It's a decent list of what readers in France think of as the books to read from the 20th c., in that it holds value. Including to myself, a French citizen with odd tastes.
The general debate on what's the objective list doesn't hold weight, and I'd rather see what each corner of the world values.
The Stranger at #1 sort of tells me everything I need to know about the list. It's a fine book, and I ended up liking it a lot more when I went back and re-read it in French many years later, but #1 of the 20th century. Yeah, not even close.
I know this is primarily a Francophone list, but not having Toni Morrison or Cormac McCarthy or so many of the great Latin American authors on it makes me wonder how much makes it into French via translation.
Cormac McCarthy is decently translated (for having read him in both English and French) and is well known.
But for the average French litterati, American literature harks back to Hemingway, Steinbeck, Salinger, Burroughs, Capote, Nabokov and so on much before McCarthy.
Toni Morrison isn't well known here yet, if only because her writing is embedded with Afro-American reality which is off-phase with Europe culture. For the same reason you'd hardly hear about Ralph Ellison in France if you're not in circles aware of post-colonial African diaspora writing.
To the same token, French authors who make it across the Atlantic aren't always the most valued here.
This is one of the criticisms[0] of at least some Great Books curricula. The skew tends too strongly towards the Anglo-American and the “canon” is too rigidly held.
What a strange list. Many books I'd never expect to be listed, others I'd expect to be listed are missing. So I looked up the background and indeed it's based on strange methodology, citing wikipedia: "Starting from a preliminary list of 200 titles created by bookshops and journalists, 17,000 French participants responded to the question, "Which books have stuck in your mind?" (Quels livres sont restés dans votre mémoire?"
> Many books I'd never expect to be listed, others I'd expect to be listed are missing
Most of them make sense to me. I don’t know some of them but then I don’t know everything. The methodology can be discussed (and indeed, a pre-selection of 200 books is at the same time a lot and not that much), but none of these lists can be perfect.
Out of curiosity, which one would you remove from the list, and which ones would you add?
Hm, you are right. Those lists can't be perfect and giving this a second look, I guess my comment was hasty. For the choices I thought weird I can mostly see the justification when researching the titles a bit more (and partly by checking for their names in my language -> properly identifying them).
For what it's worth and what mostly triggered my comment, I expected 1984 to be on the list but thought it missing, but as mentioned in the other comments I was wrong about that, it's just listed with the numbers written out. Le petit prince I wouldn't have wanted on the list, I know it's popular and french, but I never got the appeal. Ulysses, as mentioned below, surprised me as I thought it's only popular in some countries, and regardless of that I think its just not readable. I would kick out two of the Lord of the ring books, one is enough and it's not like each of them had a different impact.
Maybe even more subjective, The Hound of the Baskervilles is important and well known and everything, but does it really held up when you read it today? If not, which would be my opinion, should it be on the list regardless? And I'd consider replacing Thomas Mann Zauberberg with Tod in Venedig, just because I liked it a lot.
For missing books: Louis Begley is an author I felt to be missing, probably with Wartime lies, or About Schmidt. The first Harry Potter as well, but I understand that in 1999 it was too early for that judgement. Stephenson's Snow Crash is missing, maybe replaceable with Neuromancer to have something of that genre. Talking german literature with Thomas Mann above, Alfred Andersch Die Rote would have a place on my personal list, as well as Die Wand by Marlen Haushofer. Haruki Murakami is missing, though maybe with 1Q84 he better fits into a list of the current century. Stephen King? Paul Auster? Philip Roth? Though maybe that would be for The Human Stain, and that's from 2000.
As an aside, I was happily surprised to see The Master and Margarita on the list. It's one of the more known books that I thought had a very special charm, but not one I'd expect to see working on many, as one would have to have read Goethe's Faust and liked it...
Starting with only 200 titles in the survey, for a final list of 100, seems off to me for starters. Every book surveyed has a 50% chance of making “book of the century”
When reading "Books of the Century" I expected a list of the most important, most influential or just best books. Skewed towards the french perspective, given Le Monde as a source. But this was never the goal, just a "what stuck in your mind" question.
For example, 1984 is missing, and Louis Begley Wartime Lies. And I wouldn't have expected Ulysses in there given the french source, for me it was incomprehensible gibberish and I thought only the US ranks it high. But that gibberishness makes it certainly memorable, so given the question it fits.
Ulysses was first published in Paris during the 20 years that Joyce lived there.
>I thought only the US ranks it high
Joyce never even set foot in the United States... You could say this about The Great Gatsby, which US sources might rank in the top 5 compared to 46 in this list.
Right, Great Gatsby is another book one could highlight, where it's surprising that it is on the (french) list, while it would be on an US list. But I haven't read it, I do not know whether it is a good example for the difference between a good or important book and a memorable one.
James Joyce wearing his bottle bottom glasses (thick glasses) would like to have a word with you. You can call him genius, dirty, knowledgeable in many languages but certainly not gibberish. He used to hold long book club style readings of his books among the prominent literateur in his times to exactly impinge in their minds that what he writes is clever and not gibberish. In our book club we often discuss for hours what he was trying to say on a page. Sometimes he says things in 3 different dimensions by writing a single sentence.
