Forging an Art

Part 1 ended with Mary Flannery O’Connor’s Hazel Motes of the terrifyingly honest Wise Blood; Part 2 begins with . . .
#37 – Marcel of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past.  Oh, please. I only mention this because it is one of those titles – like Infinite Jest - that people don’t actually read but carry around so others notice and say, wow, what a big book!  You must be smart/dedicated/insane/without a life.  Okay, so no one wants others thinking that last one, but you know they do, and those are the ones who believe that you are actually reading the brick.  There are some gigantic books that are so worth the time and effort (Gone With the Wind, Kristin Lavransdatter); these two are not of that persuasion.
#38 – Toad from The Wind in the Willows.  Pooh, and now Toad.  Wait for it . . .
#39 – The Cat in the Hat.  I just don’t know what to say.  I like him.  I like Toad. I like Pooh.  Dare I say again that there are no Henry James characters on this list?
#40 – Peter Pan – not too far down, not too far up.  Barrie’s flying perpetual child maintains a huge popular culture influence over 100 years after he first appeared in the Darling children’s window.
#42 – Sam Spade, of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon.  Hammett peopled his fiction with complicated yet simple – yes, exactly – characters who brought life to his detective tales.  Nick and Nora Charles check in at #65; fabulous fun with not a little questionable coping behaviors.
#44 – Willie Stark of All The King’s Men.  Robert Penn Warren’s masterpiece wasn’t just about Stark.  Jack Burden sure had a, well, burden to carry, and while his story ends on a happier note than Willie’s, it is at a great cost to him and those he holds close.  This is true American fiction, an exploration of identity, politics, and integrity.  Everyone should read this book, as an adolescent and then again as an adult.  It is a reminder than while the ends are important, we are also responsible for the means.
#46 – Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince.  This poor creature is probably responsible for multiple suicides. 
#51 – Sula Peace of Toni Morrison’s Sula.  If we’re going to talk Morrison, let’s talk Pecola Breedlove of The Bluest Eye.  Let’s talk about responsibility to family; taking care of your own.  Let’s talk about looking at your own behaviors and how they affect those close to you, those you bring into the world and should protect, even at your own emotional and physical expense.  Blaming the rest of the world is easy; looking at your own faults and the damage your inflict on others is hard.  Pecola is what – and not who – happens if you don’t.
#55 – Hurston’s Janie Crawford doesn’t have enough depth to interest me.  The author’s descriptions are vivid, but the emotional draw is flat.  I’m not sure where exactly this went wrong, and although the story is interesting, the characters lack dimension.
#57 – Grendel.  For all his popularity, this monster remains all too human.
#59 – Big Brother.  Orwell is so misused. I’ll leave it at that.
#61 – Salinger’s Seymour Glass probably causes the suicides that are not directly related to the The Little Prince.
#63 – Charlotte the spider.  Do I have to indicate the book as well?  Honestly.
#66 – James Bond in Fleming’s Casino Royale.  With the background to authenticate his fiction, Fleming made Bond, who easily could have become a caricature, into a flawed being worthy of idoltry.  In the film version, Daniel Craig really picked up the latent insecurities missed by previous Bond actors who, while creating an suave icon who was above human flaw, left the third dimension at the door.
#69 – The Sound and the Fury‘s Benjy.  Quentin drops in at #97.  Why is Faulkner so far down the list?  Did these people read Sanctuary?
#75 – Ah, Babbitt arrives.  Sinclair Lewis’ title character of his 1922 novel is a bit more complex than he seems, although the same can’t be said of some of the other characters, which makes him appear as the only folded creation in a pop-up book.
#76 – Tietjens in Parade’s End.  I can’t stand Ford Madox Ford, as a writer or as a person.  I expect artists to be self-absorbed to an extent, but he made it an art form.
#77 – Frankie Addams.  Carson McCullers can drive one to The Little Prince’s end, as some of her characters are inclined, and leaving her towards the bottom quarter of the list is a travesty.  Noting only one of her characters is an even greater one.  Ignoring The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is heresy when discussing American fiction.
#84 – Yuri Zhivago of Dr. Zhivago fame.  Wow, Pasternak is incredibly boring.  I don’t know if it is just the translation or if he is as awful in the original Russian, but I can’t find the people in this book. 
#85 – Harry Potter.  I always get nailed on this one.  I haven’t read any titles of Rowling’s series because I can’t.  I tried, I really did, out of duty as a youth librarian and curiosity as well.  I don’t know that the writing is that much worse than Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, because I was able to muddle through those, but it is wretched.  Love Harry if you will, but I can’t.  The movies are great fun, because one doesn’t have to read Rowling’s dreadful abuse of the English language to access the story.  Call me a literary snob if you must, but good writing is good writing, whether it is literary fiction or romance or young adult.  I admit that I read some pretty trashy historical romances, but they are well written trashy historical romances.
#86 – Ondaatjie’s Hana of The English Patient doesn’t grab me the way David, Katharine, and Geoffrey do.  The author takes love and control to believable heights while drawing parallels with the political situations surrounding the trio.
#90 – Lennie Small in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.  Wow, really?  At #90?  As Steinbeck’s only entry?  The Grapes of Wrath, anyone?
#93 – Kipling’s Kim.  Kipling was a genius; while much contested on grounds of his political views, the beauty of his writing, as a craft, should not be.  Whether you agree with him or not, if his characters are honest enough to upset readers, he has done his job well.
#95 – Clyde Griffiths.  I am not a Dreiser fan, and I can’t stand Sister Carrie.  He redeems himself with this absorbing and frightening story of a man without conscience.  His downward spiral – or has he always been this way, without manifesting obvious indicative behaviors? – is disturbing.  I considered An American Tragedy in book and movie format here.
#99 – Celie in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.  I can’t stand the end of this book.  I don’t buy it, and I don’t want to.  Poor Celie deserved better from her creator.