What is the "Great American novel?"

Agreed, followed by To Kill a Mockingbird

If we took a poll, it'd be Gatsby,

but I think Moby Dick stands for all time.

Moby Dick is hands down better and more important than practically any other American novel of the last 170 years--certainly any of the novels mentioned above.

Moby-Dick.

[quote]Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.

R2 Moby Dick is boring though.

I didn't want to make a poll. I wanted an open discussion.

Valley of the Dolls

You can now add Anthony Doerr's latest, CLOUD CUCKOO LAND to the list. A true masterpiece.

Boring, OP? That's a matter of opinion and that also has nothing to do with your question. Nothing could be more quintessentially the Great American Novel than Moby-Dick.

Push by Sapphire

Private Parts - Howard Stern

What is the great American novel meant to be though? A novel written by an American or a novel about America? Serious question, because they're entirely different things.

By one, yes, Gatsby, but also Gone with the Wind, or The Scarlet Letter. By the other, Grapes of Wrath or Mockingbird, but what about Uncle Tom's Cabin or Huckleberry Finn or Beloved.

And in any event, you can't pick just one, there will never be a definitive answer. Unless it's the Bobbsey Twins canon.

East of Eden

Moby Dick. Followed by The Education of Henry Adams.

R11 I think the Great American Novel gets the essence of America: American excess, American dreams, etc. That is why I voted for The Grapes of Wrath. America and the Great Depression are the main characters. The Joad family is the story of so many Americans.

"Beloved," by Toni Morrison

"Roots," by Alex Haley

"Native Son," by Richard Wright.

American excess, American dreams.... By that standard, I'd say Gatsby holds the crown for The Great American Novel. Heck, it's even got "The Great" in its title!!

Call of the Wild

Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The Great Gatsby is a contender.

Gone with the Wind

The Age of Innocence.

R12 East of Eden is my favorite Steinbeck, I like it significantly more than GoW, but I feel its too much of an epic saga to be a Great American novel.

Gone With The Wind has been considered the "Great American Novel" since it was published in 1936.

The Great Gatsby

For me personally, From The Terrace by John O'Hara

The Great Gatsby is not my fave but I really think it's the quintessential great american novel. Set in a period of MAJOR change, introspective, it's about the falsity of the Great American Dream. It's less about the people in it and more about the times.

No love for A Tree Grows In Brooklyn?

To Kill a Mockingbird

The Color Purple. For me, anyway.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Apparently many critics and Earnest Hemingway consider this the FIRST Great American Novel.

A number of Booktubers, practically professional readers, undertook trying to read Gone With the Wind and found it so problematic and unreadable they stopped. There maybe was a time it was the great American novel, but that has long past, it is an artifact of its time.

Moby-Dick, Beloved, Gatsby, The Collected Stories of Flannery O'Connor (I know, not a novel.)

As someone upthread pointed out, picking just one is impossible.

I think picking one for every generation of American life would tell a more complete story. I know "Get her."

The Grapes Of Wrath. It's hard for me to consider Moby Dick, a novel with no women in it as the Great American Novel.

Anything but Gatsby. How it earned its reputation, I will never know. Moby Dick; meh.

Anything by Steinbeck, Twain, Morrison, Henry James, Wharton. And Mockingbird, of course. Lotsa good stuff to choose from.

GWTW was never considered a Great American Novel, idk where people are getting that. It was considered a fun, entertaining novel that sold well and made for a good movie but it was never considered to be even near the ranks of the other novels mentoned in this thread.

That said, fragile gen z-ers/millenials need to grow a pair and read that and other problematic shit. What is that quote again about needing to remember the past n order to not repeat it?

Everything is an artifact of its time. Things should be viewed critically but not dismissively. That’s lazy, overly emotional non-intellectualism.

Melville: Moby Dick

London: White Fang, Call of the Wild

Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby

Hemingway: Old Man and the Sea, A Farewell to Arms

Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men

Trumbo: Johnny Got His Gun

Twain: The Notorious Jumping Frogs of Calaveras Country

Capote: In Cold Blood

Sinclair: The Jungle

Wilder: Our Town

Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter

Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye

Lewis: Main Street, Babbitt

Cooper: The Last of the Mohicans

Doctorow: Ragtime

Runners Up: James, Wharton, Updike, Cather, Vonnegut

I would actually consider "Lolita" a contender even though it was written by a russian. Honestly Nabokov wrote mid 20th century america better than 99% of american authors of that time did.

