The Library of the Palais Bourbon in Paris, photographed by Baptiste Roussel in September 2012, licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en in Wikipedia “Literature”
TOP 10 LITERATURE (SPECIAL MENTION)
But wait – there’s more!
I’ve counted down my Top 10 Literature (by author and literary work), albeit with my preference in literature tending towards fantasy and comedy, but there’s obviously enough literature I like for my usual twenty special mentions and beyond to honorable mentions.
As I noted for my top ten, my true taste consists of literature that is really just fantasy (including SF) or comedy and that mostly persists in my special mentions. They also mostly go by my definition of literature as literary fiction, almost entirely novels and short stories, but some of my favorite literary writing is in the form of essays and observational humor or comedy – of which we’ll see quite a few entries in my special mentions.
Anyway, here are my Top 10 Literature special mentions.
S-TIER (GOD TIER)
Cover of the Penguin Classics edition – the edition I own (fair use)
(1) AMBROSE BIERCE –
THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY (1906)
“OVERWORK, n.
A dangerous disorder affecting high public functionaries who want to go fishing.”
As I like to quip, I am the son of the Devil’s Dictionary and TV Tropes.
And as TV Tropes said of The Devil’s Dictionary – “Bierce had nothing but contempt for the mores and customs of his fellow man, and his book is full of ungentle deconstruction of what people secretly mean when they speak…In a nutshell, The Devil’s Dictionary is a dictionary that claims to present the “true” definitions of words, or rather the concepts said words supposedly represent, free of the superficial and hypocritical connotations they’ve gained throughout their years in the zeitgeist. As expected of Bitter Bierce, the vast majority of these paint even universally benevolent concepts (like “friendship”) in a very grim light, often accompanied by poems or rhymes written by Bierce under a series of bizarre and cryptic aliases. Bierce had fierce hatred for mediocrity, common morality and religion, and his frequent jabs caused a great deal of controversy”.
But seriously, The Devil’s Dictionary is one of those select few books that have etched themselves deep in my psyche – not just for its own content but for all the satirical lexicography that has followed in its footsteps.
The premise is simple enough – a satirical dictionary or lexicon in which words are defined mocking or poking fun at the social concepts or pretensions behind them. The humor is dry and some of it is unsurprisingly dated, although it is surprising how much of it remains topical, which I guess says something about human nature as enduring.
The Devil Dictionary was compiled, originally under the more accurate but less colorful title of The Cynic’s Word Book in 1906, from the instalments of it – presumably “defining” a few words at a time – published over three decades in magazines and newspapers.
I’m not the only one to have an opinion of it as god-tier – “Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Zweig said in an interview that The Devil’s Dictionary is probably the most brilliant work of satire written in America…maybe one of the greatest in all of world literature”.
H.L. Mencken praised it in his characteristic style mocking the United States – “There you will find the most brilliant stuff, first and last, that America has ever produced… the true masterpiece of the one genuine wit that These States have ever seen.”
As well he might given that he was one of its imitators with his own humorous lexicography, as was my favorite anarchist, Bob Black.
I also have to shout out Ambrose Bierce for his famous short story, An Occurrence at Owl Creek – as well as his mysterious disappearance, “one of the most famous disappearances in American literary history”, while accompanying Pancho Villa’s army during the Mexican Revolution.
RATING: S-TIER (GOD TIER – ALTHOUGH I SUPPOSE THAT SHOULD BE DEVIL TIER?)
Most cover art variants for 1984 involve a watching eye or gaze, as does this cover art by Shephard Fairey for the 2008 Penguin edition (fair use)
(2) GEORGE ORWELL –
ANIMAL FARM & 1984 (1945 & 1949)
All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Big Brother is Watching, or if you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.
The influence of George Orwell in popular culture or imagination, encapsulated in the use of Orwellian as an adjective, is difficult to overstate – as is the extent to which these two books are etched into my psyche since reading them, hence the god-tier ranking.
