Its presence on the BBC's Big Read list of the nation's 100 favourite novels reminds us of the deep appeal of its brew of mythology and religious sex.
Ron Powers, in his outstanding 2005 biography of Twain (its influence is all over Tarnoff's book), put his finger on the deep appeal of those rock-star performances: [They] caught a new-blooming audacity of the Self, a Self let loose from old pietistic constraints.
His pictures resonate with a feeling for tradition and the deep appeal of the old, enduring things.
But I think that response misses the deep appeal of their idea.
Yet it instantly had a deep appeal to those looking for a soft focus view of race in America.
Still, for many of the voters at the conference who identified themselves as conservatives, Mr. Santorum holds a deep appeal.
Something we don't talk about is that, actually, one of the strengths of games is the stigma that still surrounds them – they feel like bunking off!" But the brain's love of systems and puzzles is only part of the deeper appeal.
This alone could account for the deeper appeal of the series — the suggestion that during this transitional era, the equilibrium of both state and psyche will keep shifting between cool reason and dark romance.
Strange Fruit, inexorably linked to Billie Holiday, with its vivid imagery of Ku Klux Klan lynchings – bodies hanging from trees, the strange and terrible fruit of deep south racism – appeals to that side of Lennox happy to describe herself as a "singer and activist".
But the list's deepest appeal, and the source of its staying power, goes beyond the fact that it feels good.
