Theme Park at its Darkest

1.

A wise friend of mine rejects the idea of there being such a thing, because it suggests that novels are like horses and the race makes assessment into a simple matter of comparison in a single field of endeavour.

However, the idea of any novel being the ‘best’ is almost guaranteed to incense a reader who disagrees with your choice, and given that we live in the era of outrage, it seems like a good idea to draw that outrage towards a wholesome outlet, like a fight about art.

Wuthering Heights isn’t necessarily my favourite novel, but I’m willing to assert it is probably the best piece of popular fiction ever written. This is a weird qualification to begin with, but allow me to explain further.

The two best books I’ve ever read are most likely War and Peace and In Search of Lost Time. I think everybody should read War and Peace in the same way everyone should visit the Taj Mahal, or the Pyramids.

There is something profoundly edifying about being in the presence of some of the greatest architectural marvels ever realised by mankind. These things are an aspect of your own greatness, and as monuments, they need you in order to exist. And while War and Peace is long and detailed, it is not especially difficult to read. It’s simply, by modern standards, ‘slow’.

In Search of Lost Time is something else again. It’s a book that in part, calls into question what a book is as a psychological and intellectual experience, and that is closely related to an inquiry into the phenomenon of reality, as it relates to perception and memory. It is extremely difficult to read, and if you don’t really love books, it will do your head in.

Some people define a novel as a story that starts with a beginning, traverses a middle to deliver you at an end and, if that’s your definition, I think Wuthering Heights knocks almost everything else I’ve read straight into a cocked hat.

‘Popular’ fiction is often defined as a book you can’t put down. If Robert McKee, the author of Story can be relied upon, a gripping story is about crisis and resolution, and Wuthering Heights delivers in these terms better than anything I’ve ever read.

This entry was posted on March 22, 2026 at 2:49 am and is filed under Observation, Reading with tags book-review, books, Emily Bronte, gothic, gothic novel, In Search of Lost Time, literature, Pyramids, Robert McKee, Taj Mahal, War and Peace, Wuthering Heights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.