There's a good book of literary criticism by the Harvard English professor Lawrence Buell from just a few years ago where he approaches this question: it's called [italic]The Dream of the American Novel.[/italic]

He looks at a whole series of books that have been seriously called this: [italic]The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, The Age of Innocence, An American Tragedy, Absalom, Absalom!, [/italic] the [italic]U.S.A[/italic] trilogy, [italic]The Grapes of Wrath, Gone with the Wind, Invisible Man, Gravity's Rainbow,[/italic] and [italic]Beloved.[/italic] He questions what the criteria have been that have led these books to be called this, and how the books address the problem of national identity.

"The Great American novel" was a phrase coined by Henry James after the Civil War.

It's been interesting that postcolonial nations like the United States, Canada, Australia, and India have been obsessed with finding a great national novel to unite the country. You will not find a similar obsession in the UK or France or Russia--their critics are not obsessed with this question because the sense of national identity is more secure (since their nations are much older).

[italic]The Education of Henry Adams, Our Town,[/italic] and "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County " are not novels.

[italic]Roots[/italic] is a novel, although it was sold originally and then for years later as non-fiction.

Not national identity. The wide-ranging American experience, unknown in Europe.

Philip Roth wrote two of my favorites, Letting Go and Goodbye, Columbus, the latter of which looks at the American dream as experienced in the journey from Newark to Short Hills (or not) for its two families. I'm from New Jersey, which may have something to do with it.

Gone with the Wind successfully straddled the divide between literature and popular fiction. It was a beautifully written piece of storytelling, painting rich pictures. In a way it is surprising it isn't taken more seriously given its feminist implications. Scarlett demolished a lot the conventions about women - without apology. She was wiser at the end, perhaps, if not redeemed. But agreed, it isn't treated as literature. It was a phenomenon, a lot like the Thorn Birds. Popular fiction but that in the quality of the telling punched above the weight of the subject matter.

R39 Our Town may have been a play, but it was required reading in high school, i.e., another "book" I had to read.

Thank you R32. I've always thought that The Great Gatsby was written to be a great novel. It's not, but it's trying to be. I just don't get it.

The thread is about novels.

Must.control.

R45 And? I love reading! If you love novels, then reply. If so, please scroll on.

I actually quite like reading original versions of scripts, to see what was cut. The only really good writing on Downton Abbey, after the first season, was the stuff they cut. Often just a few lines, but they were usually the truly revealing or interesting bits of character.

R28

[quote] Apparently many critics and Earnest Hemingway consider this the FIRST Great American Novel.

Oh Dear.

^ help. Google translate got nothing.

To Kill a Mockingbird

Catcher in the Rye

One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest

Stanger in a Strange Land

The Left Hand of Darkness

Lucky Bitches.

In the mid-20th century it was "Look Homeward, Angel" by Thomas Wolfe. It was an inspiration to many young American authors.

It's amazing how far the reputation of that once-heralded novel has fallen, mainly because of its casual racism. And not just the N-word.

I'd like to nominated the following underappreciated novels:

William Dean Howells: A Hazard of New Fortunes

James Gould Cozzens: Guard of Honor

Wallace Stegner: Angle of Repose

Go Set a Watchman when read immediately after reading To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee was the bomb.

Brave New World

"Naked Came the Stranger," by Penelope Ashe

Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men -- Steinbeck was just so brilliant

The old man and the sea ?

R33, Since its original publication in 1936, Gone With the Wind—winner of the Pulitzer Prize and one of the bestselling novels of all time—has been heralded by readers everywhere as The Great American Novel.

I do hope r56 isn't serious

[quote] [R12] East of Eden is my favorite Steinbeck, I like it significantly more than GoW, but I feel its too much of an epic saga to be a Great American novel.

What's wrong with an "epic saga" being a great American novel? Isn't that what makes a great novel?

R61, we are the greatest nation on earth. If we want to call a British novel the Great American novel nobody is going to stop us.

Atlas Shrugged

IMO, "To Kill a Mockingbird" doesn't hold up as well as others. "Go Set a Watchman" was horrible, IMO. Possibly b/c I "read" the audio book with Reese Witherspoon as narrator. Horrible.

My picks:

Multiple works by Flannery O'Connor. She's the fucking best, IMO.

East of Eden, Steinbeck.

