[In 2005 I published the now famous list of 'Greatest European Novels by Contemporary Writers'. Whilst whiling away a week in Vladivostock I wrote the following fulsome introduction...]
INTRODUCTION TO THE GREATEST EUROPEAN NOVELS
‘Do we love all that we hate, do we not, I say now, in the end, do we not love it?’
(F L C Gorgny, Interloper 89)
The tradition of the ‘list’ deserves to be executed: bloodily beheaded by a symbolic guillotine. And well might I invoke the weapon of a social revolution, for undoubtedly ‘the list’ is a capitalist invention. It is a microcosm of a deformed social system which establishes an order of brilliance based on a series of deluded conceptions of worth and beauty stemming from the rotten brains of the Mammon-worshiping monkeys we insist on electing to government. The tradition of the list contains more holes than Swiss cheese, more mould than the most pungent Stilton, and crumbles at a touch, like Wensleydale. The very sight of a list makes me feel unclean; until I have the burnt the offending article and washed all over my body with a rough Albanian soap I will not feel the strength to carry on. The list is, in short, an invention of the very vilest sort.
It has long been the duty of the critic, nevertheless, to don a pair of rubbery boots and wade out into the swamps of excrement that constitute modern culture: to embrace all the varieties of filth and, from the bucket of dung collected, build concepts as fresh as new fruit. Thus, for all my seething hatred of lists, I am by necessity drawn to them: charmed by their sickly pallor and seduced by their very impurities. The demon ignored snores on: the devil confronted is shunted off.
What is signified by the word ‘greatest’? Who can decide whether one novel is greater than another? There is no man, no woman, no creature on earth that can do this with any authority. All attempts are futile – even critics with bats-ear sensitivities go about the task clumsily, their results no more convincing than a frog’s impression of an elephant. There is no trap into which you fall whilst compiling a list. You are trapped before you start.
Accept, therefore, your fate. As the tradition of the list is scarred, so too is the tradition of the novel. Though disagreement over its boundaries will never cease, the novel remains a medium like any other. Even if it was not written as a novel, it is yet read as one: humans are creatures that will classify anything, regardless of sense and logic. Patterns not need not be intended to be seen. Our eyes and minds are list-eating machines; architects building invisible constructions on weak or no foundations: blueprints of falsehoods, great cities of delusion. Greatness thus is largeness: a celebration of sprawlingness: of nothingness: of pure ‘mess’.
I recently launched my esteemed journal ‘Underneath the Bunker’ with the publication of a list. Giving birth to a child, I blessed it with a curse. Without inflicting such a wound, I fear it would have grown into a healthy child. It has grown instead into a profitable sickness, coughing and wheezing with the best of them. The list has caused much consternation. This is a medal it wears about its neck. Thus spake the Danish poet Egor Gnardin: ‘I am a provocation, so I am’.
Hear this: the list is not my invention alone. I was there when it was conceived; by publishing it I pulled it, sticky, from the womb. But it has many parents. This was necessary. The tradition of the list is innately flawed; the tradition of the novel knows no boundaries: so it must be so that any attempt to unite the two wears its flaws on its sleeve. I took suggestions against my will, and I am pleased to have done so, though it may have resulted in choices that I would rather die than have chosen myself.
Of course, the very construction of a list invites its own mistakes. Where other lists consign themselves to a simple numbering structure (Fifty Best, or The Hundred Greatest) this one enlists the help of the alphabet with which to weave its clumsy tricks. Rather than simply choose our preferred fifty novels, we set ourselves a simultaneously needless and necessary challenge, choosing two novels for each letter of the alphabet, with the first letter from the author’s surname providing the vital letter. The most overt quandary I hold with this classificatory system is that it leads to some novels being ignored on account of their author having a common letter at the front of his surname, whilst others, whose authors lead with a rather rarer one – though arguably poorer works than the former – find themselves included. This would appear to be a thoroughly negative fact. On the contrary, I am fascinated by it.
An example, if you will. Pierre Manniac’s Death: A Way of Life is, in my humble opinion, an insufferable novel. Zulita Zouff’s Soup-Spoon-Tank-Bomb, on the other hand, is a work of singular genius. And yet, there are two other brilliant novels by authors whose surnames begin with the letter ‘Z’. No place, therefore, for Zulita – whilst mouse-brained Manniac finds a friendly berth.
This is no by means the end of the unfairness. Elsewhere I find myself looking at titles that may not even be novels at all. I very much doubt that Obo Urlach’s Fires of Wilmedestran even exists, for example, whereas Hoçe’s Receding Rainfall (so far as I can tell) is a paltry twenty-four pages of poetry. And yet I continue to embrace this list with every bloody region of my middle-aged heart. Sometimes fierce animals need to be caged.
What else can I say? Since its fateful publication, this list has grown into a monster: a salivating bug-eyed giant, punctured by insulting arrows and healed by the balm of profuse praise. A beautiful blistered beast. Long may he rampage. Meanwhile, as ‘Underneath the Bunker’ expands, a new opportunity arises like the proverbial phoenix from the flames. With ‘Underneath the Bunker Online’ providing additional hunting grounds for this important critical project, I have given full support for the setting up of an insightful resource directly inspired by the list: a collection of reviews based on all of the novels that were included. Though I believe that it has been impossible to collect reviews for every novel so far, I can certainly promise that we are working towards this aim. I am myself working on several of the titles, whilst lesser critics work equally hard to support the cause. I entreat all readers to observe future developments closely.
Georgy Riecke, Vladivostock, Summer 2005
AFTERTHOUGHTS TO FOLLOW SHORTLY…
[...] enemy. What is more, it must be admitted that that much-discussed and often-derided convention – the list – has an uncanny knack, when used properly, for raising intriguing [...]