> He used to hold long book club style readings of his books among the prominent literateur in his times to exactly impinge in their minds that what he writes is clever and not gibberish.
My was so clever, that he had to verbally harangue people into finding his writing clever.
Ulysses was written in Paris, where James Joyce lived, and was published in Paris by the now legendary Shakespeare & Co. The US and UK banned it for being obscene.
When I don't know, I ask and don't judge (and lacking omniscience, I don't judge anyway).
It's completely irrelevant where it was written, where it was published and where it was banned, I'm talking about how it is seen today. It is possible I am getting this wrong -certainly possible, since I'm taking this impression from English speaking sites like this, that I attribute to the US what should be attributed to England -, but I have seen no argument so far that even strives the point I made.
What is your question? If you just want to know why Ulysses is seen as influential you can start with the wikipedia article. If you want to try again to read it you can try to read it with a guide of some kind, there are multiple, I used this one https://www.ulyssesguide.com/1-telemachus.
No question. It's completely against my being to consider something as good if it can't be enjoyed without a guide. I hated the tendency in computer science to hide simple definitions behind jargon. I'm okay with stuff having hidden meaning, with texts being interpretable, I'm not okay with it just being gibberish when not studying it in closest detail.
I'm aware that some think this book is influential, I'm not clear on how widespread that belief is. Also, whether regular readers really like it. And no, Wikipedia does not clear that up.
What would be interesting is to cross reference this list with an Anglophone one and pull out the writers that are big in France but almost unknown amongst the public in America. Céline is definitely one such example, I think.
The general debate on what's the objective list doesn't hold weight, and I'd rather see what each corner of the world values.
Don't want to know what difficult is
If only because it's less french oriented, but also maybe because it starts with one of my favorite.
I know this is primarily a Francophone list, but not having Toni Morrison or Cormac McCarthy or so many of the great Latin American authors on it makes me wonder how much makes it into French via translation.
To the same token, French authors who make it across the Atlantic aren't always the most valued here.
Any national worlds book list, and this explicitly includes US and UK lists, are heavily skewed and I mean ridiculously so
[0] https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2023/05/great-books-e...
Makes more sense like that.
Most of them make sense to me. I don’t know some of them but then I don’t know everything. The methodology can be discussed (and indeed, a pre-selection of 200 books is at the same time a lot and not that much), but none of these lists can be perfect.
Out of curiosity, which one would you remove from the list, and which ones would you add?
For what it's worth and what mostly triggered my comment, I expected 1984 to be on the list but thought it missing, but as mentioned in the other comments I was wrong about that, it's just listed with the numbers written out. Le petit prince I wouldn't have wanted on the list, I know it's popular and french, but I never got the appeal. Ulysses, as mentioned below, surprised me as I thought it's only popular in some countries, and regardless of that I think its just not readable. I would kick out two of the Lord of the ring books, one is enough and it's not like each of them had a different impact.
Maybe even more subjective, The Hound of the Baskervilles is important and well known and everything, but does it really held up when you read it today? If not, which would be my opinion, should it be on the list regardless? And I'd consider replacing Thomas Mann Zauberberg with Tod in Venedig, just because I liked it a lot.
For missing books: Louis Begley is an author I felt to be missing, probably with Wartime lies, or About Schmidt. The first Harry Potter as well, but I understand that in 1999 it was too early for that judgement. Stephenson's Snow Crash is missing, maybe replaceable with Neuromancer to have something of that genre. Talking german literature with Thomas Mann above, Alfred Andersch Die Rote would have a place on my personal list, as well as Die Wand by Marlen Haushofer. Haruki Murakami is missing, though maybe with 1Q84 he better fits into a list of the current century. Stephen King? Paul Auster? Philip Roth? Though maybe that would be for The Human Stain, and that's from 2000.
As an aside, I was happily surprised to see The Master and Margarita on the list. It's one of the more known books that I thought had a very special charm, but not one I'd expect to see working on many, as one would have to have read Goethe's Faust and liked it...
For example, 1984 is missing, and Louis Begley Wartime Lies. And I wouldn't have expected Ulysses in there given the french source, for me it was incomprehensible gibberish and I thought only the US ranks it high. But that gibberishness makes it certainly memorable, so given the question it fits.
>I thought only the US ranks it high
Joyce never even set foot in the United States... You could say this about The Great Gatsby, which US sources might rank in the top 5 compared to 46 in this list.
> "what stuck in your mind"
That's strongly correlated IMHO; and I don't really see any objective metric for the influence of a book anyway.
> He used to hold long book club style readings of his books among the prominent literateur in his times to exactly impinge in their minds that what he writes is clever and not gibberish.
My was so clever, that he had to verbally harangue people into finding his writing clever.
When I don't know, I ask and don't judge (and lacking omniscience, I don't judge anyway).
I'm aware that some think this book is influential, I'm not clear on how widespread that belief is. Also, whether regular readers really like it. And no, Wikipedia does not clear that up.
I'm not sure I saw any living authors there. I see no reason why copyright should extend beyond the lifetime of the author.