Point Counter Point, Aldous Huxley. It seems like for every critic who thinks highly of it, there’s another two who (accurately, I suppose) claim it’s plodding and pedantic. I’m just gonna crib Rubystreak here: “[He] writes in a way that jibes with how I think and experience the world”.
The only way to fully characterize it is that a dozen or so Englishmen and women get dropped in a petri dish, and Huxley pokes them with sticks for 500 pages, until he’s cataloged a response to every stimulus. He picks up diverse specimens representing a full cross-section of London, and treats them all (save Mark Rampion) equally in his eyes. Every motive and passing thought in that book has a traceable cause, and every action produces a reaction that is, if not predictable, always inevitable. But the incredible thing is they still manage to go beyond the material and the mechanistic, just by living their lives and interacting. You can’t, after reading it, plausibly argue that any of these characters have immortal souls, or are constituted of anything save carbon, phosphorous, and rare earths, but at the same time it is such an intensely spiritual book. Whether they live their lives for idealistic, childish, self-serving or contemptible purposes, each one still transcends the sum of their parts.
Of course, there’s also the pleasing little tidbits and big ideas that pop up on every page. Hearing talk of British Fascists, the next great war, of stem cells and even mankind’s future extinction from the success of his own industry would impress were it a novel about 1928 London written today. That the novel itself actually is as old as its setting is stupendous.
Sinclair Lewis’s Arrowsmith. I read it as a high school student and hated it, because I couldn’t understand the title character and thought he was a prima-donna jerk. Read it again fifteen years later in my early 30’s, and after all I’d seen and gone through, I could understand the title character, even though I still thought he was a prima-donna jerk.
It also has my favorite fictional character of all time, Max Gottlieb. I would love to have read a Sinclair Lewis novel based around him instead of Arrowsmith.
John LeCarre’s Karla Trilogy is a not too distant second, with George Smiley being my second favorite fictional character. I started reading Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy during my last year in the army, and it taught me that not all heroes have washboard abs and ripped pec’s. Smiley’s character inspired me to start using my head and read more philosophy and history for perspective.
First one that occurs is The Maltese Falcon, for the range of utterly fascinating characters and a hero who is morally ambiguous, and likable at the same time.
And for that story that Sam Spade tells in the middle, with the line that is utterly hopeless, and funny.
To Kill a Mockingbird for many reasons, but mostly for it’s brutal humanity and definition of decency.
Close choices would be For Whom the Bell Tolls (for it’s writing and sense of honor) and Tales from Margaritaville (for sheer joy of being alive and being the inspiration of the greatest solo road trip I ever embarked upon.)
This is a list of most of my favorite books. I don’t know that I can narrow it down to just one.
The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold would probably be the one if I had to pick. It’s a sort of time travel wish fulfillment novel without much of a plot per se; it focuses on the internal life of the main character who inherits a timebelt, the theory of thime travel, and his relationship with his time duplicates.
Second would be either The Neverending Story or Momo by Michael Ende. The first is an epic children’s tale of a child who is reading a fantasy story and becomes part of it. It even has different colors of text for which perspective you are reading. Simply brilliant, and the first half was made into a wonderful movie you’ve probably heard of. Momo is a story about an orphan girl who lives in an abandoned building but is loved by the townsfolk who visit her and listen to her advice. When the time thieves come to town and start taking away everyone’s time, she has to save the townsfolk with the help of a talking turtle.
Oh, yes. That book captures so much of what I love about the academic world, and so much about its flaws as well. (Even seventy years later, much of the stuff about gender and double standards seems so, so familiar.) Also, I want Letitia Martin to be my dean
The Godfather
I love this book. I like the foreshadowing of how Michael is destined to be the Godfather. He’s just like his father Vito and is destined for greatness.
Since nothing in this thread requires us to name a novel, I’m going to list Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton. I love this book in part because it had such a profound effect on me, but also in part because it seems to have some magical appeal that I just can’t explain. I can note a few things about it.
First, it is simply the best philosophical argument that I have ever seen. It is entirely logical, each paragraph leading directly to the next and all adding up to meaningful, clearly-stated conclusions.
Second, various pieces simply correspond perfectly to things that I have experienced in my own life. Chesterton’s language captured what I believed, even though in some cases I was barely aware that I believed it.
‘1984’ is indeed an amazing book and one of my top five. The movie version shot with John Hurt in London in 1984 was very well done as well.
However if I had to choose a single favourite book it would be ‘Catch-22’ by Joseph Weller for a whole host of reasons and its one book I can read several times and find something I missed in it the first time.
If I’m ever in doubt I ask myself, “What would Yossarian do?”
It is the “The Lord of the Rings” for me. Tolkien created one of the most complete worlds of imagination ever and effectively founded a genre of fiction at the same time.
Frodo is not the classic hero but in fact would have failed in the end if not for the compassion he showed. Each Hobbit was distincted and nuanced. The characters are all archetypes but they are archetypes as so many other have copied and cribbed from Tolkien.
I have actually heard how boring and predictable Gimli was and yet the common idea of what a dwarf is and should be is based on the character Gimli and even here I don’t think any other Dwarven character showed his growth and depth as he did in his friendship of Legolas and chaste love of Galadriel.
