Hit Lit: Cracking the Code of the Twentieth Century's Biggest Bestsellers

by James W. Hall

  Thoreau’s pragmatic, law-abiding neighbors were no doubt unmoved when their freeloading neighbor, the dreamy transcendentalist, was hauled away to jail for tax evasion. Rebellion is one thing, doing your fair share for the public good is another.

  A similar tension between mavericks and conventionalists operates at the core of the biggest bestsellers of all time. Scarlett O’Hara, Allison MacKenzie, Scout Finch, Anne Welles, Michael Corleone, Chris MacNeil, Sheriff Martin Brody, John Smith, Jack Ryan, Mitch McDeere, Robert Kincaid, and Robert Langdon each in his or her own way does righteous battle against the forces of conformity and repression.

  Every one of them is a maverick of one denomination or another. Most are teetering on the brink of flat-out rejection of conventional society and are ready to embrace an individualist isolation from the customs of the mass culture.

  THE EBB AND FLOW OF ORTHODOXY

  Social scientists who chart such things have long been fascinated with the American tendency to tout individualism in one decade, then urge conformity in the next—reliable mood swings that seem to occur every ten years or so. In the postwar 1920s, for instance, there was something known as the “hometown mind,” a form of groupthink that acted as a restraining pressure on the new, young individualists with “subtle compulsions” not to speak out frankly or act out sexually. The flappers vs. the moralists.

  During the decade of the twenties, the flappers mostly won the day, and mavericks of every kind flourished and could be found spouting their views in literary journals and over shots of absinthe in Parisian Left Bank cafés.

  During the Great Depression, calls for more personal and sexual freedom subsided, and the conformity pendulum lurched back the other way for a good long stay. In her sociological study In Conflict No Longer, Irene Thomson found that in the 1930s (a period during which Gone with the Wind was written and To Kill a Mockingbird was set), the heroes and heroines in mass magazine fiction no longer favored “self-realization over and above group definitions.” Instead, the most widely read stories of that decade depicted individuals making adjustments to fit into the larger social context.

  While the ebb and flow of gray flannel conformity and tie-dyed counterculture rebellion clearly exists in the national culture at large, these twelve bestsellers are consistent in the stands they take regarding these issues. Scarlett and Scout and Mitch McDeere and Allison MacKenzie and Johnny Smith don’t blithely accept the prevailing views or social pressures exerted by their families or the citizens of their towns, even if it means public disapproval or risking their lives to act in ways they believe are right.

  Over the last century, the heroes and heroines who consistently strike the deepest chord for American novel readers have remained those who reject the pressures and deadening effects of conformity and strike out for new territory.

  SCARLETT AND RHETT,

  A COUPLE OF MAVERICKS

  From early on, Scarlett thinks of herself as a clashing mixture of her parents’ unique bloodlines, her mother’s “soft-voiced, overbred Coast aristocrat mingled with the shrewd, earthy blood of an Irish peasant.… It was the same conflicting emotion that made her desire to appear a delicate and high-bred lady with boys and to be, as well, a hoyden who was not above a few kisses.” “Hoyden,” meaning part heathen, part tomboy, and all maverick.

  With self-conscious contempt for conventional good manners, Rhett Butler sets himself apart the first moment we meet him at the Wilkeses’ barbecue, where he sneers at the assembly of gentlemen who are salivating at the prospect of war. He takes the floor, exuding his special blend of contempt and faux courtesy.

  Rhett knows his lecture will be badly received by these airy-fairy cavaliers, but he forges on anyway, telling them what they least want to hear. How many cannon factories are there south of the Mason-Dixon Line? How many iron foundries? What about woolen mills or tanneries or cotton factories? And what about our lack of a navy? Yankee ships could easily blockade southern harbors, and then how would we sell our cotton? All the rebels have is a bunch of arrogance and slaves. We’ll be licked in a month.

  As becomes increasingly clear to both of them, Rhett and Scarlett are maverick soul mates. Defying the thought police of Atlanta high society at every turn, Scarlett quickly earns a reputation for defiance. So it comes as no surprise that when Rhett Butler asks the recently widowed Scarlett to dance at a charity ball, even though the rules of propriety strictly forbid such a thing, Scarlett is irrepressible. She leaps up, her heart beating wildly, completely undeterred by the disapproving looks on the chaperones’ faces.

