The 10 (err, 11?) Greatest Sentences Ever Written [according to The American Scholar].

Let's face facts.

First off, The American Scholar's article about 10 Best Sentences is indecisive. It's actually 11, not 10.

Other issues? The 11 best sentences are written by 7 Americans, 2 Brits, an Irishman, and a Russian. Because if there's anything we can all agree on, it's that England hasn't given a lick to the field of literature. And the rest of the world? Pssh, please.

You might think this is a logical extension of the The American Scholar journal. You might ask, "But The American Scholar is all about America, no?"

No. Their own "About Us" states nothing about star-spangled Americana in literature, or that Jane Austen is an honorary member of the Tea Party.

So how is this top-10/11 made up?

8 men.
3 women.
7 Americans.
2 Brits.
1 Irishman.
1 Russian.
10 Caucasians.
1 African American.

...and that's it. Toni Morrison does double-duty covering quotas as a black woman, but otherwise there's no diversity, no extension of talent, no breadth of real insight into amazing sentences within the realm of literature. If you're a white American male, odds are you're writing literary gold, baby!

And that's the problem.

So who's included on this list? Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joan Didion, James Joyce, John Hersey, Jane Austen, Toni Morrison, Tim O'Brien, Charles Dickens, Vladimir Nabokov, and Truman Capote.

It's like a who's who of obviousness until you hit John Hersey. And lord only knows who Tim O'Brien and Joan Didion are blackmailing in the field of literature, because the orgasmic obsession some have for them can only be explained through nefarious means.

Who's needed in this top-10/11? Margaret Atwood, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Anton Chekhov, Wole Soyinka, Doris Lessing, Boris Pasternak, Junot Diaz, Alice Munro, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Salman Rushdie, Nadine Gordimer, Chinua Achebe, Samuel Beckett, Alice Walker, Kazuo Ishiguro, Kate Grenville, Leo Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, Albert Camus. Pick a half dozen, swap them out with The American Scholar's list, and you've got something.

But, hey, God forbid.