
Forgotten Best Sellers - samclemens
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/forgotten-best-sellers
======
legerdemain
It is hardly news that American (and, to a smaller extent, European) reading
tends to revolve around disposable media events. Specific books are announced,
promoted, celebrated at launch parties, paraded on semi-arbitrary bestseller
lists[1], advertised with author appearances, and then retired and forgotten
just as quickly. Do you remember when you couldn't throw a rock without
hitting a volume in the endless _Left Behind_ series?

A lot of people I've talked to in the US enjoy specific books, to a large
extent, _because_ they are read by lots of other people at the same time. The
spectacle gives the reader a sense of affirmation that the choice was a good
one, and for a subset of book genres, wide readership is what allows a fandom
to coalesce.

In this setting, an old and unpopular book is bad, because no one else is
shipping Bjornstjerne Bjornson characters. It's almost as weird as going back
to watch old baseball games.

But if that's not how and why you read, yeah, there are thousands upon
thousands of wonderful and unusual books that will narrate a corner of human
experience that you've never thought about before.

As an anecdote, _Raintree County_ , a 19th-century family saga set in a
fictional Southern town, was a cause celebré when it came out in 1948. The
movie rights to it were sold before the novel was even published, and the
eventual film won the best picture Oscar, beating out _Gone with the Wind_!
Talk about changing tastes!

[1] e.g., [https://observer.com/2016/02/the-truth-about-the-new-york-
ti...](https://observer.com/2016/02/the-truth-about-the-new-york-times-and-
wall-street-journal-bestseller-lists/)

~~~
nabla9
I don' think that is big issue in countries with good public libraries.

~~~
vinay427
Library access and quality where I've lived in the US is fantastic, and at
least in California access to all local libraries is extended to any state
resident so there isn't a significant socioeconomic hurdle, and other places I
lived in at least had very convenient interlibrary loaning. I live in
Switzerland now, and quite frankly so far I've been slightly disappointed by
the non-university resources even in a larger city here, both in physical
buildings and online, but I haven't explored the full reaches of it yet.

------
scottlocklin
I love old Best Sellers. Don't think that article was real helpful in listing
any.

For example, pretty much everything by Michener is amazing, but nobody cares
about him any more. He's dismissed as some kind of trashy or middlebrow post
WW-2 writer; maybe he was -but he's also almost always a lot of fun to read,
and occasionally incredibly interesting.

The Bjorndal Saga by Trygve Gulbranssen is largely forgotten in the US (maybe
less so in Norway), but won all kinds of presidential awards and was a big
deal in its day. It's sort of like "The Leopard" which is less forgotten,
since they made a decent movie out of it (probably the great Italian novel).
Greater novel though, in my opinion.

Another one I picked up because of an interview with Jim Simons; Jan de
Hartog's "the Captain" -so far so good; was a big deal back in its day; it's
predecessor "Captain Jan" was important enough it figured into Holland's war
story. Totally forgotten now in the anglosphere anyway, and I'd have never
heard of it if it weren't for a one off statement by an important guy who
could hardly remember the name himself.

Dennis Wheatley is another huge best seller from the Ian Fleming era of trash
novels; loads of fun to read -vastly better than Fleming. Alas, the movies
they made of his books were all "video nasties" rather than James Bond.

None of these are Nobel Prize in Literature tier books, they vary wildly in
quality, but they're loads of fun to read now as they were back then. Books
don't always need to be an exercise in self improvement.

~~~
anarbadalov
oh man, Wheatley. I read "The Devil Rides Out" on a bus when i ran away from
home at fourteen. Brings back some memories. Probably would find it pretty
hokey today.

~~~
scottlocklin
If you like Tom Baker and Sean Pertwee cheese, it will stand the test of time.

[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/dec/05/dennis-
wheatle...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/dec/05/dennis-wheatley-
devil-gentleman-review)