  Later, while helping Scarlett flee Atlanta along the road to Tara, Rhett decides abruptly to join the doomed Confederacy, leaving Scarlett to finish the dangerous journey on her own. He’s confident she’ll survive just fine without him. She wails for him to stay, but he’s adamant. Then he tags Scarlett perfectly:

  “I love you, Scarlett, because we are so much alike, renegades, both of us, dear, and selfish rascals. Neither of us cares a rap if the whole world goes to pot, so long as we are safe and comfortable.”

  A renegade. A maverick. What’s the difference? Not to quibble too much about the nuances of etymology, still, it’s interesting to note that a renegade is one who abandons one belief for another; or else he’s a turncoat, a person who has acted with disloyalty to a cause.

  To be a maverick is more extreme, for a maverick rejects the general status quo and will not be branded by its white-hot iron of normalcy. A maverick is a dropout, a nonconformist, a misfit. In short, a maverick is fully independent of the herd, an individual who acts without regard to others’ opinions or rules.

  Though the word maverick wasn’t in use at the historical moment when Rhett was making his proclamation, it seems the more appropriate description of the characteristics Mr. Butler believed he and Scarlett shared. Renegades abandon causes, but neither Rhett nor Scarlett ever had a cause worth fighting for other than self-interest.

  AMERICAN TOMBOY

  Jean Louise Finch, otherwise known as Scout, has her own thought police to outwit. Near the head of the list is Miss Caroline, her first-grade teacher, who is displeased by Scout in general but in particular doesn’t like that the girl has arrived at school already knowing how to read. Scout’s learned it on her own somehow, and this proves to Miss Caroline that the girl-child has an unruly spirit that must be reined in immediately. Scout’s solution to this assault on her freedom is much like Scarlett’s “tomorrow is another day” avoidance. She begins a pattern of staring out the classroom window till the school day is done, at which time she’s free to resume her education.

  A more worthy adversary for Scout is her father’s sister, Aunt Alexandra. Like Huck Finn’s aunt Sally, Scout’s aunt means to “sivilize” her niece, with special attention to the young lady’s fashion sense.

  Aunt Alexandra is obsessed with Scout’s clothes and tries in vain to convert her from breeches to dresses. She is just as fanatic about the manner in which Scout spends her playtime, urging her niece to use the tea sets and small stoves and to play with the Add-A-Pearl necklace Alexandra had given her as a newborn. Naturally, Scout will have none of this and would rather consort with her brother and her brother’s friend Dill than stay inside and learn the feminizing tea ceremonies.

  To stand against the entire community’s racist views as Atticus does when he defends the innocent black man Tom Robinson is the ultimate act of individualism. Both Scout and Jem are swept into the turmoil, rebuked and isolated and threatened by nearly the whole town of Maycomb. What follows is something resembling a maverick boot camp, with Atticus as drill sergeant.

  Atticus is eloquent in explaining to Jem and Scout that the discomfort they feel being ostracized by their friends and the townsfolk of Maycomb will pass. Such maverick behavior, he goes on to explain, is based on compassion and conscience, two Christian virtues that Atticus cannot disregard, although doing so would be so much easier. Giving in to the social norms, the racial intolerance, and the smal
l-minded views of Maycomb is simply not an option for him, even if it means endangering himself and his family.

  On the surface, you couldn’t find two more dissimilar mavericks than Scarlett and Scout. One is defiant out of selfishness and romantic delusion, chasing the mirage of Ashley Wilkes or trying to re-create the antebellum fantasy of Tara. The other is a natural-born questioner of authority, an innocent seeker of the dadgum honest truth.

  Yet the reality is that Scout is similar to Scarlett on many counts. She’s as self-sufficient and every bit as brave as young Miss O’Hara—all of which becomes clear when Scout faces down a lynch mob, a group of men as grim as a gaggle of zombies and as dangerous as any Yankee soldiers Scarlett ever dealt with. The gang wear denim shirts buttoned to their throats, and most are in overalls, with hats pulled over their ears—sullen and sleepy-looking, as though they’re not used to being up so late. Scout is not cowed and wakes them from their mindless daze by singling out one man and speaking to him disarmingly. The mob tension dissolves, and the men drift off.

