Tomorrow's Publishers Make Today's Headlines

Students from the Radcliffe Publishing Course receive attention for their list of 100 best

By Heather Macferran '98-99

Special to the Gazette

It began as a simple homework assignment -- you know, "Write 10 pages about Fitzgerald's use of dichotomy in The Great Gatsby." But because the 20-something, blue-toenail-polish-wearing, not-ready-to-buy-a-navy-suit-yet students in this class are the future of the publishing industry, their homework became headlines.

The Radcliffe Publishing Course students' list of the 100 best novels written in English in the 20th century was news in such publications as The New York Times, The Boston Globe, USA TODAY, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report, as well as The Today Show, National Public Radio, and C-SPAN. The reason being that the assignment to compile the list, given by longtime Publishing Course instructor Christopher Cerf, was released in conjunction with the Random House Modern Library's list of the 100 best novels. Cerf is chairman of Random House's Modern Library editorial board.

The differences in the two lists were characterized by commentators as the differences between old-style, stodgy literary stalwarts and fresh-faced, too-young-to-be-taken-seriously publishing industry beginners. Little did anyone know that the two lists would generate tidal waves of controversy in literary circles across the country.

The Modern Library, whose board members include Maya Angelou, A.S. Byatt, and Gore Vidal, came up with a list that contained only eight women, failed to include such influential novels as Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, and was dubbed "anti-contemporary" for excluding many works written after the 1970s.

The Radcliffe list included several more women authors, many more recent novels, and To Kill a Mockingbird ranked No. 4.

But for its part, the Radcliffe list was not taken as seriously by some commentators because it was considered more an opinion based on movies viewed by students rather than text they have read, was dubbed "kids' stuff" for including E.B. White's Charlotte's Web and A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh, and was mocked for being "too diverse" with an undue emphasis on recent African-American writers.

Cerf's assignment as a whole was even criticized by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Ford, who said that the "notion of art should exclude lists of bests."

But Cerf and his colleagues at the Publishing Course seemed to think such commentators missed the point of the assignment. Cerf was thrilled by the attention, not only to the lists, but to the state of literature. "No one has been talking about a lot of these books for a long time . . . [and] now people are talking about them like they're new," Cerf said. "The proof is in the pudding. The list helps get attention for books . . . sales are soaring because people want to read . . . isn't that thrilling? . . . This is what publishing is all about. . . . I love the way this all turned out."

And so did the students, who entered into the good humor of the controversy by reading aloud a delightful poem they wrote for Cerf, sometimes mocking the Modern Library's choices: ". . . was The Awakening by Kate Chopin/dropped from your list because she's not a man?"

To further show their appreciation, students presented Cerf with an annotated Charlotte's Web. He also received a first edition of The Great Gatsby, ranked No. 1 on Radcliffe's list, from the Radcliffe Publishing staff.

Cerf, in turn, presented everyone with hardbound copies of John Fowles's The Magus, his favorite book on the Modern Library list, and assured the students that he was "wildly in favor" of the Radcliffe list, "lik[ing] it better than the Modern Library's in many ways."

So what effect will all of the discussion have on the future of the literary canon, especially because today's students will be making tomorrow's decisions?

Lindy Hess, director of the Radcliffe Publishing Course, believes that such exercises show students not only the power they have, but also the responsibility they have to use that power wisely. "Cerf takes the course to the future and anchors it to the past," Hess said. "[It was] nice for the class . . . [They are] people who care deeply for books, and they are the publishers of the future."