The 100 best novels: from Bunyan's pilgrim to Carey's Ned Kelly - The Guardian

In the parlour game called “Humiliation”, in David Lodge’s 70s campus novel Changing Places , the players score points by confessing the famous works of literature they have never read. Lodge’s insight into the practice of literature is that everyone who steps into the world of books and letters risks humiliation. com, the fate of the classics has been my special subject. For one enraged online critic, the series was simply “an elaborate headstone for a defunct way of thinking about literature”. not only was there a vigorous, sometimes splenetic, discussion of the list and its choices by a dedicated core of well-read correspondents, there was also a surge in subscribers. In total, between 1 and 2 million readers have interacted with the series through the Guardian website. TS Eliot, Ezra Pound, Italo Calvino and Sainte-Beuve have all written at length on the subject. Calvino’s definition – “a classic is a book that has never finished what it wants to say” – is probably the sweetest, followed by Pound’s identification of “a certain eternal and irresponsible freshness”. One necessary, but not sufficient, characteristic of a classic is that it should remain in print. Classics, for some, are books we know. Source: www.theguardian.com