Hit Lit: Cracking the Code of the Twentieth Century's Biggest Bestsellers (2 page)

On that day over twenty years ago, I also began an odyssey to try to understand what makes a book “successful.” What makes us connect with it, what makes us fall in love the way I had.

It suddenly seemed obvious to me that when millions of readers, whether they are formally educated or not, have expressed their separate opinions by buying and delighting in a particular novel, there is some larger wisdom at work. Thus, it seemed self-evident to ask one simple question: What is it about this or that enormously popular book that inspires such widespread fervor and devotion?

I began to wonder what my students and I would learn if we reverse-engineered these novels, breaking them down into their component parts. Would we find any common features lurking in the most popular books of all time? Was it possible to figure out what made these books so irresistible?

Before we begin, it’s important to understand that the twelve novels I’ve chosen to discuss aren’t your run-of-the-mill bestsellers. To spend a week or two on the
New York Times
bestseller list, a hardback novel could sell a hundred thousand copies or half that many. Depending on the other books it’s up against at any given moment, maybe a little more or a little less will be required of the average bestseller. Those are terrific numbers in the book business, but they fall well short of the sales figures for the bestsellers-on-steroids we’ll be examining.

In fact, one of the quirky features of the bestseller list is that appearing on it depends more on velocity of sales than on total sales. If Book A managed to sell ten or fifteen thousand copies in the first two weeks after it was published, it would almost surely appear on national bestseller lists, even if its sales dropped off to zero in the weeks after that. While Book B could sell many times more copies in the course of a year than Book A, if its sales were slow and steady, without the initial surge that Book A had, Book B might never appear on any bestseller list at all.

In any case, the novels I’ll be discussing in this book were spectacular megahits, selling in the multiple millions, and a few of them continue to show up on bestseller lists fifty years after their publication. To bend Mark Twain’s famous analogy, the difference between these blockbusters and an average bestseller is like the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

The common features I’ve identified recur with such frequency, it’s almost as if these books have been spun out of identical genetic matter. I would go so far as to say that these twelve novels are permutations of one book, written again and again for each new generation of readers. True, these twelve novels have radically different settings, different characters, very different plots. But no matter which decade they were written in or what publishing vagaries brought them to the forefront, all have used strikingly similar techniques and themes to provide deep enjoyment to millions.

But it’s not the ingredients alone that create the magic of highly popular stories. If it were that simple, this book would be only a few paragraphs long and I could end the semester on the first day of class. It is how those ingredients are combined and the unique ways they intermingle and resonate that set a megabestselling novel apart and make it appealing to such a vast audience.

In the following pages, we will analyze these particular elements in detail and examine the ways they are employed, and we will puzzle out the reasons for their enduring appeal to so many millions of American readers.

Along the way, I’ll show how these recurring features in bestsellers spring from a single purpose: a desire to capture
the uniqueness of the American story, its inspiring traditions and its bold idealism, its moral struggles, its violence, its contradictory values, and its extraordinary characters.

So without further ado, and before I say more about my methodology, here’s our reading list, with a glimpse at the publishing history of each.

Scarlett O’Hara is in love with the vapid Ashley Wilkes, but he shuns her and instead marries his cousin—a tradition in the Wilkes family. However, Scarlett will not give him up that easily and schemes constantly to win his heart. As the Civil War presses closer around her, Scarlett uses any means she can to save her family’s Georgia plantation, including entering into a series of increasingly lucrative but increasingly unhappy marriages, until she meets her match in the roguish Rhett Butler
.

Number one bestseller for 1936. Six months after its release in December 1936, the novel had sold 1,000,000 copies. By fall of 1941, it had sold 2,868,200 copies. In 1946, authorized foreign sales of the book were estimated to be up to 1,250,000, and American sales had reached 3,713,272. In 1956, worldwide it reached the 8,000,000 mark; by 1962, it had grown to 10,000,000; by 1965, it was 12,000,000. In 1983, the number reached 16,000,000. During the 1980s, the novel continued to sell 100,000 hardbacks a year worldwide and 250,000 paperbacks a year in the United States. Estimates put the sales figures near 30,000,000 in the 1990s.

Conceived during an illicit love affair, Allison MacKenzie grows into an introverted and sensitive young girl who struggles to free herself from her overprotective single mother, Constance, as well as the narrow-mindedness of the quaint New England town of her birth. Just when it seems she has escaped and established a successful writing career in the city, she decides she must return to her hometown to cover the sensational trial of her old friend Selena Cross. While there, Allison finally comes to peace with the cruelty, kindness, and complexity of Peyton Place
.

This was Grace Metalious’s first and most successful novel. According to Alice Payne Hackett’s
80 Years of Best Sellers, 1895–1975, Peyton Place
sold a total of 10,670,302 in hardcover and paperback combined.

Scout Finch is bursting with innocent mischief as she starts first grade in her sleepy Alabama town. Soon after, her father, Atticus, a lawyer, takes on the legal defense of Tom Robinson, a black man who has been accused of rape by a white woman. The trial rocks the town to its core and forces Scout and her older brother, Jem, to wrestle with grim racial and social wrongs
.

Published in 1960,
To Kill a Mockingbird
remained on the bestseller list for eighty-eight weeks. (Rose as high as number three on the 1961 year-end list.)

The paperback edition has had 135 printings, with well over 14,000,000 copies sold.

Full of confidence, Anne Welles arrives in New York City just after World War II. She takes an exciting job in the entertainment business and soon has two new roommates, Neely O’Hara and Jennifer North, and a dashing suitor, Lyon Burke. But when the lives of her beautiful and talented friends begin to unravel, they take Anne Welles down with them into a tragic, drug-fueled spiral
.