The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald.

Disagree that "Gone with the Wind" is a great American novel. Also, Lolita? I don't think so.

This piece on Gone with the Wind is a more even handed analysis of its place in writing. It doesn't call it the great American novel, whatever that means, but it does call it a classic and in my book that seems accurate.

Gone With the Wind.

R50, as it turned out, the great Ernest Hemingway wasn't a very earnest person.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S Thompson

This is a great thread, DL at its best!

It would be interesting to see a list of books that were once considered great, but have since fallen out of fashion.

The Godfather by Mario Puzo. Not the great American novel, but if GWTW can be discussed, so can The Godfather.

Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" is a masterpiece and beautifully written.

I see a lot of people mentioning Toni Morrison's "Beloved." While I enjoyed Beloved immensely, her early novels "Sula" and especially "Song of Solomon" were better.

Hemingway-"The Sun Also Rises" (his best Novel) Mitchell-"GWTW" ( Baldwin-"Giovanni's Room" Steinbeck- "Grapes, Mice-Men, East of Eden"(OMFG, I Love that book) Wharton-"Age of Innocence"(my personal favorite) O'Hara-"From the Terrace" In Cold Blood(genius)-To Kill a Mockingbird( genius) Henry James-" The Golden Bowl" To R73...I agree, it is a really good Book(it is a classic)

For Toni Morrison, "Jazz" was the easiest to read, IMO, IIRC. Song of Solomon was also easy to read.

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry

The World According to Garp. And the film adaptation was also great.

I've heard Lonesome Dove was good. I just could never get into it.

Sister Carrie

"An American Tragedy" by Theodore Dreiser

I'll save our resident know-it-all the bother: the novel was based on a true story and was the source material for the Montgomery Clift/ Elizabeth Taylor film "A Place in the Sun," (among other screen adaptations).

Sex, Madonna.

And the sequel, Sag.

I'm writing one as we speak.

[quote]Baldwin-"Giovanni's Room"

It's a great novel, but it doesn't take place in the US, and most of the characters are not American. if there is a Great American Novel, it needs to be about Americans living in the USA--it needs to be about the American experience.

I would nominate rather his first novel "Go Tell It on the Mountain."

R85, YES! to "Go Tell it on the Mountain." That is one helluva novel.

Moby Dick The Great Gatsby

I'm Team Gatsby (or Scarlet Letter), but The Adventures of Augie March also merits consideration.

The Last of the Mohicans

[quote] It would be interesting to see a list of books that were once considered great, but have since fallen out of fashion.

R72, last year, I was roaming through Kindle to find older, free books to read and came across Java Head (1919) by Joseph Hergesheimer, who was considered one of the USA's greatest authors -- a 1922 poll of critics in Literary Digest voted Hergesheimer the "most important American writer" working at the time -- but he passed out of favor in the 1930s and died in obscurity in 1954.

So I read Java Head and thoroughly enjoyed it. The linked blog post discusses how the book was predicted to win the Pulitzer Prize for 1920, but was denied the prize due to the jury's distaste for the subject matter:

[quote] Reading the book, it’s very plain to see why it wasn’t awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Among these pages were accounts of a mixed-race marriage, drug addiction, suicide, murder, an illegitimate child, the casting of religion (Christianity, especially) in a not-so-positive light… And when you consider that the people in charge of selecting the big winners were uptight, puritanical, upper class white men, it’s no wonder Java Head “[didn’t] at all obviously conform” to the rigid guidelines of the Prize.

The story centers on the shipping industry in Salem, MA, in the 1840s, and the reappearance of a family member with a Chinese bride (a so-so film version from 1934 starred Anna May Wong and was one of the few films of the era to show a white man kissing an Asian woman). Here's more on the book from this blog post:

[quote] What’s even more frustrating is that Java Head ABSOLUTELY deserved to win! Hergesheimer was a talented writer who masterfully describes setting and is fantastic at creating interesting and complex characters and the construction of the novel as a whole is really interesting—pretty ahead of its time, actually, writing the story as an omniscient narrator in the third person from ten different viewpoints over ten chapters while keeping the plot progressing from chapter to chapter, the transitions between one chapter and the next occurring at the points when two characters’ paths converge. Very ahead of its time.

