THE BEST TEARJERKERS (according to the Penguin List)

Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck
The Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton
Notre-Dame De Paris
Victor Hugo
Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy
The Old Curiosity Shop
Charles Dickens

Best Tear-Jerkers (according to Semicolon)
Not Steinbeck. I just think Steinbeck is sordid. And unfortunately, I’ve never read The Old Curiosity Shop, so I’ve never cried for Little Nell. I don’t remember Jude the Obscure, and I’ve never finished Notre Dame de Paris. I’ll go with Age of Innocence, so that leaves me four slots to fill with my own tear-jerking choices.

I’ve already used A Tale of Two Cities and Les Miserables and several other tragic novels in other categories. I could list dog stories like Old Yeller or Where the Red Fern Grows, but since I lack the animal-loving gene, those aren’t really tear-jerkers for me. So I’ll start with a different animal story that does pull out the emotion from me.

Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White. If you don’t cry when Charlotte . . . Well, you’re lying if you say you don’t at least feel sad.

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. If we’re talking tragic, this book is tragic. I will never forget the line spoken by a black priest in the novel, “I have only one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find that we are turned to hating.”

Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Bittersweet ending.

Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. So. tragic. When all those doomed Confederates march across that open field in Pickett’s Charge, and when General Hood in the hopital after losing his arm says his boys could have taken that hill, and when Pickett yells at Lee, “General, I have no division!”

“Armistead turned away, walked back to his brigade. Now for the first time, at just the wrong time, the acute depression hit him a blow to the brain. Out of the sleepiness the face of despair. He remembered Longstreet’s tears. He thought: a desperate thing. But he formed the brigade.

Bridge to Terebithia by Katherine Paterson. A very sad book for children. Can children cry more easily and without embarrassment than adults can? Is that why children’s authors are not afraid to evoke emotion, whereas authors of adult books are afraid of being accused of creating melodrama or maudlin sentimentality?

What book brings the tears to your eyes? What is it about a book or a movie that can create a sense of tragedy?

Let’s combine another two categories from the Penguin list since my dictionary tells me that rebellion is open resistance to established authority and subversion is an attempt to undermine the authority of an established system or institution. I get the difference, but if I combine them. I get another category to make up later.

THE BEST SUBVERSION (according to the Penguin List)
1984
George Orwell
The Monkey Wrench Gang
Edward Abbey
The Prince
Niccolo Machiavelli
Bound for Glory
Woody Guthrie
Death of a Salesman
Arthur Miller

BEST REBELS (according to the Penguin List)
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Malcolm X
The Outsider
Albert Camus
Animal Farm
George Orwell
The Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Les Misérables
Victor Hugo I put Jean Valjean in the category of Best Heroes because he wasn’t ultimately a rebel but rather a penitent sinner and a hero.

Best Rebels (according to Semicolon)

Paradise Lost by John Milton. In literature and in life, isn’t Lucifer the model rebel?

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. I’m breaking the rules myself because I haven’t actually read The Communist Manifesto, but don’t I know enough about it and its effects (Stalinist Russia, Maoist China) to declare it pernicious and its authors deserving of a spot alongside Lucifer?

1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell. Something about the category tempts one to rule-breaking. I can’t decide between these two masterpieces in which the characters mount an ultimately unsuccesful challenge to an unjust authority.

Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. Mr. Christian also rebels against what he sees as injustice, but his plans for an ideal society fall apart in the face of man’s sin and ingratitude. Pitcairn Island: Where rebellion becomes a way of life.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Humorously subversive and then openly rebellious Huck Finn refuses to conform to the society that wants to tame him and civilize him. Mark Twain uses Huck to make fun of, and yes, subvert, the hypocrisy of a society that condones slavery and other evils and inequities. Huck never does give in; at the end of the book he’s headed for the West “because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.”

Cathy and Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights) belong to this list, but they’re slated for the Best Lovers list. Becky Sharp (Vanity Fair) is a rebel if there ever was one, but she’s going in the Best Minxes list. Don Juan (Byron) and Judah Ben Hur (Ben Hur) and Maggie Tolliver (The Mill on the Floss) are rebels, too, but the limit is five and I’ve already gone over.

Whom do you nominate for Best Rebels and Subversives in literature? And is subversion ultimately more successful than open rebellion?

It could be argued that most great authors are somewhat subversive, trying to challenge the status quo in some way. Even those books that show a failed rebellion ( Mutiny on the Bounty, Huck Finn, Death of a Salesman) are attempting to encourage a real change in the laws and unwritten rules of society. And some books (Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Common Sense, The Communist Manifesto) have been quite successful in fomenting rebellion.

THE BEST ADULTERY (According to the Penguin List

Madame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert
Thérèse Raquin
Emile Zola
Les Liaisons dangereuses
Choderlos de Laclos
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy

Best Adultery according to Semicolon

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. Of course, this novel is the definitive study of adultery and its consequences.

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. Emma Bovary comes in a close second as Foolish Woman of the Year. Eldest Daughter thought Emma Bovary was annoying, and I must agree. But she’s supposed to be annoying.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I suppose so although I think Ms. Prynne is annoying. And what she ever saw in that Dim guy, I don’t know.

Le Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Malory. Those knights of the Round Table and Arthur himself were so promiscuous that it’s hard to keep up. But it can always be blamed on some magical trick. “I didn’t mean to sleep with her. It was a magical castle.” Camelot: where all sin is illusion.

