Which Novels Would You Kick Out of the Literary Canon

Noah Millman at The American Scene has an interesting twist on the usual desert island question. He asks which books you would vote off a desert island. The rules are quite simple. The novels should be generally well-regarded and should not be a minor work by a major novelist. So, while Midnight's Children would be eligible, The Moor's Last Sigh would not.

Here's my list:

1: James Joyce- Ulysses

I am not including what is widely considered to be the greatest novel ever just to be a contrarian. I have genuine difficulty getting past the first 50 pages and I must have made at least half-a-dozen attempts. I even took a class on Ulysses at college but dropped it after a week.

I'm a huge comic-book fan and when the Watchmen movie came out a lot of friends borrowed my copy. Most came away disappointed. I would explain to them that to appreciate Watchmen they needed a solid grounding in superhero comics, needed to understand just how much the quality had dropped by the 1980s and understand the conventions of the genre. Watchmen was an act of revolt against superhero comic strictures and to make that the first comic you read is akin to trying to make sense of the French Revolution without knowing anything that came before it.

Fans of Joyce have made a similar argument about Ulysses. They argue that Ulysses was a successful to redefine the novel and throw off its shackles. I even read a piece calling it (and this was meant as praise) an act of terrorism against the novel. If that is the best case that can be made for Ulysses, I just don't buy it. Superhero comics needed to be reinvented in the 1980s, the novel was doing just fine in the 1930s.

I'm humble enough to admit that the fault must lie in me. I may even attempt to read Ulysses some time in the future and hope I have become smart enough to get it. Until then, I'm chucking it in the ocean. I might add that the only reason One Hundred Years of Solitutde isn't on the list is because I have exactly the same objections to it as I do to Ulysses.

2: Ayn Rand- Atlas Shrugged

I doubt this will be a controversial choice. Very few people above the age of 16 (other than right-wingers with the mental faculties of a 16-year-old) defend the literary merit of Rand's novels. She has only two stock characters: strawmen and the caricatures who take them apart. John Galt may be the worst example of this. His speechifying bears no relation to language as spoken by human beings. Plot exists only to further her political propoganda. instead of using characters towards whom she is unsympathetic to further our understanding of human impulses and emotions, she merely categorizes them as The Looters and is done explaining their motivations.

3: Jack Kerouac - On the Road

As the legend goes, Kerouac banged out the novel in a six-day frenzy. It shows. There are passages of lyrical genius, but one has to wade through too much pointless dreck to make it worthwhile. There really isn't much to say about On the Road - which in itself is a indication of how ordainary it is. On the Road has often been compared to improvisitional jazz, something else I that sounds much better in theory than practise.

4: F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby

I actually quite like this short novel but am including it on the list because it is vastly overrated. The plot wouldn't be out of place in a soap opera and the character's actions seem driven by plot needs. Yet, the final sentence ("So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past) is so perfect it lends what came before it a gravitas it doesn't deserve. Never before had such brilliant writing been wasted on a story so thin and unsatisfying.

5: Herman Mellville - Moby Dick

If you just removed all the dull ocean and whaling tutorials, there's a decent adevnture story hiding in there somewhere. Good luck finding it though.

Over to you guys. Make your lists in the comments and explain why I'm such a dumbass.