[quote] Where the book falls short, for me, is Hergesheimer’s inability to bring the characters to life; like I said, the characters were interesting and complex, but they weren’t dynamic. I don’t know if his writing was too distant or a little too polished, but I never formed any sort of connection to the characters. They were certainly interesting, just not very compelling.

[quote] Over all, though, this is a great read. The uniqueness (for its time) of the book’s structure alone makes it worth looking into. And I’m not alone in saying that Java Head is a great read; when asked in 1962 what his favorite novel was, the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett said, “one of the best I ever read was Hergesheimer’s Java Head.” Also, Hergesheimer’s style (known then as the “aesthetic school” of writing) is considered to have largely influenced Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

Personally, I highly recommend the book.

R31 buell's list would set out the American equivalent of The Great Tradition by Leavitt ( sp) on English lit. It's a great list. It makes more sense than singling out one TGAN. But then we won't have this parlor game would we? :)

So.

Ashamed to say I haven't read Moby Dick, but I agree that The Grapes of Wrath is majestically, heartbreakingly, deeply American in its story of the Joads. I also feel Ragtime reaches for the same.

GWTW is a marvelous read but it lacks a textural depth in comparison. Would Beloved be a greater contender that speaks of the southern experience? Huck Finn too but the ending is chillingly disastrous. Is it a lethal fault?

Honest question: what is textural depth? Because I Googled it and all I got was related to engineering and soil.

According to a survey of 100 literary scholars across the country, Nicole Ritchie's "The Truth About Diamonds" stands alone in portraying the American experience in a post-Reagan world.

Textural depth is subjective, like just about everything in this realm.

The most relatable way to describe it is maybe by using food. Since we're discussing American things, I'll use fried chicken as an example. You can eat a fried chicken meal that fulfills all of it obligations, it tastes good, it's filling, etc. You walk away from the meal thinking, that was fine, pretty good, and you move on with your life never really thinking about fried chicken again.

Then you have fried chicken from someone who really knows what they are doing. They have the spices, the way it's soaked overnight, breaded, the temperature and type of the oil it's cooked it, how the oil is seasoned. Every aspect of the preparation is down to a science that can't really be reproduced. The person who is cooking it knows on an instinctual level how it's done right. That is the meal that stays with you years after you ate it. It doesn't need to be complex, but there is an odd level complexity that other's can't quite replicate. It's the "artist" or cook drawing from years of experience.

That's my best way of describing textural differences. It's something you do experience as an eater, or a reader. Some things are going to resonate with a wider audience than others, but it can and does vary depending on who is consuming whatever it is they're consuming.

It's breathtakingly stupid to even mention "Gone With the Wind" in the same sentence with "Moby Dick." "Gone With the Wind" is a fun read, but it belongs "Valley of the Dolls." Not with Melville. And anyone with a little bit of smarts should know not to lump GWTW together with "Moby Dick." It's just absurd.

As for the Great American Novel? Everyone knows that is LITTLE ME by Patrick Dennis.

Oh, don't be so grand, R95, or ridiculous. Gone with the Wind may not be Moby Dick but it's a hell of a lot more than Valley of the Dolls. Your little bit of smarts is showing.

R92 I made that up "trctural depth" hun. I mean the characters and situations of GWTW lacked depth. For empathy there was drama. For a feels into human nature and striving, we got melodrama. For transformation, we got the heroine's, not ours. It lacked a dimensionality by not presenting a deeper perspective from the black and slave pov. From that angle, the change that Scarlett undergoes is heroic but what a missed opportunity.

Frankly, it seemed to me to also lack an essential literacy. I use that instead of literariness though I'm not sure why it feels more like what I mean. But mind you, I devoured it. Covertly, as it was banned in the nuns seminary I schooled at.

The Grapes of Wrath consumed me. I was a changed person after reading it. I feel it is now a part of my DNA. I read these books in my formative teens and have not reread them I must add.

You have a rich interior life, R97.

"Scarlet Dawn at Boca Raton" by DL fave Barbara Thorndyke

Should we move on to the Great American Gay Novel and scratch out each other’s eyes like the bitches we are?

Fine, R100. I vote for American Psycho.

r100, we all know the correct answer to that is Song of the Loon.

I think we're back to Valley of the Dolls then, aren't we?

