High on the List of Scams

The Modern Library’s recent and much discussed ranking of the 100 best English-language novels published in the 20th century is, like all such lists, arbitrary and arguable, and it expectably prompted noisy debate over many of the titles omitted from the list as well as some that made the cut. But a more significant point of controversy came later, when Christopher Cerf, chairman of the Modern Library board, had to concede that the whole ranking business was to a great extent “a scam.”

It turns out that the 10 literary eminences who were asked to choose the top 100--all members of the Modern Library’s editorial board--were not asked to rank the novels and so could not be credited (or blamed) for the implicit importance that the books’ positions on the list seemed to assign. Indeed, as interviews by the Washington Post discovered, some board members had not even read many of the novels that made the list.

The 10 selectors, among them the historians Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Shelby Foote and the novelists A.S. Byatt and William Styron, were given a list of 440 titles and asked to pick 100. The basis for selection--literary merit, influence, whatever--was left unclear. For example, Gore Vidal, who is a Modern Library board member and whose publisher is Random House, owner of the Modern Library, had 21 titles on the master list of 440, more than Joseph Conrad, William Faulkner and Henry James combined. Thomas Wolfe, another author of some note, failed to squeeze aboard with even one.

The board members were not asked to numerically rank the books or even required to select a full 100. One says he chose only about 37 titles, another no more than 60. Rankings were instead made by Random House executives, who seem to have arbitrarily decided where to place the apparently many books that were chosen by two, three or four of the judges.

Cerf defends this deception as “a good scam,” good presumably because it got people talking about and buying books, quite a few of which--surprise!--are published by the Modern Library. An interesting marketing ploy, no doubt, though how useful it is to readers seeking an informed consensus on the best in 20th century English-language fiction seems open to question.

We suppose the lesson in all this is that lists that purport to name the best of anything--books, movies, sushi bars--ought always to be regarded as something less than infallible or selfless. Tastes and preferences differ, and a civilized tolerance for the opinions of others is a hallmark of a decent society. Of course, any fool knows that it was indefensible to include “The Maltese Falcon” and “The Postman Always Rings Twice” on the list of best books while ignoring everything by Raymond Chandler, but that, as they say in the novel business, is another story.