lit news

[Craig Clark]

Christopher Tassava posted:

> This stuff came through on the email "news" service, NEWSpot Morning Edition 
> @ 1/20/97.  It might be of interest, if only as indicators...
> 
> *** Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings' top book for Britains
> 
> Britains voted J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," a myth about
> hobbits and elves, as top book of the century, according to a survey.
> George Orwell's "1984" and "Animal Farm" were second and third in the
> poll of more than 25,000 people, conducted by booksellers Waterstone's
> to pick their top books of the last century. Six Nobel Prize winners
> including Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Steinbeck, William Golding and
> Albert Camus were also among the top 100. "Ulysses" by James Joyce,
> "Catch 22" by Joseph Heller, "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D.
> Salinger, "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, "100 Years of
> Solitude" by Marquez, "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck and
> Irvine Welsh's "Trainspotting" rounded out the top ten.

Right, now just as the anti-Tolkien flamefest starts, let me declare 
rightaway that I am a Tolkien fanatic... With the obvious exception 
of "You-know-who" from this list, it's not an altogether bad list. 
I'd query Welsh, Lee and probably even Steinbeck ranking this high, 
particulalry higher than TRP, but thank God there's no Shirley Conran 
or some such here...

Craig Clark

"Living inside the system is like driving across
 the countryside in a bus driven by a maniac bent
 on suicide."
   - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"