Of the two books, 1984 has the far greater influence, both for me and for wider popular or political culture. Don’t get me wrong – Animal Farm is a ripping yarn but it lacks the sheer memetic impact of 1984. 1984 is essentially the entirety of the basis for the use of Orwellian as an adjective “describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices” – as well as the entirety of the source for Orwell’s neologisms that have become part of the English language – “Big Brother”, “Thought Police”, Room 101″, “Newspeak”, “memory hole”, “doublethink” and “thougtcrime”.
I can’t resist quoting Archer’s one line of summary of Animal Farm, although I disagree with his spoiler alert – “It’s an allegorical novella about Stalinism by George Orwell, and spoiler alert, it sucks! Although I was talking about an actual animal farm…”
That pretty much sums it up, except the allegory is by way of beast fable, with the partly anthropomorphic (in behaviour) farm animals standing in for various people or aspects of Stalin’s Soviet Union. Three of the pigs are the most obvious as representing people – Old Major as a conflation of Marx and Lenin, Snowball as Trotsky, Napoleon as Stalin. Beyond that, the allegories are more general – Boxer as the proletariat (but perhaps also Alexei Stakhanov), and so on.
Ironically the human characters are similar to the pigs in their straightforward allegory – Farmer Jones overthrown by the animals is of course the Tsar while Frederick and Pilkington are Germany and the United States (or Western democracies) respectively.
Animal Farm doesn’t have the memetic depth of 1984 – with people usually remembering most my featured quotation, the subversion of the original commandment among the animals.
TV Tropes sums up 1984 as “one of the most horrifying and depressing codified for the dystopian genre, ever, notwithstanding its now-outdated title”. Orwell selected the title as an inversion of the last two digits of the year he wrote it in 1948, but in fairness, whether 1984 is the actual year is something the protagonist simply doesn’t know. Only the Party knows, if even it does – “the Party rewriting history certainly does not help matters”.
Even much of the setting and world-building is iconic. The book is set in London, although the United Kingdom is now prosaically called Airstrip One, part of the superpower of Oceania – essentially the former Anglo-Saxon nations of the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australasia, South Africa, give or take the rest of the Americas and some other territory.
Oceania is ruled by the Party in the most totalitarian regime in fiction or history – essentially Stalinism turned all the way up or a state “in which every single thing has become monstrously overwhelming”, despite having originated from Ingsoc (or English socialism). The actual Stalinist Soviet Union has taken over most of Eurasia to become, well, the superpower of Eurasia, while east Asia centred on China has become Eurasia, each as totalitarian as Oceania.
Life in Oceania – and presumably the other superpowers – is as bad as you’d expect. Standards of living are low due to perpetual war (with Oceania constantly shifting between fighting Eurasia alongside Eastasia as ally, or fighting Eastasia alongside Eurasia as ally). State surveillance is omnipresent and everything, including language itself, is heavily controlled and censored. Perhaps worst of all, the Party bans s€x as much as possible outside procreation – “We shall abolish the 0rgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now.”
The novel’s protagonist, Winston Smith, a member of the middle-class Outer Party, secretly thinks of rebellion before being coaxed into it by a relationship with another party member, Julia, and a chance discovery of an apparent opposition or resistance movement within the Party. with a resistance movement. Needless to say, that does not work out well for him (or Julia).
1984 is frequently compared to Brave New World, with the latter as a competing fictional model of dystopia where hedonism rather than state terror is used as a means of control. The latter seems more plausible in the contemporary world rather than the heyday of totalitarian states in the twentieth century – and contemporary political culture often conflates the two in predicting or warning about real life dystopian scenarios.
RATING: S-TIER (GOD TIER – OR IS THAT BIG BROTHER TIER?)
Cover art of the Faber & Faber editions in 1973 and 1986 – still my favorite because it features the iconic pig’s head on a stick
(3) WILLIAM GOLDING –
LORD OF THE FLIES (1954)
“Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn’t you?” said the head…”You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you?”
I’m fond of quipping that I’m working on my own version, Lord of the Files, set in my office.
As per TV Tropes, “a plane full of British schoolboys crashes on a deserted island, and the darkness of humanity spills forth as they turn against each other.”
I don’t know why they had to crash on a deserted island for that. Frankly, I think my school could have just stayed put and we would have been hunting each other within a week with a little push. Which is no doubt why they teach it in school – “it is very popular for English literature assignments in high school…thanks to its themes about morality and authority, and its symbolism, which is extremely easy to spot, but open to many different interpretations.”
Those interpretations are usually proposed along the lines of protagonist Ralph representing reason, his sidekick “Piggy” representing science, Simon representing intuition, and antagonist Jack representing “savagery, violence, and power”. Needless to say, it doesn’t work out too well for the Ralph, Piggy, and Simon.
The most iconic element is the Beast, identified by Simon with the titular Lord of the Flies or Beelzebub, with its iconic representation as the pig’s head mounted on a stick that features on my favorite variations of cover art for the book – and with whom Simon has the imaginary dialogue I quoted at the start. Apart from Simon, the boys believe the beast to be an actual beast in the forest with the pig’s head as an offering to it, but the pig’s head tells Simon otherwise – that there is no beast except that within the boys themselves.
RATING: S-TIER (GOD TIER – OR IS THAT BEAST-TIER?)
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
The Cask of Amontillado illustration by Arthur Rackham for Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination published in 1935 (public domain)
(4) EDGAR ALLAN POE –
“THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO” (1846)
This is why I don’t drink wine – because I don’t want to be chained up in some dank cellar, at least not without some kink involved.
On the other hand, I do have a cask of Amontillado or two waiting for some people. You know who you are. You’re on my list.
Edgar Allan Poe was one sick puppy in American literature and we love him for it.
“The inventor of the modern horror story and the modern detective story, as well as an early influence on the science fiction genre”.
He also believed that the perfect subject for poetry is the death of a beautiful young woman (because it married the “most poetical subject”— Beauty— with the “most poetical emotion”— Melancholy)
In this he was inspired by the deaths of numerous loved ones. The last including those by his own hand. Just kidding. Or am I? You read his stories and tell me. In fairness, some of those may have been when they came back from their graves to get their revenge. Poe’s like that.
And yes – this is my favorite Poe story, even if I can’t help but always remember it as The Cask of Armadillo. I can’t really tell you what I like about “The Cask of Amontillado”, but I can show you. It’s down this way, through these dank catacombs…
Art by George Herriman for archy and mehitabel (public domain)
(5) DON MARQUIS –
archy & mehitabel (1927)
*
“i look back on my life
and it seems to me
just one damned kitten
after another”
*
And now some light fantasy – and poetry – creeps into my stories and works of literature, literally in the form of cockroach protagonist archy. Yes, that lower case is intended.
In archy and mehitabel, archy is no ordinary cockroach, but a reincarnated (human) free verse or ‘vers libre’ poet, writing his verse-stories each night by laboriously hurling himself at the keys of a typewriter in the newspaper office. Since he is unable to also operate the shift key, all of his verse is written without capitalization or punctuation.
However, archy also finds himself the poet-chronicler of mehitabel, my favorite feline of fiction (with an archetypal feline personality) – alley cat, dancer and self-identified reincarnation of Cleopatra.
2016 Penguin edition as tie-in with the film, featuring the titular short story and other works by Thurber
(6) JAMES THURBER –
THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY (1942)
“Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.”
James Thurber – “American cartoonist, writer, humorist, journalist and playwright”, as well as prolific contributor to The New York magazine.
Speaking of Thurber as cartoonist, as much as I love Thurber’s cartoons, I have to admit he wasn’t the best artist – as he himself admitted about his “lumpy” art style, joking to parents who submitted the art of children as better that indeed it was but they just hadn’t been through as much.
However, it was the dry absurdist humor of Thurber’s cartoons that shone through the art, as it did through his writing. “Many of Thurber’s fictions…deal with the fundamental conflict between men and women, and the romantic vs. practical mindset represented by each, respectively. His works are also colored by his liberal individualist views, in a time when creeping nationalism was threatening personal freedom in many parts of the world — some not entirely remote — and are also characterized by a deep sympathy for animals, particularly dogs.” Some of my favorite works by Thurber are the portraits he wrote for his family dogs.
