The Why Not 100: 41 CLASSIC LITERARY PAIRINGS

When we at Why Not Books were musing on the title of our beautifully illustrated (by award-winner Zachary Pullen) picture book about the sport-altering 1913 U.S. Open golf championship, we realized that this true story was even greater than the sum of its parts.

It wasn’t just about Francis Ouimet, the unknown amateur golfer who lived across from the Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, taught himself how to play be sneaking onto the course, and qualified for the Open there against the world’s finest golfers. And it wasn’t just about Eddie Lowery, the four-foot-tall, 10-year-old kid who didn’t have a father at home, who idolized the 20-year-old Ouimet and offered to carry his bag. No, it was about the magical combination. Eddie calmed Francis down; Francis propped Eddie up. Together, they shocked the world in a story not about golf, but about hope, loyalty and a friendship that lasted half a century.

So we chose a title that conveyed the most compelling aspect of the story simply and succinctly: FRANCIS AND EDDIE.

And when it comes to books, we’re in heady company. Headier company. Some of literature’s finest masterpieces were couplings like ours—titles showing the power, if paired properly, of one simple word: And.

I’ve come up with a list of such titles—evocative pairings of two elements that are better together. My contrived rules mean that (with the exception of a Salinger classic) we aren’t including names as part of the title. So Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory didn’t make the cut. No Harry Potter tales either. So we reluctantly didn’t include another Why Not Books title (by 14-year-old fantasy-writing prodigy Luke Herzog)—GRIFFIN BLADE AND THE BRONZE FINGER.

And no threesomes, however repetitive and lyrical. Sorry, C.S. Lewis. You should have chosen two of three from the lion, the witch and the wardrobe. That also means that two excellent recent books aren’t on the list—Love and Shame and Love by Peter Orner and Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou, who graciously wrote the foreword to MY MANTELPIECE, the memoir of civil rights icon Carolyn Goodman, published by (yup) Why Not Books.

But still, it’s an impressive collection—literature’s classic combinations:

1. Romeo and Juliet (William Shakespeare)

2. War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy)

3. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

4. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)

5. The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway)