EclectEcon Two Outa Ten Ain't Bad

I am, in most ways, a non-intellectual. Not really an anti-intellectual (despite chairing the Philistine Liberation Organization); just a non-intellectual. I'm pretty ignorant of lots of things, and I love to watch sports and shoot-'em-ups on television, and I am blissfully unaware of the content of many of the classics in literature. Here, via Craig Newmark and from the NYTimes, is a list of the top ten novels or books or something of all time:

1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
2. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
3. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
4. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
7. The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
8. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
9. The Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov
10. Middlemarch by George Eliot

Yawn. I've read two of them and wasn't all that impressed by one of the two. I have a vague notion about maybe four more, but for those four I'm not about to rush out to buy the books, rent the movies, or scan the classic comics versions. And I don't really care if I never hear of the other four ever again.

As the NYTimes article says, there are always questions and challenges when a "top ten" anything list is compiled (just look at the NCAA BCS football arguments!), but I must say I didn't think I was as ignorant as this list makes me seem --- I haven't even heard of a couple of these books. If they're such good books, how come they're not more popular, huh?

(link)

Ronnie (mail):

11. The Economic Way of Thinking (Cnd. Ed.) ???

1.28.2007 3:07am

Gabriel M. (mail) (www):

I completely sympathize! "Liberal arts" intellectuals want to monopolize that word. But there are many ways of being an intellectual.

I haven't read any of those books. Too big. Too much time. It's a waste for me to spend time with Flaubert when there's still so much non-fiction I haven't read (including outside of Economics... I'd rather read Freud, Jung or Hawkins than posh it up with Proust *raise pinky*).

And, to be franc, if "intellectual" is about using your intellect, well... it's clear, I hope, what's more demanding, on a first view at least. ;-)

1.28.2007 4:04am

Rebekah K (mail) (www):

As of last summer, I've read all but the Proust and the Chekhov. I'm planning for it to stay that way. Although, if Monty Python can summarize Proust... nah. He's still off my list.

Nothing by Zane Grey? Pfui.

1.28.2007 6:48pm

Rondi (mail) (www):

I've read eight and a half of the ten. And the French ones I've read in French. BTW, I linked to this on my blog.

1.29.2007 9:09pm

radek:

I haven't read 1 because I tried reading 3. 2,3,5,6,7 we read in school although I had read Twain at an earlier age. And that's still the only trully great book out of those. Hamlet's ok. 2,3 and 7 are not only horribly boring, they're also terrible as a matter of aesthetics - i.e. the writing just plain sucks. Aside from Twain and Dos Passos, Americans just aren't great writers though they have some decent ones. 8 and 10 I have not read and I'm suspicious of 10 (I suspect it's more boring badly written Victorian crap) - the English make better humorists (Edward Lear) and story tellers (O'Brian, Stevenson, Doyle, Tolkien) then "serious" novelists. Except maybe Hardy. Proust, I've thought of reading but never got around to it. It's probably not as scary as it sounds. Now, the Russians. Well, I already said Tolstoy is worthless and I don't see how people can prefer him to Dostoyevsky who though "serious" could really write worth a damn. Nabokov (semi-Russian) is not only boring but also pretentious and Victorian. Besides shock value there isn't much to 4. His other books are equally stupid. Chekhov can be occasionally fun but there's some staleness to it and honestly I don't remember which of his stories were good and which were not.

I like low brow fun as much as the next guy but I do think there's hi-brow literature out there worth reading. Trouble is the consenus among the intellectuals as to what it is just way off kilter. They think Pynchon is better than Cela or Hemingway better than Hamsun or Dickens better than Dumas. They pick the most boring writers and books because they think that somehow suffering through the awful prose makes them more intellectual. Where's the fun-to-read Hasek, Selimovic, Celine or even Marquez or Borges? Or even Solzhenitsyn's novels?
If you're gonna be a snob you should at least have something to be snobby about.

1.31.2007 4:11pm

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