If there’s one work by Thurber that stands above the rest, it’s his short story of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, which “recounts a day in the life of a man who daydreams about heroic adventures as he goes about his mundane existence”. It has been adapted as – or loosely inspired – two films, one in 1947 starring Danny Kaye, and the other in 2013 starring Ben Stiller. I haven’t seen either, but I’d lean towards the first given Kaye’s comedic performance in The Court Jester.
Cover of The Vintage Mencken, published by Knopf in 1991 – one of the Mencken collections (along with A Mencken Chrestomathy) I own (fair use)
(7) H.L. MENCKEN –
“THE ANGLO-SAXON” (1923)
“No one in this world…has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby”
The “Sage of Baltimore” and the “American Nietzsche” – writer, journalist, essayist, critic, satirist, “acerbic critic of government, religion, and popular culture”, “one of the most influential American writers and stylists of the early 20th century as well as one of its leading cynics and sceptics”.
In other words, one of those great gadflies whom I like so much – and for whom sacred cows make the best hamburger.
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
There’s a certain art to being a provocateur like Mencken – one has to be a consummate prose stylist. Prose style counts for a lot with me. I always admire a good prose stylist, even when I don’t agree with them – and Mencken was one of the best, famous for his “caustic wit and bitingly sardonic prose”, or in other words, mastery of snark.
“The term Menckenian has entered multiple dictionaries to describe anything of or pertaining to Mencken, including his combative rhetorical and prose styles”.
If that wasn’t enough to endear him to you, “Mencken viewed the freedom to drink as critical liberty and considered alcohol as one of humanity’s greatest inventions” – of which, I add, margarita is the pinnacle of human achievement.
“His humor and satire owed much to Ambrose Bierce and Mark Twain”, with turns of phrase that “evoked the erudite cynicism and rapier sharpness of language displayed by Ambrose Bierce in his darkly satiric The Devil’s Dictionary”.
There’s much to choose from for Mencken but if anything was the peak of his provocations and prose stylings, it was his essay “The Anglo-Saxon” skewering the contemporary pretensions of the Anglophone nations, notably Britain and the United States. It takes a certain skill to take all three of Britain, the United States and the Confederate States of America in their various wars on opposing sides where at least one of them fought their way to victory – and still lambast them all for their cowardice and military inferiority.
Cover of The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl published by Penguin – the edition I own (fair use)
(8) ROALD DAHL –
SWITCH B!TCH (1974)
“I don’t write horror stories, I write funny stories. I think they’re funny, anyway.”
Roald Dahl is best known for his children’s novels but started – and continued – as a writer of short stories for adults, interestingly originating from writing about and stories inspired by his military service as a literal ace pilot for the Royal Air Force in the Second World War.
While on the subject of his military service, Dahl lived a life out of an adventure novel. When his active service as a pilot ended when he was wounded in action, he was assigned as an assistant air attaché to the British Embassy in Washington DC – from which he managed to get involved with the British Security Co-Ordination, essentially a quasi-espionage organization. That saw him as something of a real-life James Bond, including being an “utterly shameless womanizer” – and may even have been the inspiration for the character, as he worked with Ian Fleming. Dahl wrote the script for the Bond film You Only Live Twice – and it shows in characteristic stylistic traits. However, Dahl’s own life, particularly that utterly shameless womanizing, was probably more the inspiration for his character Uncle Oswald.
If you think his children’s novels are dark, then oh boy – I have something to tell you about his stories for adults. You can tell them apart because his stories for adults are slightly darker with slightly more risqué subject matter.
“His style is exemplified by black comedy…His works for adults are almost universally cynical and pessimistic about human nature”.
There’s so much Road Dahl to choose from, even confined to his short stories for adults, but I’ll go with this short collection of four stories, originally published by Playb0y magazine, which was also my introduction to Dahl’s stories for adults – I had, after all, grown up reading his novels for children.
And I’ll go with the titular two short stories – well, almost titular for the story The Great Switcheroo (where two husbands plot to “switch” wives), but the other story is indeed titular from the other word in the title of the collection, with bonus points of having his recurring character Uncle Oswald as a protagonist in a plot involving an irresistible aphrodisiac.
