Reviewing the 100 Best Novels of the 20th
Century
by
Annette Ferran
Dystopia
Novels
depicting a dystopian world of the writer’s future are intriguing, entertaining,
and frightening, especially when read from a time vantage point well past when
the novel’s future was supposed to have happened. It is then that the novel’s staying power is tested and the
predictive intelligence and imagination of the writer is spot-lighted.
Brave New World (Aldous Huxley, #5) and 1984 (George Orwell, #13), along with A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess,
#65, discussed in a previous column) are the books on the Modern Library’s list
that fit this description. I would
not have ranked them, relative to one another, the way the Modern Library did,
but this is not the first time we have not seen eye to eye. I would also have included Margaret
Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale on the
list. Maybe a separate list
covering just this genre is needed.
Phrases
and notions from each of these books have entered into our common vocabulary and
consciousness. “Big Brother,” from
1984, is arguably the most entrenched. It has also been co-opted in this
post-ironic age of voyeuristic/exhibitionistic television “reality” dramas to
the point that it’s quite possible the label is no longer associated with
Orwell’s vision of an intrusive and controlling government and the loss of
personal privacy at all levels.
Which is more frightening than the novel is.
From
Brave New World we get
mood-controlling drugs and specially designed test tube babies. These days, psychopharmaceuticals are
so ordinary and prevalent that the pharmaceutical companies are now making up
disorders to go with the drugs. And the animal way of making and delivering
babies has seemingly become optional.
The
disintegration of society in Handmaid’s
Tale starts with the elimination of cash transactions, which is so common
now as to be unremarkable. Surrogacy for procreation, depicted so disturbingly
in the novel, is also, while not exactly mainstream, no longer an abhorrent
oddity.
Obviously,
these novels all made a mark, reflecting the atmospheres, and fears, of the
times in which they were written, and capturing so well the logical
trajectories of then-current developments that they read now as prophetic. This
is a literary merit of each.
I prefer 1984 to Brave New World
because I prefer Orwell’s writing style to Huxley’s. Orwell’s writing is clean and swift. He wastes no words (as he was famously known to advise) but does memorable things with
the language. His characters are unique.
His plots unfold with a kind of stomach-churning relentlessness.
By
contrast, Huxley’s writing is pedantic and can become boring. (In fact, his other novel on this list,
Point Counterpoint, I dismissed as
practically unreadable.) Brave New World has just as compelling a
premise, and just as well constructed and detailed a fantastical world, but the
writing does not sing like Orwell’s does, and its characters do not live quite
as fully off the page. (Similar
things could be said of Handmaid’s Tale.)
1984, in its succinctness, is a thing of beauty. Like some other slim novels on the list, it is made to be read again and again.
1984, in its succinctness, is a thing of beauty. Like some other slim novels on the list, it is made to be read again and again.
Let’s
say the criteria for “best” in a novel include the art of the story, the
artistry of the writer, the significance of the novel culturally, images that
achieve iconic value, and themes that transcend the writer’s own time. Then let’s say that among the novels here judged “best,” some
are more best than others.
Annette
Ferran lives in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and
works in Philadelphia as an editor for a medical publisher. She is also the Associate Editor
for 10,000 Tons of Black Ink, a
Literary Writers Network publication. She has a degree of dubious practical
use, in German, and is a lifelong avid reader of fiction and lover of lists.
She has had a few short stories published, most recently in RE:AL.
