PBS Best-loved Novels -- Some thoughts

In an article in today’s Washington Post( https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/whats-the-best-american-novel-a-pbs-vote-is-a-revealing-look-at-our-limited-taste/2018/10/29/039f8532-db80-11e8-b732-3c72cbf131f2_story.html?utm_term=.602914107d94) Mark Athitakis criticizes America’s taste in fiction while concluding that the reason so many of the titles made the recent PBS list of 100 best is a nostalgia for childhood and adolescence and the stories that first taught us about family and friendship. Athitakis believes that the problem with this is that, “if we treat books mainly as mementos of our own experiences, like yearbook photos, we diminish our capacity to see them as ways to understand that of others.”  

 I see his point about the presence of adolescent literature on the list – the Harry Potter series, Charlotte’s Web, Little Women, e.g. -- but as to his criticism, I think he forgets that the list is not “The best books of all time” but rather “the best lovedbooks.”  There’s a difference.  “Best” implies a literary quality that reflects strong command of language, creative but controlled narrative structure and well-developed characters. “Best” books are often the first to play with a particular idea in a unique way and they always leave the reader with moral or philosophical questions as in the case of the list-topper, To Kill a Mockingbird.  We may love books for these reasons but sometimes a book that lacks some or all of these qualities still resonates for a very personal reason and that, I think, is where the readers who voted are coming from. 

Less concerning to me than the titles that appear in the list is, as Athitakis points out, America isn’t reading. Research tells us, he says, that ¼ of Americans never read fiction and only ½ of Americans read a book for pleasure last year.  As a bibliophile and former English teacher, this breaks my heart.  I have relatives and close friends who almost never read novels and to me that’s like watching a black and white television. Don’t they want to update to color?  

Athitakis also expresses dismay that you have to go pretty far down the final tally to find a work in translation — “The Little Prince,” No. 36 — and further still to find one by a non-North American or European author — “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” No. 54.”  This may reflect the age of the PBS readers (He says it’s the over-50 crowd.) I spent most of my 36-year career working with colleagues to put into the hands of our students works that reflect the diversity of the world in which we live.  My former students know who the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche is (and could spell her name), and can compare and contrast her work with that of white South African writer Nadine Gordimer.  They have read Chekhov and Orwell but also Toni Morrison, August Wilson, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Bao Ninh and Michael Ondaatje.  I was in a classroom recently where students had just finished Diary of a Part-time Indian.  It is my hope that these young people in 30-40 years will be a) still reading, b) watching PBS and c) offering up a list of best loved titles that demonstrates a wider and more diverse selection.  

That said, I will smugly conclude with the fact that I have read 65 of the titles on the list, a few of which would be included in my personal selections for “best loved” and a few that would also just be “best.”  How about you?

Here’s the link to the PBS list:

https://www.pbs.org/the-great-american-read/results/