100 Best Novels (A View from the UK)

By chance, I recently came across a list of “100 Novels Everyone Should Read” compiled by the UK publication “The Telegraph.  Putting together such lists and then arguing about them is mostly harmless fun.

Looking at the list, my first thought was “What have I missed?” and my second thought was “How did the Russian XIX century do?”

As for the first, I think I would get at least a C+ (having missed 98, 92, 90, 80, 79, 75, 74, 71, 69, 48, 46, 45, 44, 40 27, 26, 25, 20, 15, 7, 4--making it 21 out of 100) but I would then go and argue with the professor pointing our how English- and XX century—centric this whole list was.   The professor would probably wear a tweed jacket and throw me out of his office.

The Russian XIX century didn’t do so well in being represented on the list.  We only have “Eugene Onegin” at 88 (a scandal), “Crime and Punishment” at 66 (not even the best book of the author, at least as compared to “Brothers Karamazov), and “Anna Karenina” at 3^rd which is well deserved (though “Moby Dick at 2^nd is not).

Let just note as an aside that Nabokov’s “Lolita” comes at 54.  Its author would be very happy to edge out Dostoevsky whom he detested but he would have been quite embarrassed by being placed so far ahead of “Eugene Onegin” which he himself had placed alongside works of Homer and Shakespeare.

And speaking of  Homer, let me close with astonishment that by far the best and the most influential novel (out of which most of the novels on list sprung) wasn’t even included.  I mean, of course, “The Odyssey”.   I will have more to say about the continuing relevancy of “The Odyssey” as confirmed by certain events that took place in a Lvov prison in early days of WW2.

Vronsky’s Rules

Vronsky, the dashing cavalry officer lover of Anna, is one of the main protagonists of “Anna Karenina.”  Most readers of the book, however baffled they might be by Anna’s choices and behavior, feel great deal of sympathy for her.  This is not the case for Vronsky.  In part because Tolstoy makes him an instrument of Anna’s destruction but in part  because Tolstoy just makes him unsympathetic in general.  Take the case of Vronsky Rules:

VRONSKY’S life was particularly happy in that he had a code of principles, which defined with unfailing certitude what he ought and what he ought not to do. This code of principles covered only a very small circle of contingencies, but then the principles were never doubtful, and Vronsky, as he never went outside that circle, had never had a moment’s hesitation about doing what he ought to do. These principles laid down as invariable rules: that one must pay a cardsharper, but need not pay a tailor; that one must never tell a lie to a man, but one may to a woman; that one must never cheat any one, but one may a husband; that one must never pardon an insult, but one may give one and so on.

There was nothing strange about these rules, except that Vronsky made them explicit.  But implicitly, many men of Vronsky’s social standing, lived by them.  But others did not.  Perhaps this could be one of the dividing lines among Tolstoy’s protagonists .  Thus, Stiva, Anna’s brother, wouldn’t have any problems with the rules but Levin would.  Anatol Kuragin, from “War and Peace” wouldn’t but Andrei Bolkonsky definitely would.  

No time to read anymore?

David McCullough is unimpressed.

“Once upon a time in the dead of winter in the Dakota Territory, Theodore Roosevelt took off in a makeshift boat down the Little Missouri River in pursuit of a couple of thieves who had stolen his prized rowboat. After several days on the river, he caught up and got the draw on them with his trusty Winchester, at which point they surrendered. Then Roosevelt set off in a borrowed wagon to haul the thieves cross-country to justice. They headed across the snow-covered wastes of the Badlands to the railhead at Dickinson, and Roosevelt walked the whole way, the entire 40 miles. It was an astonishing feat, what might be called a defining moment in Roosevelt’s eventful life. But what makes it especially memorable is that during that time, he managed to read all of Anna Karenina. I often think of that when I hear people say they haven’t time to read.” 

Teddy Roosevelt on Anna Karenina

Yesterday there was a post about Teddy Roosevelt's response to Russian literature. It’s worth quoting Teddy at length (from a letter to his younger sister dated April 12^th 1886):

“I took Anna Karenina along for the trip and have read it through with very great interest. I hardly know whether to call it a very bad book or not. There are two entirely distinct stories in it; the connection between Levine’s story and Anna’s is of the slightest and need have existed at all. Levine’s and Kitty’s history is not only very powerfully and naturally told, but it is also perfectly healthy. Anna’s most certainly is not, though of great and sad interest; she is portrayed as being a prey to the most violent passions, and subject to melancholia, and her reasoning power is so unbalanced that she could not possibly be described otherwise than as in a certain sense insane. Her character is curiously contradictory; bad as she was however she was not to me nearly as repulsive as her brother Stiva.”

For all its worth, I also like the story of Levin and Kitty much more than that of Anna and Vronsky. But I don’t think that Anna was insane. Now Adele H. certainly was. Her story is told in a great movie but a very sad one. It’s about a woman loving too much and losing everything, including her mind. Would I know where to draw a line? I would not.