Hit Lit: Cracking the Code of the Twentieth Century's Biggest Bestsellers (21 page)

Our old friend Henry David Thoreau will do for one quintessentially American example. Thoreau turned his back on civilization and experimented with a Spartan existence for a couple of years beside Walden Pond in what he claimed was an act of mutiny against the puritanical dogmas of his time. Yet all that journal writing and introspection in the drowsy Concord forest certainly has a tinge of indolence.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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 small-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.

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.

“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.

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.