  As much of a maverick as Scarlett is on matters of social propriety, she hews close to the conventions of her era on racial matters. Numerous passages that most charitably might be considered instructional can sometimes sound an awful lot like rants of racial intolerance. She scornfully describes former field hand slaves as acting like “lords of creation” and “trashy free issue niggers,” while the “better class” of slaves stayed with their white masters.

  Though only twenty-five years separate the publication of these two books, their views on race couldn’t be more different. By Scout’s estimation, being black or poor or both is a hard lot, but the worst predicament of all is being ostracized.

  It came to me that Mayella Ewell must have been the loneliest person in the world. She was even lonelier than Boo Radley, who had not been out of the house in twenty-five years.… She was as sad, I thought, as what Jem called a mixed child: white people wouldn’t have anything to do with her because she lived among pigs. Negroes wouldn’t have anything to do with her because she was white.…

  Both these female mavericks win our respect by remaining unbranded, using every means at their limited disposal to butt heads against the pressures of convention. The fact that both are female southerners and therefore subject to an additional set of persnickety social demands and relentless pressures to conform only makes their independence that much more triumphant.

  WANTING TO BE NORMAL

  “All I want is a normal life,” John Smith moans. Not that Stephen King is about to let that happen.

  Not a natural maverick like Scout or Scarlett, Johnny sets his feet firmly on the path of normalcy, working as a public schoolteacher. The kids like him, though they spot him as something of an oddball, nicknaming him Frankenstein for his geeky appearance. He’s also a little off center in his laid-back approach to teaching and a bit inept with Sarah, the more experienced lover whom he courts.

  For all his desire to fit in and live a normal life, Johnny is cursed by his condition, just as Rhett and Scarlett are cursed by theirs. He’s bumped his head twice, and those accidents have reconfigured his hard-wiring.

  When he wakes from his coma after four years, all hope of normalcy is gone. Sarah has deserted him and married another and has produced a child. Johnny’s mother, Vera, has become a religious kook and is eagerly waiting for the End of Days. Ironically, Vera might have it right, if Greg Stillson comes to power. Unless Johnny can summon the ultimate maverick’s courage and shoot down the psychopath before he’s put in higher office, the End of Days may very well be here.

  So there it is. Greg Stillson runs on a platform as an outsider, a man with fresh ideas, in what seems like a winning strategy. He’s billed himself as a political maverick, and much of his appeal is based on the “straight talk,” “straight shooter” attraction. He successfully charms the voters, but not the reader, who knows this man has kicked a dog to death and that he honed his persuasive skills as an unsavory con man selling Bibles door-to-door. And we also come to understand that Greg is cynical about his own maverick image. He’s nothing but a manipulator running the biggest con of all.

  The only one who can save us is a genuine maverick, a man willing to take the most extreme act of individualism one can imagine, sacrificing his own life to save millions of others.

  DRAGGED BACK

  The normal life that Johnny Smith wanted was a lot like the one Michael Corleone had in mind before he was dragged into the family business. Normalcy was all Mitch McDeere sought, to marry Abby, have some kids, make a decent wage. It’s the sum total of what Jack Ryan has in mind. Come to America, do a little weekend CIA business, and scoot back to London with a stateside Christmas gift for his daughter.

  But all four of these male protagonists who are conformists by nature bump their heads in one kind of traffic accident or another. Michael’s car explodes with Apollonia inside it, sending him storming back home with a vengeance. Mitch discovers his car is wired with microphones, as is his bedroom, and he crashes head-on into a plot to launder the Mob’s money. Jack Ryan has no aspirations to be James Bond, but he’s dragooned into service because his brainpower is unsurpassed. He’s a scholar and knows a lot of esoteric stuff that might just save the world.

  All four of these men become mavericks, but not by choice. Maverickhood is thrust upon them. They are forced almost against their will to act beyond the conventional patterns of behavior they’ve always embraced.

