Making the Most of The Best

By Stefan Kanfer

It is the fate of weighty books in summer to be lugged to shores and mountains, to gather sand and silt and rings where vodka-and-tonic glasses treated them like coasters, and to go unopened. War and Peace, Gravity's Rainbow, Remembrance of Things Past, The Gulag Archipelago: they will all be home soon, reminders of Mark Twain's melancholy observation that a classic is "a book which people praise and don't read."

One summer seller that people are still reading and discussing is a slim nonbook titled The Best. Compiled by two Columbia professors, Peter Passell and Leonard Ross, The Best is neither the Reader's Digest version of The Best and the Brightest nor a capsule Social Register. The Best is, at bottom--which is just three-quarters of an inch from the top--a shallow smattering of opinion and data based on a surfeit of snobbism and a poverty of research. The professors treat their audience like a class of life's freshmen. They offer no criteria, arbitrarily choosing the Best Book of the Bible (Job), the World's Best Restaurant (France's Pyramide), the Best College at Oxford (Magdalen), the Best Flavor of Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream (Mandarin Chocolate). Such judgments are ideal for those who would rather sample the wine label than the wine. But even these insecure customers can find little solace in The Best. Many of its items are mere common sense (the Best Chess Player Other Than Bobby Fischer: Boris Spassky). Many more are only clothbound Consumer Reports (the Best Camera Under $100: the Japanese Olympus 355P).

Why, then, has the book gone into its fourth printing? Why has it remained a favorite cocktail-party appetizer? Because of its very attitude of unassailable superiority. In France, the Guide Michelin can move a crowd to a country inn or a chef to suicide.

In America, The Best merely gives rise to challenges--and a new game. In a few months, The Best has become the amateur snob's Can You Top This?--a chance to exhibit a knowledge of the farfetched, the arcane and the bizarre.

Novices begin with The Best's Best Exit Line, provided by former Vice President Alben Barkley. The Veep, "Speaking at the commencement exercises of the University of Kentucky, declared, 'I would rather sit at the feet of the Lord than dwell in the house of the mighty.' He thereupon keeled over and died." At one low-tide sand bar this "Best" was challenged by a player who offered Henry David Thoreau's reply when his aunt asked if he had made his peace with God: "I was not aware that we had quarreled." Play-offs will be scheduled shortly.

In the intermediate category, The Best's Best French Cookbook is the 20th century's Great Book of French Cuisine by Henri-Paul Pellaprat. Francophiles know better. Le plus meilleur livre is the 19th century The Physiology of Taste by Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, with entries on the erotic properties of truffles and rules of exemplary dinners: "Let the number of guests not exceed twelve ... the men witty and not pedantic, the women amiable and not too coquettish; the dishes exquisite but few ... the signal to leave not before 11, and everyone in bed at midnight."

After these limbering-up exercises, any player should be able to throw away his copy of The Best (itself a Best Idea) and venture out on the masters' circuit. Here the tournament becomes reminiscent of Kipling's "somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst." Some cases in point:

The best composer to have his works played to death in the '70s: Scott Joplin (The Sting, The Red Back Book, piano rolls, E. Power Biggs' pedal-harpsichord arrangements, ad infinitum).

Best theatrical performance: Henry Kissinger at Salzburg (untitled; one showing only).

Best look before leaping: Evel Knievel's self-promotion before his Sept. 8 trip over the Snake River Canyon, Idaho.

Best example of selfless dedication to art: Steve McQueen's decision to found an acting school so that there will be other Steve McQueens to take his place when he hangs up his spokes.

Best lifesaving invention for swimmers: the String. Who swims wearing--or watching--a String?

Best filly running on turf: Chris Evert.

Best filly running on clay and grass: Chris Evert.

Best cold comfort: Secretary Earl Butz's reassurance that though prices will keep rising, the U.S. will not run out of food.

Best directory of the best people: David Rockefeller's card index of some 70,000 associates.

Best vanishing lady: Sally Quinn (Washington Post--CBS --New York Times--Washington Post).

Best act of contrition: the League of Arab States' ad announcing that the fuel cutoff to the U.S. was done "more in sorrow than in anger."

Best American basketball player who never went to college:

Moses Malone, 19, who signed with the American Basketball Association's Utah Stars for a reported $3 million.

Best college that never went to a basketball player: Magdalen, Oxford.

Best new phrase for all occasions: "Expletive deleted."

Best rock group: Elizabeth Taylor's diamond and sapphire consolation prizes in her divorce from Richard Burton.

Best joke of the year from a man not previously known as a jokesmith: Gerald Ford's assurance that "Ronald Reagan doesn't dye his hair; he's just prematurely orange."

Best Debussy string quartet: G Minor, Op. 10. (It is also his only string quartet.)

Best year-round resort: bed.

Best putdown of non-books: The Nothing Book (Harmony/Crown; $3), with 192 blank pages.

Taken as an adult comic book, The Best can evade critique. Taken seriously, the tome has its disturbing aspects. Participation in the public arena is increasingly ceded to a few: athletes, politicians, performers. But their audience at least retains the ability to judge for itself, to realize that one man's best may be another's worst. Once the power to discriminate is left to others, that audience becomes herd but not seen, a mass to be manipulated. One would do better to choose the second best because it appeals rather than the best because it is dictated. Far too many delights have gone untried because they have come in second in some arbitrary rating system. Given the success of The Best, Voltaire's warning seems more valid than ever: "The best is the enemy of the good."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.