And then there were 32.
After a brutal round of upsets, blowouts, and close calls we have narrowed our list of 64 in half.
Click to Download Round 2 Brackets
The Upsets: It was Bloomsday to Doomsday for Ulysses. The Irish giant, often called the Greatest Novel of All Time, was felled by the preppie American Gatsby. Another American, Huckleberry Finn, outwitted theSpanish Don Quixote, often considered the first novel. But while individual Americans triumphed, Passos’ U.S.A got sucked into a slough of despond and lost the race to the humble Pilgrim’ s Progress.
The Blowouts: Atlas Shrugged must have “gone Galt” because it barely showed up in the competition against powerhouse Lord of the Rings. And the The Stand proved it wasn’t able to withstand The Plague of existential angst; King made a horrific showing against Camus.
The Nail-biters: Alice made a wonderful effort but wasn’t swift enough to outpace Gulliver’s Travels. In the second closest match-up of the round, Lewis Carroll’s fantastic tale lost by 14 votes. The closest match-up? That very last bracket: Although Fahrenheit 451 kept the heat on, the book got caught up in Charlotte’s Web and lost by a mere 12 votes.
So who will make it into the Sweet 16? Decide now by casting a vote for your favorites. Each round of voting, one round per day for the next six weekdays, will begin at 9:00 am and end at midnight.
March 26th, 2010 | 9:24 am
Summary still inaccurate (or just prejudiced :).
The tension builds.
I appreciate the sports commentary, may it increase.
March 26th, 2010 | 9:31 am
Moby-Dick against Pale Fire? You mean I have to vote one of them down? You’re breaking my heart.
March 26th, 2010 | 9:35 am
Putting Karenina against Karamazov in the first round goes against accepted best practice for tournament matchups, I would think.
March 26th, 2010 | 10:06 am
[...] UPDATE: Round 1 is closed. Please vote in Round 2. [...]
March 26th, 2010 | 10:17 am
Terrific match-ups! It’s getting tough.
March 26th, 2010 | 10:26 am
Hitchhiker’s Guide beat Dune? Surely not on quality of writing, plot, characters, or… most anything else. How did that happen?
Sigh.
March 26th, 2010 | 10:55 am
I know Daniel Deronda is going to get crushed by Lord of the Rings, but I wish more people voting against DD had actually read it! It’s SO GOOD!
March 26th, 2010 | 11:43 am
I agree with thomas, and about many of the other first round matchups. Who seeded this tournament?
March 26th, 2010 | 12:08 pm
So LOTR and Brothers Karamazov will meet in the semi’s? This is a grave injustice. Both are superior to every book in the other division (that I’ve read).
March 26th, 2010 | 12:11 pm
“Hitchhiker’s Guide beat Dune? Surely not on quality of writing, plot, characters, or… most anything else. How did that happen?
Sigh.”
Agreed.
And Ulysses out? Alice in Wonderland? Fahrenheit 451? Far be it from me to question the judgment of fellow First Things readers, but….
March 26th, 2010 | 12:38 pm
Are you kidding me? As of right now, Ender’s Game is beating Pride and Prejudice, Hunt For Red October is beating Herzog, Call of the Wild is beating Scarlet Letter, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is beating The Pilgrim’s Progress!? Who exactly is reading this blog? What the heck is wrong with you people? Do we need to have a lecture?
*sigh* At least To Kill a Mockingbird is beating Catcher in the Rye.
March 26th, 2010 | 12:46 pm
I don’t know how Hitchhiker’s Guide could have won against Dune, either, but its being matched up against Pilgrim’s Progress is interesting in more than one way. One of Bunyan’s inspirations for Pilgrim’s Progress was a little book called The Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven, written by an English Puritan preacher named . . . Arthur Dent.
No joke.
March 26th, 2010 | 12:48 pm
I agree that the seeding was very poor.
March 26th, 2010 | 1:07 pm
I think the only sure thing with First Things readers is that O’Connor, Tolkien, and Waugh will go far.
March 26th, 2010 | 1:18 pm
Fret not, J. I felt your pain over Daniel Deronda, though I had to vote for LOTR. Odd match-ups so early. George Eliot is brilliant.
Btw, where was Kristin Lavransdatter? She stands alone outside the madness? Good.
March 26th, 2010 | 3:30 pm
There’s no way that Pride & Prejudice is losing. That’s an error in the program.
