America’s worst books?

The American Book Review has taken stock of literature and come up with its Top 40 Bad Books. The list targets some big, popular favorites -- F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic “The Great Gatsby,” Richard Yates’ “Revolutionary Road,” the James Bond novel “Casino Royale” by Ian Fleming and Cormac McCarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses.” Really? If they’re the worst, what’s the best?

Most books were selected by university professors. On the one hand, these are some of America’s best-read people, so we should be able to trust their analyses. On the other hand, their analysis sometimes reads like this: “Badness enters the nonparodic historical novel when an author overtly uses historically situated people, places, and cultures as mirrors, and denies their difference.” That’s part of a critique of Toni Morrison’s “A Mercy,” E.L. Doctorow’s “The March” and Ian McEwan’s “Saturday” -- whatever those writers’ offenses, their sentences are certainly more direct and graceful.

The list itself is slightly misnamed -- it has 40 responses about bad books, some of which list several offenders, while others refuse to name any. If there is any constant, it’s that the best books that appear on their worst-book list are subject to the most unreasonable critiques.

Christine Granados of Texas A&M University writes: “When I read what I consider to be a bad book, I notice that it is usually written by an arrogant person. Cormac McCarthy’s ‘All the Pretty Horses’ (1992) comes immediately to mind. I think of it as a romance novel for men, his trilogy included. Like all good romance novel writers, McCarthy uses clichés and derivative characters to sell millions of copies.”

Perhaps Granados has met McCarthy; if not, it’s hard to figure how or why she’s decided he’s arrogant. I’m not sure what is wrong with a romance novel for men -- Cervantes’ “Don Quixote” would fall into this category too. I’m also not at all convinced that McCarthy, a longtime purveyor of literary fiction, had any formula for selling millions of copies.

At least Granados got into the text of the book. The same cannot be said for Tom LeClair of the University of Cincinnati, who condemned “The Great Gatsby” based only on a distant recollection.

There is one good lesson in the enterprise. Sophia A. McClennen of Pennsylvania State University doesn’t name a bad book; she writes, “In almost every class, I teach a bad book, an awful, poorly written, sometimes sexist, racist, reactionary book.” She doesn’t tell her students, though -- they read it on the syllabus and come into her class, disturbed, upset and engaged. That’s a bad book -- put to good use.

-- Carolyn Kellogg