SOURCE: "'Ulysses' on Top among 100 Best Novels," in New York Times, July 20, 1998.

[In the following essay, Lewis describes the intent and composition of the Modern Library's list, noting the members of the selection panel and some of their responses to the final list.]

Ulysses, that sprawling, difficult, but uniquely original masterpiece by James Joyce, has been voted the finest English-language novel published this century by a jury of scholars and writers.

The book—in which an immensely long account of a single day in the lives of a group of Dubliners becomes a metaphor for the human condition and the author experiments with language almost to the point of unintelligibility—heads the list of 100 novels drawn up by the editorial board of Modern Library, which has been publishing classic English-language literature at affordable prices since 1917 and is now a division of Random House.

The list is to be...