Where does Thomas Wolfe rank in the latest poll?

By D. G. Martin
Posted Wednesday, April 25, 2007

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Chapel Hill, NC - What happened to Thomas Wolfe?

It was my first question for Peder Zane after reading his new book, “The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books.”

Zane, the long-time book editor at the Raleigh News and Observer, contacted 125 leading writers and asked them this question: What are the 10 greatest works of fiction of all time?

Zane took the results, consolidated them, and came up with an overall top ten list.

The bad news is that North Carolina’s treasured author of “Look Homeward Angel” did not make this top ten list.

There is worse news.

First though, here is the “top top” ten list compiled by Zane.

1. “Anna Karenina,” Leo Tolstoy
2. “Madame Bovary,” Gustav Flaubert
3. “War and Peace,” Leo Tolstoy
4. “Lolita,” Vladimir Nabokov
5. “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Mark Twain
6. “Hamlet,” William Shakespeare
7. “The Great Gatsby,” F. Scott Fizgerald
8. “In Search of Lost Time,” Marcel Proust
9. The stories of Anton Chekhov
10. “Middlemarch,” George Eliot

Disappointed? Did your favorite book miss the list, too?

Surprised? Even though most of the writers who picked the books are Americans, only two of the top ten were born in the United States.

I asked Zane why he thought the Bible did not make the list. “We limited this to works of fiction,” he reminded me. “The Bible is not supposed to be a work of fiction.”

Nevertheless, several writers included the Bible or one of its books as their number one pick.

The 125 writers mentioned a total of 544 books in their top ten lists.

Most of these 544 books were listed by only one of the 125 writers.

(I am moving towards the “even worse” news.)

For instance, the modern North Carolina classic, “Cold Mountain” by Charles Frazier, was noted only once. Chapel Hill’s Elizabeth Spencer ranked it eighth on her list. Others on Spencer’s list, in order, were Dickens’ “Great Expectations,” Faulkner’s “The Hamlet,” Fielding’s “Joseph Andrews,” Stendhal’s “The Red and the Black, Welty’s “The Golden Apples,” Turgenev’s “On the Eve,” Forster’s Where Angels Fear to Tread,” Fitzgerald’s “Tender Is the Night,” and Cather’s “The Professor’s House.”

There is a hint in Spencer’s list about the worse news that is coming.

None of the books of Spencer’s top ten list made it to the “top top” ten. But as a big fan of Elizabeth Spencer’s writing, especially her ever-popular “The Light in the Piazza,” I am more likely to be guided by her choices than by any consolidated list.

In fact, the top ten list of each one of the authors whom I know is much more interesting than the consolidated list. From Zane’s book, I learned the top choices of several of my favorite North Carolina writers: Fred Chappell (“The Iliad”), Clyde Edgerton (Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”), Alan Gurganus (“Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe ”), Reynolds Price (“Madam Bovary”), Gail Godwin (James’ “The Portrait of a Lady”), Haven Kimmel (“The Gospel of Mark”), Lee Smith (Joyce’s “The Dead ”), Louis Rubin (“In Search of Lost Time”), and G.D. Gearino (Voltaire’s “Candide”).

Did you notice that there was more bad news about Thomas Wolfe? None of these North Carolina writers made “Look Homeward Angel” a number one choice. Nor did any of the 125 writers. In fact, and here is the worse news I promised you, none of the 125 writers included “Look Homeward Angel” as one of their individual top ten choices. The very worst news for Wolfe fans is that every one of the participating North Carolina writers omitted this North Carolina classic.

Zane provides a wonderful set of summaries of the 544 books that were mentioned at least once by a participating writer. It is a great reference tool, almost a complete one, considering that I already know about the missing “Look Homeward Angel.”

Top 10, top 100, top anything lists are tricky. They are fun and they provoke instructive discussion and arguments. But, as “The Top Ten” show us again so well, they are subjective and personal. In the end we have to work our own ways to books that best entertain us, educate us, and change us.

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D.G. Martin is the host of UNC-TV’s North Carolina Bookwatch, which airs Sundays at 5:00 p.m. Check his blog and view prior programs at www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch/

This week’s (April 29) guest is Paul Leonard, author of “Music of a Thousand Hammers.”

Upcoming NC Bookwatch programs on UNC-TV at 5pm, Sundays:

April 29
Paul Leonard
Music of a Thousand Hammers

May 6
Angela Davis Gardner
Plum Wine

May 13
Pat Taylor
Fourth Down and Goal to Go

May 20
Lee Smith
On Agate Hill

May 27
Charles Frazier
Thirteen Moons

Paul Leonard—Music of a Thousand Hammers: Inside Habitat for Humanity

Habitat for Humanity International focuses on two goals. The first is to build as many houses as it can, using the principles of sweat equity, no interest, no-profit, volunteer-driven construction- one house, one family at a time-in every corner of the world. Today, Habitat is completing a house somewhere in the world every 26 minutes (20,000 per year). Habitat also attempts to make housing a matter of conscience everywhere. Habitat wants everyone to understand that it is morally and socially unacceptable for any human being not to have a simple, decent place to sleep at night. Yet, all is not well in the Habitat household. In late 2004, Habitat’s founder Millard Fuller was forced out of his job by the board of directors of the Christian homebuilding ministry. The announcement that Fuller was stepping down came near the end of a tumultuous year for Fuller and the Americus, Georgia-based organization that he co-founded in 1976 with his wife, Linda. The year included allegations against Fuller by a female employee of inappropriate behavior and a struggle concerning the organization’s future. The shakeout, now apparently complete, could affect Habitat for years.

In this episode of North Carolina Bookwatch, former Habitat for Humanity interim CEO, Paul Leonard shares his book Music of a Thousand Hammers: Inside Habitat for Humanity. Part memoir, part history of Habitat, and part expose, the Davidson College graduate’s work provides a glimpse into the shattered world of an organization built on a solid foundation of trust.