Here's a top tip: get hold of a hardback edition of one of these pompous books, cut out the middle couple of hundred or more pages of it, and then you can just put your usual, normal, real people's, non-hipster, pompless, friendly-neighborhood, genuinely readable, unpretentious, happybrow, fun, top-entertainment books inside it, so that people think you're ultra-hip and highbrow and can actually make sense of that wacko shit.

Read Ulysses today at the Social Security office (it's just what I happened to be reading!), so where do I pick up my pompous card?

Only two women in this list! A little bit unbalanced...

I count 5 female authors in the top hundred, but that's still a very masculine list.

I'm personally thankful that so few female authors have to resort to being overbearingly pompous in order to write quality literature. If they don't make the list, I think that's a success, not a failure...because face it, this list is obnoxious! Pew!

PS: Although.. after some reflection I realize Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia belongs on the list. Very much so.

Perhaps a list for Genuinely Thought-Provoking Books or Deeply Intelligent Reading would have better diversity. I know several female authors that could wipe the floor with the competition in that case.

Um. Why is the "The Road" on this list? Its an easy-to-read page turner that was turned into a blockbuster movie, and by far Cormac McCarthy's most accessible mass audience genre novel...

ah yes, glenn beck, the most pompous of them all. riiiight...

This list is hilarious. *Bookmarked*

must we be ironic and postmodern about good literature? perhaps you just want to read a good book when you read Ulysses.

so funny!

Grant wrote: "must we be ironic and postmodern about good literature? perhaps you just want to read a good book when you read Ulysses."

Well, we are still in the "postmodern" era, so... yes.

This list gave me ass cancer

Mark wrote: "Here's a top tip: get hold of a hardback edition of one of these pompous books, cut out the middle couple of hundred or more pages of it, and then you can just put your usual, normal, real people's..."

this has to be satire

Once i had fun.
It was horrifying

But 'Ulysses' is flat out brilliant. It's one of a handful of books that make me laugh out loud, and yes several times in coffee shops. "Atlas Shrugged" is brilliant entertainment, but basically a pretentious soap opera! Proust is a magnificent writer!

Mark wrote: "Here's a top tip: get hold of a hardback edition of one of these pompous books, cut out the middle couple of hundred or more pages of it, and then you can just put your usual, normal, real people's..."
Mark, well, in the 1st grade I had Agatha Christie books hidden within those silly readers like "See Jane Run." I had no other choice but to hide what I really wanted to read.

smoothbrain cope list

I'm glad to see Jacques Barzun on a list of pompous people. My only qualm is that he doesn't deserve to be on a list with writers of real ability and insight.

Whoever you are: I love you.