------
scandox
The Gadfly[1] is an interesting one. Sold 2.5 million copies in the Soviet
Union. 2 million copies in China. Mostly unheard of in the West.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gadfly](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gadfly)

~~~
basch
another reason to repost a link to Now Then
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7-30a0-9a0a-3ff76e8bfe58)

Spoilers.

"

George Boole - who helped start all this with his Boolean Logic had an
extraordinary family.

...

But George Boole had another daughter called Ethel. She had an amazing life -
which showed that there is another way. Because Ethel believed in the future.

...

Then Reilly deserted her - and went off to Russia where he worked as a secret
agent for the British. Ian Fleming is said to have used Reilly as the model
for James Bond.

Ethel was heartbroken - and she wrote a novel called The Gadfly which,
although she never admitted it, her biographer says is obviously based on the
early adventures of Sydney Reilly.

It's the most amazing book. It's an over the top melodrama set in Italy about
the hero, Arthur's battle against the church and the corrupt state - and his
treacherous family. At the same time it is about his passionate love for an
english girl - Gemma. It ends with Arthur being slowly tortured and then
condemned to be shot.

Its message though is a revolutionary one. Arthur is sacrificed so that
humankind can be redeemed and open the way to a realisation of the future
possibilities for the world - once the old oppressive forces have been
overthrown.

The Gadfly was published in 1897 in New York - under Ethel's married name,
E.L. Voynich. No British publisher would touch it because of its "outrageous
and horrible character". But then it was published in Russia and became an
astonishing success. One writer describes how all the young Bolsheviks read it
and "it virtually became the bible of the revolution".

By the 1960s it was estimated that 250 million Russian teenagers had read the
Gadfly in translation. And polls showed that Arthur was consistently the
favourite hero of Soviet youth. And in 1955 a film version was made - with a
soundtrack by Shostakovich - which won an award at the Cannes film festival.

In 1920 Ethel went back to her husband Wilfred Voynich. He had moved to New
York and had become one of the world's greatest expert and dealers in rare
books.

His most famous purchase was a mysterious manuscript written in code that has
come to be known as The Voynich Manuscript. No one has ever been able to break
the code - it seems to have many scientific references, and herbal and
astronomical illustrations.

"

~~~
scandox
Thanks. I actually knew some of those connections but by no means all!

~~~
basch
The whole article is a string of loosely connected ideas that flow like that
from point to point, ending with her, but is much much more than where it
ends.

~~~
teh_klev
That's one of the things I enjoy about Adam Curtis's writing and his films.

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Andrew_nenakhov
Interesting. I'd love to follow this series of posts, but I couldn't find an
RSS feed, so there is _zero_ chance I'll ever remember to revisit this site.
Pity.

~~~
benrapscallion
[https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/rss.xml](https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/rss.xml)

~~~
Andrew_nenakhov
Problem is, it is a general feed with all their content. I don't want that.
Article in question doesn't even appear in the initial feed preview.

They have a nice logical structure on their website: I expect all posts on the
subject to appear in their /roundtable/ section. So this URL not having an RSS
is just sad. It's so simple to do!

~~~
benrapscallion
I haven’t used this particular feed but if they tag articles properly or use
keywords that RSS readers such as NewsBlur (which I use) can filter in or out
articles that you want.

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bryanrasmussen
Normally when I think of forgotten best sellers I think novels that are pretty
good stories told quickly but perhaps not as well as they could have been and
without any great intellectual heft to them.

The books that stick with me that are largely forgotten are the Merlin books
from Mary Stewart
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Stewart_(novelist)#The_Me...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Stewart_\(novelist\)#The_Merlin_Trilogy)
and Chaim Potok's books like The Chosen
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chosen_(Potok_novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chosen_\(Potok_novel\)),
they have a certain nostalgic importance for me while I can still see that
they were not especially important otherwise.

------
chipuni
Of course, gutenberg.org is a great resource for those forgotten books.

One of the most popular books from the 19th century was "Struggles and
Triumphs: or, Forty Years' Recollections of P. T. Barnum"
[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50115](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50115)

The parallels between P. T. Barnum and Donald Trump were obvious, but P. T.
Barnum's jump into politics was far, far kinder.

------
jccalhoun
For the last few years I've had a joke that there is a law that every Goodwill
store is required to have a copy of Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey, Hunger Games,
and/or Left Behind. I wonder if these bestsellers will be forgotten decades
from now because clearly a lot of people are not holding onto these books.

~~~
load
Probably not - if something gets as popular as these it isn't likely they're
going to be forgotten anytime soon, least of all the Hunger Games.

Many of them will probably grow into 'classics' in the decades following, and
it's a bit rare to see them just fade into obscurity, but it happens.

~~~
WalterBright
Hunger Games is written for a teen audience, and like most books targeted to
that demographic, will simply go out of fashion and disappear.

Yes, I read it :-)

~~~
kennywinker
ah yes, like all the other flash-in-the-pan teen novels:

to kill a mockingbird, the hobbit, the catcher in the rye, the lord of the
rings, fahrenheit 451, anne of green gables, the lord of the flies, flowers
for algernon, dune, the call of the wild, treasure island, and the narnia
series.

Yes, I know many books in that category fade away, but only time will tell if
hunger games is one of the ones that fade, or one of the ones that lasts

~~~
voldacar
Many of those are now recognized to have a real artful quality and literary
value, which is hardly present in something like the hunger games

~~~
bryanrasmussen
Well, I haven't read The Hunger Games, but my readings of criticism of it
leads me to think it probably has some sort of real artful quality and
literary value - what is your argument that it doesn't?

~~~
voldacar
Don't take my word for it - read it yourself. It's trashy YA kitsch. Contrast
with catcher in the rye or LotR afterwards

~~~
WalterBright
It also has a completely predictable plot and many deux ex machinas to get our
heroine out of a hopeless jam. Its plot is similar to Stephen King's "The Long
Walk" which is a far better (and grimmer) book.