Iconic cover of the first edition reproduced for its 50th anniversary, featuring the cartoon art of Thompson’s usual collaborator as illustrator, Ralph Steadman. It was a highlight seeing The Simpsons use these cartoon figures in a throwaway visual gag driving away from Vegas as Homer Simpson and Ned Flanders drive to it
(9) HUNTER S. THOMPSON –
FEAR & LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS (1971)
“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold…And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats”
One of my favorite opening lines of any book. Also a book that gave me my role model of a lawyer – Dr Gonzo, always referred to as “my attorney”.
And what drugs began to take hold, you ask? Well, take your pick…
“The trunk of the car looked like a mobile police narcotics lab. We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug-collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.”
This was ostensibly to do a story on “assignment for Sports Illustrated to write a 250-word photograph caption” on a motorcycle race in Las Vegas. What Thompson wrote instead was a manuscript of 2,500 words, which was “aggressively rejected” by the magazine but became the basis for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, including a second trip to Vegas to attend, ironically enough, a drug-enforcement conference. I think they packed more drugs in the trunk for that.
What emerged was the psychedelic odyssey of the book’s subtitle, A Savage Journey into the Heart of the American Dream, with Thompson in his thinly disguised persona as Raoul Duke. Not pictured or captioned – the motorcycle race he was originally paid to write about in Las Vegas. Just kidding – I remember it briefly in there somewhere, glimpsed through the desert dust swirling as they try to find it. They do manage to attend that drug-enforcement conference, however.
Which pretty much encapsulates the gonzo journalism of Thompson’s creation – writing the hell what you feel like but with snark and style.
I liked the film as well, starring Johnny Depp (who befriended Thompson in real life) and directed by Terry Gilliam.
“His literary influence, outlandish persona and unique look (particularly the aviator cool shades and the ubiquitous cigarette in a TarGard holder) led him to become a subject of affectionate parody…Characters based on Thompson include Spider Jerusalem from Transmetropolitan, Uncle Duke from Doonesbury, Duke Rollo from Aberrant, Col. Hunter Gathers on The Venture Bros., and Dale Gribble from King of the Hill”.
If you hadn’t guessed so far, “Thompson had a lifelong love for alcohol, drugs, and firearms, and an iconoclastic contempt for authority. He often remarked: “I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.”
Cover art of various editions, including the one I own (fair use)
(10) P.J. O’ROURKE –
THE BACHELOR’S HOME COMPANION (1987)
*
“Bachelors know all about parties. In fact, a good bachelor is a living, breathing party all by himself. At least that is what my girlfriend said when she found the gin bottles under the couch. I believe her exact words were, “You’re a disgusting, drunken mess.” And that’s a good description of a party, if it’s done right.”
I’ve decided to commemorate P. J. O’Rourke passing away on 15 February 2022 with special mention in my Top 10 Literature, at least until I catch up with all his books. It’s what he would have wanted. Actually, what I think he would have wanted was a raucous, raunchy wake, but it’s the next best thing.
Seriously, though, I enjoyed P. J. O’Rourke as the leading American political humorist and satirist of our time, typically from a self-described “libertarian conservative” perspective – which largely translates as mocking everything and everyone, including himself.
My favorite remains this book that (mostly) steered clear of political humor – as well as my introduction to him. It was a gift for my own bachelor pad and has since become my bible of housekeeping.
Spoiler alert – you do not want this book to be your bible of housekeeping, as funny as it is.
Original cover art of the first edition in 1925 – “Celestial Eyes” by Francis Cugat (public domain image), used in subsequent editions
(11) F. SCOTT FITZGERALD –
THE GREAT GATSBY (1925)
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning —
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Ah, yes – the orgastic future, because if there’s one thing I want my future to be, it’s orgastic. Also, those lines pretty much sum up The Great Gatsby.
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald – the quintessential novelist of the Jazz Age (which he named as such), who wrote the quintessential novel of the Jazz Age with The Great Gatsby. Ironically for a novel that revolved around the titular character throwing lavishly expensive parties, it didn’t throw any parties of its own – it was a commercial failure, selling fewer than 23,000 copies in its first year. However, it received generally favorable reviews, while both it and Fitzgerald’s reputation have continued to rise – “with The Great Gatsby, emerging as a strong contender for the Great American Novel”.
