London didn't make the list.

Not just because he was a good writer, but because he was a devout socialist (something I blocked from my mind while enjoying his work).

[Borges]

Moby Dick is sublime. He wasn’t just out to “tell a story”.

[Future Snake Eater]

I teach it to a bunch of bored regular ed kids in public school and a lot of them love it.

I read it in AP English, my junior year in HS. I found it to be almost impenetrable, dull, and lazy (the pastor "looked into his heart"? The big scarlet A in the sky? A girl named Hester?).

I haven't read "Sound and the Fury." We did read "Light in August" and it was pretty good. We read some of Faulkner's short stories, and I loved "Young Goodman Brown."

"The Great Gatsby" was one I almost gave up on until it started really picking up after a few chapters.

Hands down the best book I read in high school was "Grendel." We read that in my honor's English class in 12th grade after we read "Beowulf" (meh). Fantastic book that took all of your preconceived notions made in "Beowulf" and turned them on their heads. Even though I knew how it was going to end, I had no idea what was going to happen next!

[Borges]

‘Madame Bovary’ is the root of Modern Literature for very formal reasons. It has nothing to do with ‘edginess’.

[LS]

Patriot’s History of the United States . . . Oh, wait, never mind.

[Borges]

Read Dubliners and ‘Portrait of the Artist’. They are wonderful and perfectly readable.

[Stormdog]

Ulysses??? C’mon, it’s not even an effective doorstop.

[Future Snake Eater]

I just realized I screwed up. “Young Goodman Brown” was a Hawthorne short story, not a Faulkner one.

I confused it b/c we had a writing assignment to take a short story and rewrite it in the style of Faulkner. So I chose “Young Goodman Brown” for that one. It stuck in my head as a Faulkner story ever since!

[ConorMacNessa]

I was an English Lit. major in my undergrad days. Your list contains a number of items that I would include in my own list.

The most striking omission from The Atlantic's list is indeed the Bible - it is more widely read than almost any other book and as you say, it is most frequently alluded to in other works - books, poems, and plays. A lack of knowledge of the Bible is a serious impediment to understanding much of the canon of great works in literature.

Of course, I am not surprised that The Atlantic omitted it - the last time I read the Atlantic it was chock full of left-wing pap. I haven't given it a look in years.

Etiam non princeps sed usque ad genua, Principis Pacis!

[Borges]

You do know that Dostoevsky was very anti-Catholic right? The Grand Inquisitor section is a giant bash of the Catholic Church.

[LS]

Agree on Moby Dick. For Pete’s sake, five chapters of how you tie a slip knot?

[savagesusie]

Jane Austin is wonderful-—she really understands human relationships and feelings and has such timeless wit. Her prose is easy to digest.

I studied James Joyce in an English class and he is brilliant—I would have never appreciated his work without the class, though.

[Borges]

Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Nabokov were all highly anti-communist. Tolstoy would have hated the Soviets and Nabokov certainly did.