It is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It was the first novel to use colloquial American speech. More significantly, it managed to capture just how slavery poisoned American society and how ridiculous and false any defense of it EVER was, the lure and possibility of setting out into the American wilderness and remaking yourself, and many peculiarities of American culture, like traveling sideshow salesman and medicine men. The ending of the book is often puzzled about (the odious Tom Sawyer peer pressures Huck into playing a truly evil prank on Jim, telling Jim he’ll be re-enslaved) but I see it as a cynical commentary on how easily “good white folks” abandon their principles on race and how deeply ingrained racial hatred is in our culture, that this is something sick that comes back and back up in American culture.

To me it’s fair to add Toni Morrison’s Beloved as a companion piece Great American Novel about just how poisonous slavery was and is to black America, beyond the obvious surface cruelty of it. (I love Sula more, but I think that is more The Great Female Novel.)

But America as a place and an idea is too sprawling for one novel. So I’ll also agree with Lonesome Dove, which captures the American dream of making a new life of your own and the myth of the West, as well as the immigrant story. This novel has far more heart than The Great Gatsby.

Whatever it is it now, it will all end up being McCarthy’s The Road, since it’s all getting flushed down the shitter.

No one will ever agree on The Great American Novel. Nor the Great Gay American Novel. But if asked about the best gay novel I usually land on DANCER FROM THE DANCE.

Well, that happened even quicker then I thought. R100 was a trap to see how long it took for Dancer From the Dance to be mentioned, and it was an impressive 15 minutes.

I’ve got three contenders:

Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Carson McCullers, The Ballad of the Sad Café

William Faulkner, Sanctuary

What can I say? I like them dark, brooding, and gothic.

[100] Dancer from the Dance and Tales of the City

I've created a separate thread on the great gay American novel.

[quote] What can I say? I like them dark, brooding, and gothic.

R108, if you like dark and gothic, what about Flannery O'Connor?

I'm not who you were referring to, R111. I tried, but I could not get into Flannery O'Connor, and I went into reading her works expecting to like them.

O'Connor is not for all...

The Violent Bear It Away and Wise Blood are not as great as her short stories, but they are still pretty amazing rides (Flannery O’Connor)

What is the greatest 21st century American novel?

Yeah, I'm aware, R113, and I'm glad people enjoy her writing. I hope more people continue to enjoy her stories.

I'm just saying that I found it odd that it didn't strike me because I have had a sort of a weird existence. A lot of it has been great, but I've had way more than my fair share of darkness in my life, and know and have known a lot of people with really troubling stories. So I don't know why her stories put me off, they just did.

“Satan Was a Lesbian”

I would like to mention Faulkner’s novel, As I Lay Dying.

Lonesome Dove is the only novel I’ve read where the screen adaptation characters looked exactly as I’d pictured them.

Bravo R177, bravo!

I've read many novels in my life and haven't read, what seems to be a very short list of titles in this thread, which I think is very few people bantering back and forth.

Must there be one novel? Isn't a list, reflecting different times, sensibilities, economics, etc... I love Miss Loneyhearts and The Day of the Locust, by Nathaniel West which I think represent America at a specific point of time perfectly.

And hey, this is Datalounge, how is it that no one has posted Now, Voyager or Peyton Place?! You guys are slipping!

let's just be honest and admit that it's 'My Sweet Audrina' by VC Andrews

I'm not American, but I have studied literature a lot. I've made several attempts to get into Moby-Dick but always failed about four chapters in. Serious question: can someone please explain WHY it's the Great American Novel? I'm totally prepared to believe you, but I have never had what's great about it explained to me.

I've read Gatsby several times and I agree with the poster who said it is consciously trying to be great, but I'm not American so not in a position to judge its status as the GAN.

In plays, I think Death of a Salesman stands out. I can totally see, from thousands of miles away, how that is about the American Dream and the ultimate exclusion from it of the average American guy. There might be better American plays, but that one and Assassins are great essays on the American condition.

Some people might say Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian," but personally, I just could not get into it.

R115 Great American Novel of this century so far is Infinite Jest. I like other books far better, but this one captures the vibe of this century in an uncanny and disturbing way.

Infinite Jest is from the 20th century, not the 21st.

Ok seems like the thread is done, it's petered out. Some interesting posts. So OP, The Grapes of Wrath it is.

Toodle-oo.

The Winter of our Discontent is another great Steinbeck novel.

I’ll always love A Confederacy of Dunces as well.

The Emancipation of Mimi

R125 Oh, dear at myself! But I still think Infinite Jest gets current America in a way very few recent-ish books have…

The unvanquished

Ethan Fromm has some important things to say.

