SOURCE: "Who Chose The Magus?," in The New York Times, August 8, 1998, p. A15.

[In the following essay, Rich reviews several controversies inspired by the Modern Library list.]

If further proof were needed that publicity can sell anything in America, here it is: Ulysses, a novel that is to beach reading what the Ring Cycle is to shock-jock radio, has now made the best-seller list, clocking in, as of yesterday, at No. 3 among paperbacks al amazon.com, where it has leaped ahead of the novelist laureate of Oprahland, Wally Lamb. On Amazon's "hot 100" list of paperbacks and hardcovers, it is even beating The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (reading Ulysses is not among them) and that ever-popular anti-Joycean screed, Don't Sweat the Small Stuff.

The Beanie-Babies-like popularity of Ulysses is the most recent, but hardly the only, fallout of Modern Library's release, less than three weeks ago, of...