“F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic social critique, in which the American Dream of Rags to Riches is portrayed as a noble illusion and millionaires as self-absorbed, emotionally bankrupt rich b!tches…frank but wistful consideration of idealism vs human nature”.
I’m just going to come out and say it – I like Gatsby, the only character in the book (apart perhaps from narrator Nick Carraway) who has some idealistic belief in anything but himself, even if that belief was misplaced and he effectively sacrificed his life to protect the object of his belief, Daisy Buchanan.
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made”.
Yes, even if Gatsby was a gangster or front-man for gangsters, bootlegging, and moonshine.
Literary critic Edmund Wilson described Fitzgerald’s style: “romantic, but also cynical; he is bitter as well as ecstatic; astringent as well as lyrical. He casts himself in the role of playboy, yet at the playboy he incessantly mocks…(the) gift for turning language into something iridescent and surprising”.
2006 Penguin classics edition (fair use)
(12) JOHN STEINBECK –
THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1939)
Okies on a road trip to California! Also, a proposed contender for the Great American Novel – not bad for a novel that is arguably the ultimate road movie plot. Not so sure about that weird breast-feeding scene at the end, though.
Oh, who am I kidding? I’d have all road movies end with weird breast-feeding scenes – and start with them or have them throughout, really.
The Grapes of Wrath is summed up in its famous quote of Highway 66 as “the mother road” of an almost chosen people to a half-promised land in California:
“Highway 66 is the main migrant road, 66 – the long concrete path across the country, weaving gently up and down on the map, from the Mississippi to Bakersfield – over the red lands and the gray lands, twisting up into the mountains, crossing the Divide and down into the bright and terrible desert, and across the desert to the mountains again, and into the rich California valleys, 66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking ownership, from the desert’s slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there. From all of these the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight.”
Steinbeck was a quintessentially Californian writer, which makes it perhaps stranger that he has always struck me as a Biblical writer, albeit in a secular sense. By that, I’m talking Old Testament, where God’s wrath is always just around the corner and anything good only happens, if at all, on payment or penalty of sacrifice – in blood, sweat, or tears (or some combination of all or any of them).
It reminds me of an old gag about the punchline if Hemingway told the joke why the chicken crossed the road – to die, in the rain – although Steinbeck would probably have it lay an egg first.
“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.”
Many have noted the Biblical or Christian imagery in The Grapes of Wrath – that breast-feeding scene replicates a pieta for one – from the title onwards. Yes, I know the title is from The Battle Hymn of the Republic, but those in turn refer to the Book of Apocalypse with “the great winepress of the wrath of God”.
“John Steinbeck’s works have become popular school study media and are still read today, traumatizing generations of American teens” – particularly The Grapes of Wrath, although schools tend to skip in-depth discussion of that breast-feeding scene.
Harper Collins 50th anniversary edition (fair use)
(13) LUKE RHINEHART –
THE DICE MAN (1971)
“Anybody can be anybody.”
A novel by George Cockcroft under the pen name – or perhaps persona as the novel’s protagonist – Luke Rhinehart, a psychiatrist who gives himself up to literally living his life by the roll of a die, somewhat like Batman villain Two-Face with the flip of a coin but even more so. It’s a wild ride and is generally regarded as a black comedy cult classic.
Arguably something of a one-book wonder, as his other books never replicated the cult status or commercial success of The Dice Man – and indeed, he revisited the same premise in a number of his other books. However, he did write a more conventional novel which I’m going to shout out here – Long Voyage Back in 1983, still one of my favorite post-apocalyptic books set after a nuclear war.
Cover of the paperback edition I own (fair use)
(14) THOMAS KENEALLY –
SCHINDLER’S ARK (1982)
“Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire”.
I assume this needs no introduction, given its adaptation by Steven Spielberg as Schindler’s List – a film often “listed as one of the greatest films ever made”.
The only introduction might be to its original title as published by Aussie author Keneally – Schindler’s Ark. I like to quip that the change to Schindler’s List was because viewers wouldn’t be able to grasp the ark in the title as metaphor from Noah’s ark and instead be looking for a literal ark, the Ark of the Covenant from Spielberg’s film Raiders of the Lost Ark – “where’s the Ark?!”
