Compared to the tempestuous beginning of upsets, blowouts, and close-calls, Round 2 proved to be rather tame. The powerhouse books trampled their competition without much effort. (The lone surprise—at least for me—was finding Les Miserables besting The Great Gatsby.)
Click to Download Round 3 Brackets
Each of the final sixteen, however, will have a difficult time moving on to the next round. The competition is fierce, with match-ups like Pride and Prejudice versus War and Peace and Don Quixote facing off against A Tale of Two Cities.
Will the favored novels make it to the final eight or will one of the underdogs—The Hobbit, The Hound of the Baskervilles—slip into the final brackets?
Your vote will decide the outcome, so choose your favorites now.
March 18th, 2011 | 9:49 am
This may be a complete and utter oversimplification, but I think, both this year and last year, there is a trend in what kinds of books First Things readers prefer:
1) Books that you read for high school or middle school, rather than for college.
2) Books by religious authors.
3) Books that are at least 70 years old (poor Jayber really deserved that first round win, but I doubt enough people had read it).
4) Nothing even resembling postmodern literature.
March 18th, 2011 | 10:53 am
Maybe postmodern literature can’t compete with the universality of other literature. Maybe it is that high school is such a formative time that literature we encounter then is better cemented in our being. Maybe high school literature courses just teach us how to dissect and appreciate literature at a level that touches us individually more than college courses. I disagree that the author’s religious affiliation directly plays into why certain books are chosen; indirectly, perhaps yes, as the themes and messages of a religious writer may be more easily latched onto by a religious reader. I seriously doubt, however, that there are people running down the list basing their choice solely on the religious leanings of the author.
March 18th, 2011 | 11:33 am
I get the sense that people get rather bitter when their snobbery isn’t affirmed by others as they would like.
March 18th, 2011 | 12:53 pm
Joe, how did you arrive at the original 64 contenders?
March 18th, 2011 | 1:23 pm
“The lone surprise—at least for me—was finding Les Miserables besting The Great Gatsby.”
Disappointing, but on the bright side, it gives me yet another round to vote against the aptly named Les Miserables.
March 18th, 2011 | 1:23 pm
Joe, how did you arrive at the original 64 contenders?
We took nominations at the first of the month which gave up about 500 contenders. Then we had another round where the readers chose their top five from that list. Out of that result I took the 64 with the most votes.
March 18th, 2011 | 3:04 pm
The Hobbit is my dark-horse favorite, and I expect to see a matchup between it and Pride and Prejudice in the final round. If this situation occurs, I don’t know which I’d vote for. Both novels deserve credit, not just for being good books, but each essentially created entire genres.
March 18th, 2011 | 8:02 pm
[...] Madness: The tournament is in the third round - not basketball, the The Tournament of Novels 2011 (First [...]
March 19th, 2011 | 11:12 am
[...] great) novels against one another, knock-out tournament style. As of this writing, he’s up to Round 3 (Round 2, Round 1). Download the latest standings [...]
March 19th, 2011 | 12:16 pm
Way back when, I predicted, “So I suppose the smart money is on ‘The Hobbit’ this year.”
I really do love “The Hobbit” and LOTR. But best novel? I guess we’ll see.
March 19th, 2011 | 7:28 pm
Chris:
I agree with most of your points, though 3) “Books that are at least 70 years old” &c., perplexes me (three novels in the current round have been published in the last seventy years and at least two exceed that span by ten years or fewer). I certainly cannot understand how Willa Cather beat out the greatest novelist of the century.
What were you expecting to see among the winners? Very few novels from the latter half of the twentieth century suggest themselves to me: one thinks perhaps a novel or so each by Nabokov, Burgess, Pynchon, and DeLillo might make the list — I would not include anything by Bellows, Roth, either Amis, Rushdie, or McEwan — much less Barth, Gass, Calvino, Powers &c., (Franzen’s name does not even present itself as a possibility.)
March 20th, 2011 | 12:02 am
Can we get over the fetish with hobbits and trolls speaking in books like 65 year old Oxford dons? Although it may give an archivist or two a chuckle a century or two from now.
If the criteria for greatest novel would be display of truth, visible and invisible (rather than seen and unseen), The Brothers Karamazov would have to win. Though Fydor D. thought Don Quixote was the best ever. The Hobbit. :) please.
March 20th, 2011 | 2:03 am
I’m shocked Jayber Crow was eliminated so early and so decisively. I think the problem is that the style of play is so different from other teams, but they always hit that three pointer at the buzzer.
(In all seriousness, read the book. It’s phenomenal.)
March 20th, 2011 | 1:22 pm
We should do a tournament for classical music (or country or whatever you like), that would be awesome. If it came down to a choice between Beethoven, Gorecki, and Reich, my head would asplode.
March 20th, 2011 | 6:21 pm
I’d bet most of us know Gorecki, Gustav Holst, and Carl Orff because of exactly one amazing composition. Now that would be a match-up:
a. Gorecki, “Symphony 3″
b. Holst, “The Planets”
c. Orff, “Carmina Burana”
Now choose one.
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