I love Daniel Deronda, too. It was just an unlucky draw. I would have voted for it over half or maybe eve 3/4 of the books on this list.
AMDG, Janet
March 26th, 2010 | 4:29 pm
[...] Now it’s up against Ender’s Game. [...]
March 26th, 2010 | 4:31 pm
Just a heads up, I came by very early this morning before you had round 2 up and the submittal button from round 1 was visible, but wouldn’t let me click it.
Kind of frustrating.
March 26th, 2010 | 4:50 pm
What a great idea! Much more interesting than BB! Bene. Optimus est!
March 26th, 2010 | 5:41 pm
your form has an error i believe. I voted for Pride & prejudice – and yet still all the votes card been for the Ender’s Game. 75-0 seems very one sides – its counting our Jane’s votes?
March 26th, 2010 | 6:10 pm
andy pickup your form has an error i believe. I voted for Pride & prejudice
There’s a glitch in the summary. P&P is comfortably in the lead on that match-up.
March 26th, 2010 | 6:38 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Brenna Bahr and MKP, DNC DUDES. DNC DUDES said: The Tournament of Novels – Round 2: And then there were 32. After a brutal round of upsets, blowouts, and clo… http://bit.ly/bn2reF #tcot [...]
March 26th, 2010 | 7:12 pm
(I though I voted in R.2 this AM. but my comment and presumably my votes are on the R.1 page, and weren’t here til just now. I’ll repeat my comment for the adoring masses just in case, but someone might want to see if I’ve managed to vote twice.)
——
“If it comes down to a choice between Huckleberry Finn and Tolkien, I’m going to be in difficulties.”
March 26th, 2010 | 8:25 pm
I agree that Kristin Lavransdattar was a terrible omission, but perhaps she is just too sensible now for this madness. In her younger days perhaps…
I still can’t believe that neither of the Bronte sisters made it out of the first round. Austen over Bronte? Really?
March 26th, 2010 | 9:18 pm
How in the world can Mark Twain beat out Cervantes? What a literary travesty….
March 27th, 2010 | 9:08 am
Hey, it’s just a game. Obviously, when one leaves out J. K. Rowling from such a contest, it’s not really serious about the best novel ever.
Just kidding.
March 27th, 2010 | 10:15 am
I am inspired to read the few I did not choose.
March 27th, 2010 | 11:03 am
It’s 10 a. m. CDT, where is Round 3?
AMDG
March 27th, 2010 | 1:55 pm
Janet It’s 10 a. m. CDT, where is Round 3?
The rounds only start on weekdays, so Round 3 will be Monday at 9 am. This prevents those that are busy on the weekends from missing out on the voting.
March 28th, 2010 | 6:50 pm
Uh, the Plague was not about “Angst”. It was about fighting an epidemic when things seemed hopeless, and was “really” about making the decision to oppose the Nazi occupation in France.
I love The Stand, but it needed an editor to make it a “great” novel…
March 29th, 2010 | 9:02 am
[...] to the tempestuous beginning of upsets, blowouts, and close-calls, Round 2 proved to be quite tame. The powerhouse books trampled their competition without much effort. (The [...]
March 30th, 2010 | 7:04 am
[...] Things is having a “Tournament of Novels.” Vote here. I just learned about it and so missed voting in the first round but just cast my vote in the [...]
March 30th, 2010 | 11:55 am
I’m a little late to this party, but geez, way to hobble Nabokov by not including Lolita. (Which isn’t to say Pale Fire isn’t an excellent choice for inclusion, just that leaving Lolita out is a bit of a tragedy.)
March 30th, 2010 | 2:16 pm
As a Libertarian, I remembering slogging through Atlas Shrugged many years ago. While I appreciated the philisophical viewpoints it espoused, the writing was TERRIBLE. I still don’t understand it’s popularity.
Come to think of it, I remember slogging through The Lord of the Rings also. I will blaspheme and say it could have used a good editing also. It shouldn’t make it past the next round or two, but on literary merit Frodo far surpasses John Galt.
March 30th, 2010 | 10:12 pm
To Kill a Mockingbird versus A Catcher in the Rye? Talk about Sophie’s Choice. BTW, I’m going purely off personal preference rather than literary merit, because something truly meritous transcends both categories.
March 31st, 2010 | 6:47 pm
Pride & Prejudice is losing 538 to 0 so far? The fix is in?
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