Word: randomly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Immediately following the list's release, a good deal of hoopla broke out--which is, without a doubt, exactly what Random House was hoping for. Everyone from professors to journalists to people on the street had their complaints, as well as the occasional accolade. Some of the most common gripes: Two works by James Joyce in the top five? Is Ulysses really the greatest novel ever written, and has anyone ever read the whole thing? And why such a proliferation of white males? Only eight women make the list, with Edith Wharton lucky enough to score twice...
This sort of nitpicking, I'm sure, pleases Evans immensely. Now that titles like The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington are suddenly floating around the airwaves, making their way into circles of conversation and, no doubt, appearing in paperback at The Coop, Random House stands to profit. Indeed, the company plans to reissue 10 more novels from the list in the coming year. But is this dose of unabashed consumerism enough to make us want to sneer at the entire project? Not really. The truth is, Americans aren't exactly eating up literary fiction these days. If it takes...
...important, however, that we recognize when we are being targeted by an advertising campaign, and few have been looking at the Modern Library's list in this light. Random House has been successfully keeping up the illusion that the 100 best list is a real news story by encouraging groups to respond with their own revised lists. The Radcliffe Publishing course, full of young professionals about to enter the field, took on that particular task. The Radcliffe group did a laudable job, even managing to sneak Winnie the Pooh in between Heart of Darkness and Their Eyes Were Watching...
Most interesting, perhaps, is the "people's choice" list on the Modern Library's Web site. Random House has been allowing those who pass by its Web site to cast their own votes for the 100 best, and the results are quite bizarre. Though John Q. Internet has kept The Great Gatsby and The Sound and the Fury in the top 50, he's also added Starship Troopers and several works by Stephen King. Four works in the top ten are by Ayn Rand. Number one, Atlas Shrugged, has received many more votes than the first non-Rand entry, Battlefield...
Ultimately, Random House wins no matter what, because it can spin any reaction it gets in order to keep the novels in the spotlight and on the shelves. The company even offers certain deprecating comments on its Web site as evidence of all the controversy it has sparked. Though the New York Times says that "the streets will be littered with lists like this when the millennium comes, and when the millennium goes they will be swept into piles and forgotten," others put a more positive angle on the spats sparked by the list. Alain de Botton says, quite poetically...