Your List Sucks

Dwight Silverman, blogging for the Houston Chronicle, writes a list of "15 Geek Novels to Read Before You Die." It's a decent list with a few interesting choices (The Catcher in the Rye, Cat's Cradle) interspersed amongst the usual chestnuts of such lists (The Lord of the Rings, Dune, Hitchhiker's Guide). I'm not sure just why Holden Caulfield's disillusionment and alienation qualify as a "geek novel," but that's kind of the point of such lists. It's a fun and fairly easy thing for a blogger or columnist to throw together when he doesn't really have any other ideas about what to write (e.g. my own GBN Top Five lists). With luck, it'll inspire some discussion and fun conversation. There's even an off-chance that some geek out there who may have had a humiliatingly deprived childhood and never heard of A Wrinkle in Time before reading such a list will now seek it out. Meaningless fun, right?

The geek response on the internet has been as predictable as the sun rising in the East.

Here's a sampling:

"Oh, and what, no Pratchett? Fail."

You can't "fail" at this kind of list. Yeah, it's called "...to Read Before You Die," but that's the kind of hyperbole is the norm for such things. In reality, no one is claiming that this is The Definitive List of the Best and Most Important "Geek Novels" in History. It's a nerdy Baby Boomer offering an opinion.

I don't think Harry Potter will last. It certainly doesn't belong on the same list as Dune.

Ah, the ever-amazing ability of the average internet geek to unfailingly predict the future. And clearly, something I personally don't like can't possibly be considered on the same level as something I do.

Any list of geek books that can find a space for Harry Potter and doesn't acknowledge anything by H. P. Lovecraft is just fundamentally wrong.

And clearly, if it includes something contemporary and popular that I don't like but doesn't include something old and cultish that I do like, this list is "fundamentally wrong."

I'd drop House of Leaves for Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Come on... Mathmatics, symmetry and intelligence? Potential readers be warned: this is not the stuff of armchair geekery. You will need much more than an iPod and a Second Life account to appreciate this work.

Translated for those who don't speak geeksnob: Ha! This list is for amateurs! I don't read simplistic stuff like that, I read dense things like this! Tremble, worms, before my massive, massive intelligence!

No fantasy please (witchcraft is not geekiness). One of my favorites is A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller.

Only certain kinds of literature can qualify as geeky. Only science fiction. Fantasy sucks! Hard to believe, but there is snobbery and elitism amongst geeks, too.

I can't believe you left out The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.....

I can't believe you think there's five periods in an ellipsis. I also can't believe you think things can be "left out" on someone's personal and essentially arbitrary list.

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Nerds have a hard time with disagreement. I've discussed this before. There's an assumption amongst a pretty large swath of the culture (not just nerds) that "my own opinions are objectively correct." Because of this, they look at any list like this as someone else putting out their objectively correct opinions. Then they get up in arms because two differing opinions can't both be objectively correct and they can't reconcile the two.

A list like this is supposed to inspire discussion. So, discuss. Say, "I disagree, I don't think 1984 belongs on the list," or "I would have included Ender's Game on that list." But don't say that the list is wrong, or that the writer has failed. When you argue that the writer has sacrificed his credibility by including or by failing to include a particular book...well, someone's credibility has indeed been sacrificed.

Guess whose?

RIP Lloyd Alexander, 1924-2007

Author Lloyd Alexander died at his home in Pennsylvania on May 17. The Washington Post offers a lovely obituary here.

When I was eight years old, Disney released The Black Cauldron. At the time, I liked it well enough, but a fairly recent viewing has revealed it to be, well, not very good. A year or so later, my brother received The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander for his birthday. The cover featured a character that was unmistakably the Horned King, the villain of the Disney film. I was curious, wondering if maybe this was something akin to the Star Wars and Disney "illustrated storybooks" with which I had learned to read, but didn't think much about it. As I learned later, Disney's Black Cauldron was a thoroughly botched adaptation of bits and pieces from several of Alexander's books.

A couple of years later, when I was in fifth grade, I was looking for something to read and borrowed The Book of Three. It was (and remains) one of the greatest reading experiences of my life. I'd read The Hobbit, had a go at The Lord of the Rings and found it far too dense for my ten-year-old brain. The Book of Three was perfect - full of adventure, magic, noble heroes and despicable villains, and everything else that makes a fantasy story great. After that, I voraciously read The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer and The High King, all of which came from the library. When I was done, I went right back and started at the beginning of The Book of Three again. Alexander's Prydain Chronicles were reliable standbys. I read the whole series through at least once a year. Taran, Eilonwy, Fflewdur Fflam, Prince Gwydion and Doli were good friends, and their adventures were the literary equivalent of comfort food. Eventually, my reading level caught up to The Lord of the Rings, and I loved Middle-Earth and Frodo and Aragorn with a great, nerdy fervor, but nothing ever displaced Prydain as my favorite fantasy world.

Alexander is often cited alongside Terry Brooks by fantasy readers on lists of early and blatant imitators of Tolkien. My memories of The Sword of Shanarra are dim, but I can't really defend Brooks. I will say that I find the accusation against Alexander to be unfair. First off, while Tolkien was writing for a more mature audience, Alexander was aiming squarely at children with his work. Secondly, it should be clear that it is not so much that Alexander was imitating (or "ripping off" if you're inclined to less kind terminology) the great Professor Tolkien as that both were dipping from the same well. Just as Tolkien was inspired by ancient Norse mythology in his work, so too did Alexander take inspiration from the Mabinogion and Welsh mythology. To say that Alexander was imitating Tolkien misses the point that both took inspiration from Beowulf.

When I first joined the Science Fiction Book Club in junior high, one of the "Six Books for $1" I chose was their very nice omnibus edition of The Prydain Chronicles. All five books, plus the short story collection The Foundling and Other Tales from Prydain, all in one handy package - can't beat that. Don't have to check them out from the library all the time, right? Neil Gaiman occasionally talks about the copies of Good Omens (another of my 6-for-$1 books) he sees at signings which are "held together with tape and dried soup." That's a good description of my copy of The Prydain Chronicles, too. It still sits on my bookshelf, and if I don't pull it down once every year to read it cover-to-cover anymore, it's only because I know it by heart.

So long, Lloyd. Thanks for the memories.