Future of the Novel and Lists

 Top 100

Someone recently tweeted a reference to a list of the ‘Top 100 Books’ and asked for comments. It was really an attempt to get some sort of discussion going about literature and increase hits on their website. To be honest the list looked very much like the Penguin modern classics catalogue and of no great excitement. But the real fascination with lists like these is to see if they confirm or challenge personal prejudices.

Adding the term ‘of all time’ to the bald ‘Top 100 Books’ reveals the futility of such lists. Even at the arrival of Armageddon it will still be impossible to put the definitive list of top novels ‘of all time’ together. The problem with such lists is the criteria used to compile them. If the list had been ‘The Top 100 Writers’ it would have been a completely different list - including playwrights, poets, essayists etc. Had the list been complied in terms of sales or library lending statistics it would be different yet again. Naturally, it is another list when books in translation are included.

The criteria used to produce a ‘canon of literature’ are notoriously complicated.  There are many lists and books of the 100 books that should be read, in order to be ‘well read’. But what does it mean to be ‘well read’? Does it make a difference to an individual to have read a certain number of the ‘right’ books?  Why is there a list at all and are some books really better than others, or just different? What makes a book ‘great art’ and thus worthy of reading? It is not surprising that groups of people should create lists of books to reflect their own interests and personal prejudices. The lofty answer might be that literature that exposes and examines the human condition or ‘being’ is worthy. To be philosophical, as Socrates is reported to have claimed – ‘an unexamined life is not worth living’. Should only ‘high art’ rather than ‘popular art’ be examined? If art is thought to reflect society isn’t it possible that all books reflect the human condition in some way or another? There are many problems here with regard to the nature and function of art that need much more detailed analysis – but as a general overview it shows the problems with lists.

As with the transformation of music from plastic discs to digital downloads, will the concept of the novel change as it moves from paper to different downloadable electronic formats? Will the concept of the novel with its set number of words continue to exist in the electronic virtual future? More importantly, will the new electronic forms of the novel still be allowed to acquire the cache of ‘art’, or will literature become more egalitarian? Will this have consequences for academics and critics?

Harold Bloom compiled an extensive ‘literary canon’ and Raymond Williams in The Long Revolution brings the history of the novel to life – and names the best selling Victorian authors that no one now remembers.