Carolyn Kellogg, who is obviously a smart lady or she wouldn't have this gig, recently posted on the LATimes Book blog about Dick Meyer's "100 Years, 100 Novels, One List" opinion piece on NPR.com. Beneath a truly tacky and reductive accompanying image (edited with just as juvenile a sensibility above) that makes Kellogg's piece seem more silly then it should be made to, her complaint is spelled out: there aren't enough women on the list. There's 7.
Who isn't there: no Flannery O'Connor, no A.S. Byatt, no Annie Dillard, no Margaret Mitchell, no Katherine Ann Porter, no Isak Dinesen, no Gertrude Stein, no Joyce Carol Oates, no Margaret Atwood, no Edith Wharton, no Zora Neale Hurston, no Eudora Welty, no Rebecca West, no Annie Proulx, no Nadine Gordimer, no Doris Lessing, no Simone de Beauvoir.
I could never lament the absence of Zora Neale Hurston on a list, the woman who wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God, one of the few books along with The Bean Trees- the most politically correct book you will ever read (Indians, adoption, ethnic people, women, there must have been domestic abuse- I can't remember)-- that makes me tear my hair out for having spent time reading. And writing five paragraph hamburger essays on.
Kellogg also points out that a lot of books on the list are "the kind that were assigned to be read in school, which indicates a kind of incurious reader to me." This is an unfair assumption. For the rest of us, say, those of us who attended LA-area public schools, only a handful of these were assigned for reading, and that's if they were taught at all. I was at least lucky enough to go through the joke that is the Honors/AP English track in high school, and only 9 of those were assigned, and only 1 on the Miss "missing" list (Hurston.) Kellogg has no way of knowing how a reader came to certain books. Frankly, you have to be a pretty curious reader to read most of the books assigned in school, especially in light of the mediocre quality of teacher-hires tend to be, along with lesson and classroom quality. Kellogg has no business making anyone ashamed for coming to a book through school. No matter how dismal the state of education is going to be, if she is going to disparage the quality of readers coming out of it, she should better spend her time trying to rectify the situation instead of harping on gender politics.
Meyer's list, which he states was formed around the concept of "how much the book hit me, moved me, made me see — and how it stuck with me" is fine because it is his list. A comment on Kellogg's piece makes a good point: "I'm afraid your article comes off like you're complaining that someone else's favorite color is green, when your favorite color is blue." Maybe Kellogg is trying to make her blog (or job) more relevant, but the fact that it is such a cop-out complaint (women! as Father Jack would say) makes it just more of the same. She should make her own list and give not just names but specific books. Not only will this make someone take her article more seriously, it will interest someone in actually reading the book. I agree that Katherine Anne Porter is a fine author, and Ship of Fools is a great book. In fact, I would put it on a "Best Of" list, but I have no way of knowing what Kellog thinks, or what book she is refering to. More importantly, what book am I missing out on? Right now, the reader just glosses over the usually gender bias complaint because it is the usual names. The inclusion of missing male authors, again as opposed to specific books, indicates that she is just picking a fight without providing specifics (again, which Henry James book would make the list?) If she makes a list, it will be just as fun to take a look at, and it will be just about as much as Meyer's- a list of his favorite books- means. Anyway, when did "Best of" lists actually mean anything? The fact that it is a group opinion compressed into one long list has always indicated that to take them seriously indicates you're taking yourself too seriously.
I just like finding out how dumb I am by seeing what 5 or 6 books I've actually read. That's the fun part. (I've read a lot of books. But remember, there are like 80 Hardy Boys books, and 15 Rogue Squadron books, and I totally count the Lord of the Rings as 3 separate books.)
The ones I've read: (You can see the complete list here. I've starred the ones I would add to my best of list.)
2. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
4. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad*
8. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov*
10. A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
11. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
12. U.S.A. Trilogy,John Dos Passos
14. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee*
16. All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren*
43. A Soldier of the Great War, Mark Helprin (I'm reading this one now.)
44. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler*
46. Charlotte's Web, E.B. White*
48. The Secret Sharer, Joseph Conrad*
55. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John LeCarre
72. Lord of the Flies, William Golding
75. A Confederacy of Dunces,John Kennedy Toole*
76. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,Ken Kesey
80. A Fan's Notes,Frederick Exley
84. The Maltese Falcon,Dashiell Hammett
88. Seize the Day, Saul Bellow
94. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,John le Carre*
99. The Godfather, Mario Puzo*
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