First Things is having a “Tournament of Novels.” Vote here. I just learned about it and so missed voting in the first round but just cast my vote in the second round. Some of the match-ups were very clever, such as Lord of the Rings versus Atlas Shrugged in the first round. (HT: Mere Comments).
Yikes–I’m even more behind than I thought! A Commenter tells me that they’ve been doing a round a day and are already up to the fourth round.
Kenneth Anderson says:
Especially for those of us who, gulp, don’t follow sports, this is just so cool!
March 30, 2010, 8:15 amAnonsters says:
That Brideshead Revisited beat 100 Years of Solitude is a disgrace, and an everlasting black mark against readers of First Things.
March 30, 2010, 9:17 amJust a thought says:
Unfortunately, Todd, you’re still a little behind in the competition. They’re doing one round a day, and today is already Round 4.
March 30, 2010, 9:18 amMike McDougal says:
1984 over Brave New World?
Shameful.
March 30, 2010, 10:09 amNunzio says:
I’m with Anonsters regarding 100 years of solitude. Great book.
And the Sound and the Fury is far better than the Scarlet Letter.
March 30, 2010, 10:27 amThatGuy says:
Am I the only one that’s glad that Ulysses went down in the first round?
March 30, 2010, 10:39 amAnonsters says:
James Joyce wrote one of my favorite short stories, “Araby.”
But no, you’re not the only one.
March 30, 2010, 10:44 amJoseph K says:
Aw! Why hate on Ulysses? It’s dense but a very beautiful work by the end.
March 30, 2010, 11:27 ammatth says:
These people like Waugh way, way, way too much. That actually makes sense, though, in terms of cultural stereotypes. I’ve always assumed that the only people who really like Waugh are well-educated social conservatives.
March 30, 2010, 11:59 amThatGuy says:
I don’t really hate Ulysses, I just feel like it is the second most overrated book of all time behind Pride and Prejudice.
March 30, 2010, 12:02 pmdeez says:
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.”
March 30, 2010, 12:25 pmTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » The Tournament of Novels: -- Topsy.com says:
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Eugene Volokh. Eugene Volokh said: The Tournament of Novels:: First Things is having a “Tournament of Novels.” Vote here. I just learned about it a… http://bit.ly/9JVARF [...]
March 30, 2010, 12:42 pmys says:
Karamazov brothers edging out Anna Karenina? Dave Copperfield knocking down Emma Bovary? People, you need to make an effort to understand women. Be like Count Leo (at least in his writings if not in his life).
March 30, 2010, 1:00 pmAnonsters says:
Yeah, but 19th century women = so boring. ;)
March 30, 2010, 1:14 pmSmooth, like a Rhapsody says:
ys
March 30, 2010, 1:18 pmthe problem is they ran it like the old NIT (privileging regional rivalries) rather than properly seeding it like most tournaments.
ys says:
Anna vs. Ivan – regional. Dave vs. Emma – less so. Still, I think the other “guy” should have won in each “region”. I would also have added “Lolita” as an inter-regional competitor.
March 30, 2010, 1:40 pmys says:
Have you dated any?
March 30, 2010, 1:42 pmbyomtov says:
But the biggest margin of the round—6 to 1—belonged to The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, which sunk the underdog Hunt for Red October’s chances of being a spoiler.
Talk about mismatches. And yes, I read Clancy’s book.
March 30, 2010, 2:14 pmMark Field says:
If he has, there’s no doubt the conversation was a trifle one-sided. No wonder he thinks they’re boring.
March 30, 2010, 3:10 pmAnonsters says:
This line of conversation is, for some reason, reminding me of Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose for Emily.”
March 30, 2010, 4:21 pmMark Field says:
Nice.
March 30, 2010, 4:39 pmDavid McCourt says:
“Bracket Six: Catcher In The Rye and To Kill A Mockingbird”
Don’t they belong in the NIT?
It might have been better if they’d put a book from Waugh’s first team in — say, Decline and Fall or A Handful of Dust, rather than Brideshead.
Also, they put Anthony Burgess’s worst book in. Apparently, being made into a movie helps with the selection committee.
Tom Clancy? Stephen King? Jack Kerouac? Milan Kundera?
No (K.) Amis, Greene, Wodehouse….
Too many American writers.
March 30, 2010, 6:32 pmDesiderius says:
Sad to see Percy gone so soon. Love in the Ruins has aged better than The Moviegoer.
Plenty there for those disenchanted with Conservatives and Progressives alike.
March 30, 2010, 9:51 pmBook thread « Entitled to an Opinion says:
[...] more interesting). If that just sounds bizarre to you, you may be interested in First Things’ Tournament of Novels. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Ten Influential Books [...]
March 31, 2010, 12:56 amFantasiaWHT says:
Round 5 now.
Is LOTR cheating because it’s a trilogy? They should have multi-book sets in a separate tournament. Of course, that would be almost exclusively dominated by sci-fi and fantasy…
March 31, 2010, 2:42 pmDavid McCourt says:
FantasiaWHT,
What you see may be based on where you look. There are quite a few multi-book series that are not sci-fi, but are literary fiction. Waugh, e.g., wrote the Sword of Honour Trilogy (Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, and Unconditional Surrender). Anthony Powell wrote the 12 novel series A Dance to the Music of Time. Lawrence Durrell wrote The Alexandria Quartet. John Dos Passos wrote the trilogy U.S.A. Updike’s “Rabbit” novels are a series. The Canadian Robertson Davies wrote his Deptford Trilogy in the ’70s. And Le Carre’s three main George Smiley books could be considered a series. (Three of the above — but not necessarily the best three — made the Modern Library’s list of 100 best novels).
March 31, 2010, 4:17 pmDuffy Pratt says:
And the pedigree goes back further than that. Trollope wrote both the Bartsetshire and the Palliser series. Balzac wrote a huge series — The Human Comedy. Going back further there’s Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel. Then, though they aren’t novels, there is Dante’s Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. And Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained by Milton. Then there’s Alice in Wonderland, and through the Looking Glass. And the Horatio Hornblower series. Oh, and the very first books, the Illiad and the Odyssey, are a series.
March 31, 2010, 4:46 pmDavid McCourt says:
But not novels.
March 31, 2010, 4:52 pmmarkm says:
Shakespeare’s historical plays form a series. If you insist on sticking to novels, Dumas published many sequels to The Three Musketeers – although, IMO, these would fit better in a bad novel contest. TTM was pretty much a potboiler to begin with…
March 31, 2010, 8:08 pmDavid McCourt says:
As for plays, Aeschylus wrote the three plays in the Oresteia (the cyle of sacrifice, murder and revenge killing in Agamemnon’s family) in the 5th century BC, and a bit later Sophocles wrote several series of plays, now mainly lost, of which Antigone and the two Oedipus plays form a fragment.
And some say the Old Testament is part of a two book series, while others say it is a stand alone work….
April 1, 2010, 10:16 am