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Scarlett’s adulterous longings are never even consummated (are they?), but she commits adultery nevertheless. Why would anyone choose insipid Ashley over virile Rhett? Yes, I’m thinking of Leslie Howard and Clark Gable, but really, how could she?

Adultery as a theme in literature is full of interest because it’s human and multi-faceted. To paraphrase Tolstoy, all sex and debauchery (see previous posts on the Penguin list) is accomplished in much the same way; each adulterer heads for destruction, unhappy in his or her own peculiar way.

debauchery n. excessive indulgence in sensual pleasures

decadence n. moral or cultural decline, especially after a peak or culmination of achievement
Decadence usually leads to debauchery, and debauchery leads to further decadence.

THE BEST DEBAUCHERY (according to the Penguin List)
I, Claudius
Robert Graves
Hangover Square
Patrick Hamilton
The Beggar’s Opera
John Gay
The Twelve Caesars
Suetonius
Guys and Dolls
Damon Runyon

THE BEST DECADENCE (according to the Penguin List)
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Vile Bodies
Evelyn Waugh
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde
The Beautiful and Damned
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Against Nature
J. K. Huysmans

I’m combining these two categories into one because I think the editors at Penguin were a little too obsessed with decadence, debauchery, sexual perversion, and sin. There are other important themes in literature. Combining the categories also leaves room for one of my own devising, which I shall reveal at the appointed time.

The Best Decadence and Debauchery according to Semicolon:
I, Claudius by Robert Graves

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz

The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas

The good thing about all these books is that they show the attraction of decadence and debauchery and also the degradation and despair that results from indulging in these pursuits. For the wages of sin is death . . .

THE BEST SEX (According to the Penguin List)

Story of the Eye
Georges Bataille
A Spy in the House of Love
Anaïs Nin
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
D. H. Lawrence
Venus In Furs
Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer

The Best Sex (according to Semicolon)
I am at a serious disadvantage here because I don’t like to read explicit descriptions of sexual acts (see the post immediately before this one). I hold to that quaint old idea that some things are meant to be private. However, I do have one selection in this category.

Song of Songs by Solomon. Solomon is describing his love for and sexual attraction to his wife (even if she was only one of many), and it’s a very beautiful and sexually alluring description of the love of a man and his wife.

I can’t think of any other classic writers who write about this subject with excellence and without becoming prurient or prudish. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any. Maybe some poet would be a good choice in this category. It seems to me that poetry could preserve the mystery and the beauty of sex at the same time. I haven’t read the books on the Penguin list, except for some of the Canterbury Tales. Should I? Somehow I doubt the others would be up my alley.

In this piece on Edgy Fiction, J. Mark Bertrand gives the rules, in progression, for writing about sex in fiction.

As a reader, I used to say that I didn’t mind reading about sex, but I preferred not to see it depicted on the screen in vivid color in movies since I considered the actions of the actors in acting out illicit sex to be immoral in and of themselves. So, I don’t watch many R-rated movies. However, I have come to find out that I am also uncomfortable with graphic descriptions of sex, and sexual perversion, in books. I don’t believe that this discomfort with, indeed aversion to, graphic sex (and violence) in books is prudery or a lack of literary apppreciation. I believe it’s wisdom and discernment.

I started reading Doctorow’s Ragtime over the weekend. I first thought it was a bit odd. The writing style is clipped and jerky and takes some getting used to. Then, I decided that it was interesting. Doctorow places real historical characters, such as Houdini and Emma Goldman, into his fictional story of turn-of-the-century America. I was curious to see where he would go with these characters, how much fact would be mixed into the fiction, how evocative of the early 1900’s the novel would be. Then, I came to the conclusion that not only does Doctorow mix fact with fiction; he also stirs in borderline pornography. I read a couple of scenes that were intentionally titilating and rather nasty. So, whatever I’m missing, I’ll just have to miss it.

My question is: I have another book by Doctorow, The March, on THE LIST. Should I skip it, too? Profanity, as in profaning what is sacred, offends me. Graphic descriptions of sex and sexual perversion profane that which God ordained (beautiful sex within marriage) and make it seem twisted and satanic. It’s an immoral use of one of God’s greatest gifts, the gift of words.

To celebrate its 60th anniversary, Penguin Classics has compiled a list of 100 best classics in twenty categories. I like the categories, at least some of them, and thought they’d make for interesting discussion here at Semicolon. I followed only a few rules, not exactly the same rules that Penguin followed in making its list:

1. First of all, I didn’t choose any books for my list that I hadn’t read. I may not even like all the books I chose, but I have at least read them. Penguin’s choices may be a bit more eclectic and broad since I assume they had a panel of editors to choose their classics list. Nevertheless, my list will be suitably eccentric and personally pleasing.

2. As the Penguin listers didn’t use any book twice even though some could fit into more than one category, neither did I. I did, however, feel free to list more than one book by a given author.

3. Most of my classics are fiction because that’s what I’ve read the most. Most of the Penguin list consists of fiction, too.

4. “There is no Shakespeare because Penguin has a separate imprint for the Bard and in any case how could the rest of the literary canon compete?” OK, I’ll go along with that restriction. However, I didn’t check to see if my other choices are Penguin classics or not, and I’m sure many of them are not. That’s OK because I don’t work for Penguin or any other publisher, and I’ve already given them enough free publicity.

So, my next twenty posts will be my take on the the best in Penguin’s various categories. Please add your thoughts as you read along. Let us discuss the best in literature.