  They are forced to be heroic and must summon their special skills, from second sight in Johnny’s case, to the grim combat skills Michael Corleone mastered while fighting for his country’s survival, to the cunning legal expertise Mitch employs to incriminate those who seek to destroy him. Jack Ryan’s knowledge base also comes in handy, and he’s recruited to handle negotiations that are far beyond his comfort zone of military duties.

  Each man simply wanted the ordinary satisfactions of the culture. They had intended to fit in. But circumstances forced their hand and gave them a test they dared not fail.

  As a Dartmouth grad and war hero, Michael Corleone doesn’t have the street cred of his brothers, Sonny and Fredo, or even the orphan the Don adopted, Tom Hagen, all of whom stayed home in the Mafia trenches and made their bones in the usual ways. Michael’s desire to fit into conventional American life makes him a bit of a maverick as far as Mafia men are concerned.

  When the Don gets whacked and is almost killed, Michael struggles to retain his outsider status. However, his Corleone genes ignite when a punch in the jaw from a cop seems to wake him from his civilian daze. He gives up his conscientious objector status and joins the fray.

  In time, Michael will learn more about the roots of this organization he’s taken over. He’ll discover its own maverick history. How when his Sicilian ancestors were repressed by cruel rulers (“landowning barons and the princes of the Catholic Church”), the common folks had learned that “society was their enemy, so when they sought redress for their wrongs they went to the rebel underground.”

  Michael, the war hero, the Ivy League boy, who will always be something of an outsider, takes control of a band of antisocial types who have lawlessness at their marrow. A maverick leading mavericks.

  ORANGE SUSPENDERS

  As Robert Kincaid comes rumbling across the bridges of Madison County in his pleasantly dented pickup truck, he’s wearing the all-American maverick costume of “faded Levi’s, well-used Red Wing field boots, a khaki shirt, and orange suspenders. On his wide leather belt was fastened a Swiss Army knife in its own case.”

  In case his individualism isn’t nailed down firmly enough by those orange suspenders, Robert provides further evidence in this recollection from his younger days. “When other kids were singing ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat,’ he was learning the melody and English words to a French cabaret song.”

  Though his IQ was off the charts, Robert rejected all that intellectual crap and spent his time reading “all the adventure and travel
books in the local library and kept to himself otherwise, spending days along the river that ran through the edge of town, ignoring proms and football games and other things that bored him. He fished and swam and walked and lay in long grass listening to distant voices he fancied only he could hear. ‘There are wizards out there,’ he used to say to himself. ‘If you’re quiet and open enough to hear them, they’re out there.’ ”

  Oh, they’re out there all right. Huck heard them long ago. And John Smith hears them, too.

  For Robert, being a maverick is conveniently conflated with being a seducer of married women. Though he experiences a moment of hesitation, considering “the propriety drummed in by centuries of culture, the hard rules of civilized man,” those conventional restraints dissolve when he starts to wonder how her hair would feel and how her body would fit beneath his.

  Later on, after Robert and Francesca have spent a few ecstatic hours between the sheets, Robert lets her know just what kind of maverick she’s gotten mixed up with. He refers to himself “as one of the last cowboys” and goes on to explain how society’s normal conventions don’t apply to him. All its rules and regulations and social conventions and laws are way too “organized” for Robert. Hierarchies of authority? Fie on them. Long-range budgets? Pooh. A world of “wrinkled suits and stick-on name tags”? No thanks, not for this cowboy.

  At moments such as these, when he claims he’s exempt from morality and has an inalienable right to sleep with married women, Robert Kincaid seems like such a smugly narcissistic blowhard, my bet is the Honorable Samuel Maverick would be tempted to rise from his lethargy, fire up his branding iron, and put his mark on this guy just to show him what being a real cowboy is all about.

  HARRISON FORD IN HARRIS TWEED

  And what of Professor Robert Langdon? Well, considering he’s on nearly every page of The Da Vinci Code, it’s a bit surprising how little we know about his personal life, or even his appearance. In The Da Vinci Code, the most detailed physical description of him is that he resembles “Harrison Ford in Harris tweed.”