SOURCE: "Sound and Fury over Top Novel List," in San Francisco Chronicle, July 21, 1998.

[In the following essay, Rubenstien reports typical reactions to Modern Library's list.]

The 100 best novels are not necessarily the 100 best novels.

A New York publisher released a list yesterday of what it called the best English language novels of the century, but had no luck convincing anyone else that the ranking was anything but another work of fiction. "Such a list is meaningless," said Ojars Kratins, an associate English professor at the University of California at Berkeley, whose specialty is the modern novel.

The best 20th century novel, according to a committee of scholars and writers hired by Modern Library, was Ulysses. The next best novels, in order, are The Great Gatsby, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Lolita and Brave New World. Most of the books on the list are published...