I love the history, the background, the languages, the maps and pretty much everything about this masterpiece. I do think it is the greatest book of the English language.
My top three from the second half of the 20th century are:
To Kill a Mockingbird–Great story, expertly told.
The World According to Garp–Covers the sexual mores of the time. Garp is sexually normal, everyone else is really really strange.
Rosemary’s Baby–The reality of telling the fantasy story and the amazing symbolism.
It’s very difficult to select just one book. It’s like picking an ice cream flavour, it’s depends on the mood, climate, etc.
I can narrow the list to “History of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire” by Edward Gibbon; “Ficciones” by Jorge Luis Borges; “Love in the Time of Cholera” by Gabriel García Marquez “Ten love poems and a desperate song” by Pablo Neruda; “Memoirs of Hadrian” by Marguerite Yourcenaur; “The Guns of August” by Barbara Tuchman; and “Rhymes and Legends” by Gustavo Adolfo Becquer.
If you put a gun to my head and force me to choose only one, today it would be Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges. Borges is a writer than can write a complex story in less than four pages. If you doubt me read “The Babylon Lottery”.
The big three are Gone With the Wind, The Haunting of Hill House, and Watership Down.
I’ve loved GWTW longest, since I read it at age ten. I remember thinking the first time I read it that at last I’d found a book with a protagonist that did everything I wanted her to do. And I wanted to be smart and tough and sexy, just like her. When I read it now, I have a totally different perspective, of course, and I think about how thoughtless and selfish Scarlett is, and how she ruined people’s lives, hardly noticing. It’s a great story, too.
The Haunting of Hill House is so beautifully written, and ghost stories have always appealed to me. I was in love with this book by the end of the first paragraph.
Watership Down is another beautifully written book, and the adventures of the characters are so interesting, I was riveted by the plot alone. The characters themselves …oh all right, they’re rabbits. I loved them, and their language and their mythology.
I laughed, I cried, I pumped my fist in the air and screamed “Yes!” What more could you want in a book?
You pose an interesting question Mr. Ataraxy, and since Mr. Lissener declined to address the interesting aspects of it, I’d like to do so. (Hopefully in a non-snarky manner.)
The easy way to to reconcile the seeming contradiction, is that Riddley Walker is exactly as good as “Joyce and Beckett’s masterpieces.” That explains why he wouldn’t necessary prefer their greatness to Riddley Walker’s greatness, even though “greatness” is the standard he provides for a book to qualify as his favorite. (Greatness, and being written in English.)
But that still doesn’t explain why he prefers Ridley Walker to the equally great, but older, masterpieces.
Gone With the Wind: I don’t know many people who love Scarlett the way I love Scarlett. Most people enjoy the book despite her, and I often see her listed in most-hated characters lists (for books and movies). But I read the book every other year (in fact, it’s that time again) and every time I do, I love her more. Every time I re-read it, I learn something new from it. Last time, it was that Melanie really was her only friend, and more than that, she loved Melanie just as much as Melanie loved her. And for all her bitching and lusting after Ashley, she acted like she loved Melanie. Yes, she could be selfish and destructive, but she was loyal and loving and fierce and smart. I still wish I could be just like her when I grow up.
Lonesome Dove: I re-read this one often, too. And it’s so gorgeous. When the mini-series aired, my mom recorded it, and my sister and I watched it all the freaking time. Later, when it came out on DVD, my husband bought it for me, and I still watch it fairly often. So I knew the story inside and out by the time I read the book. But of course, I didn’t know the story at all. As good as the mini-series is, it cannot even come close to the depth and the breadth of the book.
Death Comes for the Archbishop: I didn’t expect to fall in love with this book. I read it for my MA exam, so it was already more of a chore than anything else. But the book just undoes me. Willa Cather’s descriptions are so perfect. And I thought it was the most beautiful love story I’ve ever read (and I researched and found it showed up on a number of “best gay books” lists). It’s subtle and gorgeous.
Way too many! But I love reading everyone’s posts and so want to hold up my end…
**To Kill a Mockingbird **- it addresses the difficulties we have as Americans coming to grips with our history and its ugly truths, but frames it with hope. And it is very well written.
**The Great Gatsby **- it is practically haiku as a novel - efficient with only about 50,000 words, but with Fitz’s light, lyrical prose - so it strikes an impossible balance between having a fantastic air about it while being ruthless in moving the story along. It addresses the difficulties we have in America about coming to grips with our egalitarian intents vs. our inherent class-driven society - and forces me to appreciate the complexity of what it means to be alive in this type of country…
**Dune **- I suppose my equivalent to a lot of folks’ POV about LOTR - who knew that a universe this broad and vast could be created whole? I have re-read it a number of times and just love the complexity of the religious, political and technical worlds used in the book…
**The Red and the Black **- probably my equivalent of Catcher in the Rye - the protagonist spends the book trying to figure out how to get ahead in life while realizing that everyone wears masks. As a teenager, it was a touchstone to realize I wasn’t alone in seeing grown-ups that way for the first time…