Number one in 1966. Approximately 30,000,000 copies sold worldwide, which puts it roughly in the same category as
To Kill a Mockingbird
and
Gone with the Wind
.

After the head of the Corleone crime family, Don Vito Corleone, is shot by a rival, the empire he has devoted his life to building is in danger of dissolving, until Michael, his favorite son, a war hero and upstanding citizen, takes charge. Michael is a natural leader and quickly learns to navigate the inner workings, crude politics, and secret rituals of the Mafia, and by employing a series of swift and brutal moves, he attempts to restore power and respect to the family
.

In the first two years after its publication, 1969–1970,
The Godfather
sold more than 1,000,000 copies in hardcover and
8,000,000 copies in paperback. By 1975, over 12,000,000 copies had sold in both hardback and softcover.

Chris MacNeil, divorced single mother and successful actress, is living in Washington, D.C., with her twelve-year-old daughter, Regan, while shooting her latest film. Regan, once a curious and happy girl, grows moody and strange. After numerous doctors and psychiatrists fail to diagnose her, Chris reaches out to a young priest, Father Karras, who realizes Regan is possessed by a demon. The battle between Karras, a religious man with shaky faith, and the devil that inhabits Regan’s body is a fierce and violent struggle that results in numerous deaths but ultimately in victory for the MacNeil family
.

Four years after its publication, 11,702,097 hardback copies and 11,000,000 paperbacks had been sold.

The resort town of Amity is preparing for the summer onslaught of beachgoers from the city when a young woman taking a late-night swim is killed by a shark. It is Police Chief Martin Brody’s task to decide whether to keep the beaches open for the big holiday weekend. Under pressure from town leaders, he lets them stay open, and as a result, a six-year-old local boy becomes the shark’s next victim. Driven to set things right, Brody teams up with Quint, a salty shark hunter familiar
with local waters, and with Matt Hooper, an academically trained shark expert, and the three men head out to sea in Quint’s boat to capture the murderous creature
.

The novel stayed on some hardbound bestseller lists for forty-four weeks, making it 1974’s longest-running fiction bestseller. More than 1,000,000 in sales in 1974.

By 1975, 9,275,000 copies of the Bantam paperback were sold.

Johnny Smith is working as a high school teacher, an average guy in love with another teacher, Sarah Bracknell, when a serious head injury puts him in a coma. Years later when he wakes, Johnny discovers he has acquired the supernatural gift of foreseeing the future. He sets about finding ways to put his newfound ability to good use, solving crimes and helping individuals, until his path crosses that of Greg Stillson, a rising politician. After Johnny sees a vision of Stillson leading the nation to disaster, he decides he must do whatever is required to prevent Stillson from reaching his goal, even if it means risking his own life
.

This was King’s first novel to break into the year-end top ten. His earlier hardback novels,
Carrie
and
Salem’s Lot
, had sold modestly. But when the film version of
Carrie
was released in 1976, King’s career moved into a higher gear. It has continued to shift ever higher with a prolific output over the last twenty years. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, it was a rare year
when one of King’s novels did not appear on the year-end top ten list, frequently landing at number one.

At the height of the cold war, submarine captain Marko Ramius, who is commanding the Soviet’s newest top-secret nuclear sub, decides to defect to America. Ramius’s intentions, however, are not clear to the Americans, who enlist the aid of Jack Ryan, a naval historian and part-time CIA analyst, to help the U.S. military plan an appropriate response. When Ryan discovers that the Soviets have apparently developed a new supersilent propulsion system that could shift the military balance of power between the nations, mild-mannered Ryan is thrust into the middle of an escalating confrontation that could very well result in World War III
.

The hardcover edition of this first novel sold 365,000 copies, according to a 1987 article in the
Washington Post
“Book World.” Five to six million copies have sold in hardback and paperback. One million copies were sold in Japan alone.

Mitch McDeere, a top Harvard Law School grad, is snapped up by Bendini, Lambert & Locke, a prestigious firm in Memphis. Mitch and Abby, his bride, are thrilled by the perks: the new house, the flashy car, the big salary. But they quickly realize the firm is working on behalf of a Chicago crime family
,
and members of the firm are perfectly willing to commit murder to conceal this fact. After Mitch is secretly recruited by the FBI to help with its investigation of the law firm, his snooping endangers his life and the lives of others. So Mitch devises a complex and risky scheme that is meant to satisfy the FBI and free him and Abby from the sinister grip of the firm
.

The Firm
spent forty-seven weeks on the
New York Times
bestseller list. Grisham’s publisher shipped over a million copies of his next novel,
The Client
, and two and a half million copies of the following book,
The Chamber
.

In the mid-1960s, Robert Kincaid has been assigned by
National Geographic
to photograph the covered bridges of Madison County, Iowa. Shortly after arriving in Madison County, he meets Francesca Johnson, a farmer’s wife, who is home alone while her husband, Richard, and her children are away for a week’s visit to the Illinois State Fair. A brief and passionate affair between the seasoned traveler and the lonely woman ensues. After days and nights of wild romance, the pair realize they must decide their future before Richard and the children return. Both Robert and Francesca are heartsick at the prospect that they might have to part
.

After selling poorly for a few months following its publication, the novel was rejuvenated when a section was published in
Cosmopolitan
, which attracted a large audience of female
readers. Then word of mouth among independent booksellers began to spur more sales, until the book rose to become the number one bestseller in 1993, dropping to number nine the following year. Roughly 50,000,000 copies sold worldwide.