Sixty anonymous books, one century. Each year readers choose partly at random and partly in proportion to a book's existing standing — citations, reprints, a slot on a syllabus. Attention breeds attention: this is cumulative advantage, the Matthew effect, the same rich-get-richer process Robert Merton and Derek de Solla Price found behind citation counts.
Because early luck is amplified by feedback, the canon freezes: by the closing decades the order barely moves, and a handful of titles hold most of the reputation. Nothing chose them for their depth. They were simply ahead early, and being ahead is self-reinforcing.
The ghost lane is the honest control: the same century, the same rolls of the dice, run without your meddling. Change one early event — a critic's rediscovery, a ban, a translation — and a hundred years later the two canons disagree. Greatness here is a frozen accident, which is exactly the question a course on the canon opens and closes with: found, or made?
The simulation stopped unexpectedly — the lesson continues without it. You can move on; nothing you did was wrong.