Plank of Standard Pinkness

 The Guardian published a new list of the 100 greatest novels of all time this week. 

What immediately strikes one about the entries is how familiar they all are. How predictable the list is. How much it consists of all the obvious works still in print that you can find in any "classics" row at a standard bookstore. 

How tedious and unsurprising and uninspiring its entries all sound.

And all at once, one is seized with a conviction out of Philip Larkin: "Books are a load of crap!"

In one of his essays, Larkin would cite this as among his most beloved lines, seeing as it is a "sentiment to which every bosom returns an echo." 

(Larkin in his essays is constantly posing as the philistine, who insists he never reads literature for fun and instruction—while all the time turning out essay after erudite essay on the subject of literature. Go figure.)

But books are not really a load of crap. Even the books on The Guardian's list were not always crap. 

They have merely been made into crap by the process of canonization. 

Who wants a "masterpiece"—all jellied and congealed—"A plank of standard pinkness in the dish," as Archibald MacLeish put it? 

There's a reason why every Flaubert novel now reads better than Madame Bovary; why Bouvard et Péchuchet is infinitely more interesting to today's reader. 

It hasn't yet been candied and preserved by appearing on every possible "greatest of all time" list. 

There's a reason why The Confidence-Man or Pierre has more to say to us now than Moby-Dick. 

Or Under Western Eyes than Heart of Darkness. 

Nothing kills a book like being made a "classic." 

Unless it is the even worse fate of being assigned in school. 

Give me the overlooked and outré instead. 

Give me B.S. Johnson!