“Schindler’s Ark is a historical fiction” – the historical part being the actual people and events, particularly the titular Oskar Schindler, its “unlikely hero…saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust”, the fictional part being the “dialogue and scenes added by the author where exact details are unknown”.
2002 Penguin edition – the edition I own (fair use)
(15) DONNA TARTT –
THE SECRET HISTORY (1992)
“Pulitzer-Prize winning American Neo-Romanticist author of upper middle class Southern background…Tartt’s novels are devoted to the themes of guilt and beauty, and focus heavily on the tumultuous thoughts and feelings of her protagonists. It might not be inaccurate to call her literary fiction’s equivalent of The Smiths”.
“The Secret History” was her debut novel, inspired by her time as a student at Bennington College – suggesting to me that she killed someone there, because she writes so convincingly of a plot to cover up a homicide.
The moral of the story – don’t do Classics at college.
“The novel follows the adventures of a few upper class Classics students who inadvertently commit manslaughter and try to hide the details from their new acquaintance, the story’s lower middle class narrator who idolizes their culture and lifestyle…Left to deal with the consequences of an accidental murder, the group slowly starts to plan a deliberate one.”
What would Dionysus do? Can I interest you in an experience of our lord and savior, Dionysus? No, seriously, it all starts to go wrong when the group of Classics students try to replicate a Dionysian revel – or more precisely, it reveals the rot that was already within them.
Interestingly, that brief invocation of fantasy earned it a thinly based entry in the Encyclopedia of Fantasy – “The Secret History as slight fantasy interest in that its plot hinges on the successful attempt by a group of Classics students to recreate the requisite conditions for a bacchanal…During this they see the god Dionysus; the female among them is perceived, even by herself, as a deer, and is hunted; and they unwittingly tear to pieces an innocent bystander. That this is not merely a fantasy of perception is indicated by the fact that, afterwards, one of their number displays the bite-marks of an unknown monster”.
Although as a Dionysian, I’m not sure I’m a fan of its anti-Dionysian agitprop
Cover of The First Rumpole Omnibus collection by Penguin Books – which I own
(16) JOHN MORTIMER –
RUMPOLE OF THE BAILEY (1978 – 2007)
One of two special mention entries that originated as television screenplays subsequently adapted as books by their writer – ironically for both, I read the books first, so they had the greater impact.
In the case of Rumpole (heh), the books are from John Mortimer adapting his legal drama series (aired from 1975 to 1992, although the books continued with their own stories after the original scripts) and its titular protagonist, Horace Rumpole, barrister at law. Contrary to real life where the true heroes prosecute, Rumpole is robustly always for the defense.
On the other hand, I like that Rumpole typically tries to avoid arguing legal points and his trials are usually won on his knowledge of particular facts or cross-examination.
“Rumpole’s unhealthy personal habits, disdain for societal expectation, and general sharp-tongued iconoclasm earn him few marks among his peers or family. Despite his successes, he is something of an embarrassment to his class-conscious chambers. At home, he has to endure the well-meaning haranguing of his wife, semi-affectionately referred to by Horace as “She Who Must Be Obeyed”, a reference to the H. Rider Haggard novel She; one of Rumpole’s simple vices is a love of English literature.”
That last usually involves Rumpole quoting poetry, typically from his well-thumbed Oxford Book of English Verse from his schooldays.
Despite it being almost impossible to picture Rumpole without seeing Australian actor Leo McKern in the role, I remain far more familiar with the books as opposed to the TV series, of which I’ve only seen a few episodes.
The 1989 omnibus paperback editions published by the BBC – the editions I own
(17) ANTHONY JAY & JONATHAN LYNN –
YES, MINISTER / YES, PRIME MINISTER (1989)
The other special mention entry that originated from television series screenplays subsequently adapted as books – and again where I read the books first.
It might be surprising that a series so defined by its performances – particularly that of its leading trio – would adapt so well to books but writers Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn did a sterling job, arguably improving on their scripts by adding further detail.
