Not the Worst Best 100 Novels ListBut
not the best, either.
The usual boomer overrated crap: Slaughterhouse 5, On the Road, Naked Lunch, Gravity's Rainbow. I would guess if you analyzed the list you'd find a significant bulge centered around novels published from 1950-1975.
The usual overrated because the movie was a hit: Deliverance (snicker), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (nowhere near the novel that
Sometimes a Great Notion was), the Lord of the Rings. Brideshead Revisited marginally fits in this group; an adaptation was shown on Masterpiece Theatre about 23 years ago.
And the ridiculous and unjustifiable selections: Portnoy's Complaint, Beloved, the Painted Bird.
That said, the list does at least include some genre fiction, although I'd certainly quibble with a few of the choices. If you're going to include genre, how about a murder mystery? I'd suggest an Agatha Christie. And the ommission of anything by PG Wodehouse is indefensible.
But they deserve credit for mentioning some great novels that elites typically disdain, like Gone With the Wind and the graphic novel Watchmen.