The TV series of Yes, Minister (1980-1984) was a political satire that revolved around the trio of cabinet minister of the Department of Administrative Affairs (the bureaucracy’s bureaucracy), Jim Hacker (played by Paul Eddington), the permanent secretary who really runs the department, Sir Humphrey Appleby (played by Nigel Hawthorne), and Hacker’s Private Secretary Bernard Woolley (played by Derek Fowlds).
“The episodes focus on Hacker determinedly attempting, for political and occasionally idealistic reasons, to rock the bureaucratic boat by introducing some popular (and occasionally necessary) change, with Sir Humphrey just as determined to make sure that nothing comes of it.”
“Hovering between them is Bernard Woolley…Hacker’s still idealistic and ingenuous Private Secretary, torn between his loyalty to Hacker (his political master) and his loyalty to Sir Humphrey (his civil service superior)”. When asked by Hacker whose side he’s on when the chips are down, Woolley memorably replied that it’s his job to make sure the chips stay up.
The TV series of Yes, Prime Minister (1986-1988) obviously involved all three being promoted, with Hacker ascending to Prime Minister. The book adaptation drily includes an editor’s note – to an observation of one of the characters that there’s been a less qualified candidate for that position than Hacker – that extensive research suggests they must have been referring to the Marquis of Bute.
The book adapts the scripts by adopting the device of being the published diaries of Jim Hacker – supplemented by additional civil service memoranda, correspondence, file notes and interviews for scenes from the TV series not involving Hacker.
Covers of the trilogy in the edition I own (fair use)
(18) VALERIO MANFREDI –
ALEXANDER TRILOGY (1998)
Italian historian, writer, essayist, archaeologist and journalist – but he’s here for his pulp fiction novels of the classical world, particularly his Alexander Trilogy, not to be confused with Mary Renault’s Alexander Trilogy.
The three books of the trilogy are Child of a Dream, The Sands of Ammon, and The Ends of the Earth.
Yes – it’s about Alexander the Great.
And yes – it does kind of gloss over some of the more sordid details, but they were all Persian lies anyway.
Child of the Dream takes Alexander from his birth and childhood through to his ascension to the throne after his father’s assassination.
The Sands of Ammon – well, that’s obvious, isn’t it? It takes Alexander through his conquest of the Persian Empire to the Oracle of Ammon.
The Ends of the Earth – well, that’s obvious too, taking Alexander through to the end of his conquest (and the titular ends of the earth).
I have seen the film The Last Legion based on his book but have not read the latter – the film at least is a fun spin on the fall of the western Roman Empire, the last emperor and the titular last legion, and the misty origins of Arthurian legend.
Covers of the Penguin paperback editions – that I own (fair use)
(19) CONN IGGULDEN –
NERO TRILOGY (2024-2026)
More historical pulp fiction – an entry I might transfer to special mentions reserved for cult and pulp but for the moment I’ll leave it here.
Iggulden is known for historical fiction (and fantasy), ever since his Emperor series about Julius Caesar and Augustus.
I happened across him from his most recent historical fiction series, his Nero trilogy – Nero in 2024, Tyrant in 2025, and Inferno in 2026. Ironically, that hot slice of crazy, Nero’s mother Agrippina, is effectively the protagonist of the first book but she’s always entertaining.
Cover of Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying – Grafton 1976 paperback edition, the edition I own (secondhand) (fair use)
(20) ER0TIC LITERATURE
Bow-chicka-wow-wow!
Well, you must have seen this one coming (heh), given my fetish for reserving my final or twentieth special mention for a kinky (or kinkier) entry.
And it doesn’t get much kinkier than er0tic literature or fiction, which has a history going back as long as there has been literature or fiction – and which could well be the subject of its own top ten.
For now, I’ll go with Erica Jong’s classic Fear of Flying as representative novel for this entry – “Jong employed psychological and humorous descriptive elements, rich cultural and literary references, frank depictions of and ruminations on s€x.”
Although to be honest, I recall it doing more of the latter – ruminating, that is – than the former frank depictions. Funnily enough, the thing I recall most is her catalogue of literary love duos, such as John Keats and Fanny Brawne. Well, that and the whole zipless thing for which the novel is famed.