[quote] let's just be honest and admit that it's 'My Sweet Audrina' by VC Andrews

I thought it was "Flowers in the Attic."

Considering the mess that is modern America, Sinclair Lewis's ELMER GANTRY should at least get Honorable Mention. 94 years ago, he tipped us off to the fraud of evangelical Xtianity.

The Bible itself warned against false prophets,, and how all of that works. So, you might want to catch up on your reading.

John O'Hara's From The Terrace is, I think, a masterpiece. All of his novels are outstanding. I have them all and have re-read them several times over the years.

O'Hara was a master of characterization and, especially, dialogue. I could never get enough of his books.

Edna Ferber's SHOW BOAT.

The Great Gatsby. Not just because it is beautifully written, almost like poetry or music, but because of its setting at the time when America was just stepping up to its time as the world’s preeminent power and yet Fitzgerald was still able to detect an emptiness and very humane loneliness at the heart of the American dream.

For me personally though, my most beloved American novel will always be Washington Square. James had an admirably ability to look at America almost as an outsider, and he has a genius for giving us insight into his characters without boringly laying out their thoughts and motivations. He leaves a distance to allow the reader to interpret their own meaning.

My personal favorite comes in at a three-way tie. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving, and The Shining by Stephen King. I don't care what anyone thinks about my choices.

Play It As It Lays?

I've long been curious about best selling American books that were also hailed as great literature when they were first published; we had many Book of the Month Club editions of them on the family bookshelves when I was a child in the 60s.

So I finally read RAINTREE COUNTY by Ross Lockridge last summer. Always fascinated by the pretty title and, of course, aware of the famous MGM film ,though I'd never seen it. Well....let me tell you, don't waste your time. What a crock of pretentious and mawkish shit.

On the positive side, I'd nominate Edith Wharton's THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY, which I think, even more than her more famous novels, is a most telling tale of the Great American Dream.

MYRA BRECKINRIDGE by Gore Vidal

I had a VERY well-read and educated friend tell me that Moby Dick was the worst book she had ever had to suffer through (when she was in high school). I've always avoided it because of that. Yet many of you are saying it's the greatest. I'm kind of still trusting her judgment.

CUSTOM is my favorite Wharton novel, but think AGE OF INNOCENCE is a better book. Still, I enjoy hearing any favorable opinions of her.

As for the 21st century, no book has moved me like LINCOLN AT THE BARDO.

Hope no one nominates Franzen for one of his books.

Let's not forget Marilynne Robinson; many would nominate GILEAD for greatness. And no one in Cather's corner?

Interesting that so many nominations for GAN are from the Midwest, West, or South and explore the lives of the upper crust of the East. Wharton and James being an exception.

Huckleberry Finn. And as far as Fitzgerald goes, I prefer Tender is the Night.

You are all RACIST! "The Bench" is the GREATEST American Novel, although technically it was written by an English twa... sorry, Duchess.

Jesus Christ, if you're arguing that a piece of populist fiction like GWTW, which IS a very entetaining potboiler, is a piece of brillliant literary fiction then you really are a mouthbreathing moron with questionable taste.

Even Margaret Mitchell knew what she had written. She'd have laughed in your face if you had blown that smoke up her skirt...then offered you a highball.

My Top Ten (not in an order)

1. Moby Dick by Melville

2. Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald

3. Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck

4. Light in August by Faulkner

5. Huck Finn by Twain

6. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by McCullers

7. To Kill A Mockingbird by Lee

8. Another Country by Baldwin

9. Scarlett Letter by Hawthorne

10. The Age of Innocence by Wharton

To me, to be a Great American Novel, the story has to have America itself as a character (thematically speaking) and it must arc and change in a way that it might not want to, but, in fact, needs to. If that makes sense.

So many great, great novels don't fit the criteria for me (Housekeeping, Catch 22, etc) even if they Great Novels otherwise.

Huckleberry Finn and The Scarlet Letter together pretty much sum up America. I don't like Gatsby but there is a part of America that shows very well, too.

Moby Dick needed an editor.

Duh! Hollywood Wives!

“Everybody Poops.”

I had to read Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury for 11th grade English. I damn near flunked because I just didn't understand it. I read it again in my 20s. Nope, still didn't understand it. Tried again in my 40s. Nope, zilch, nada. I am at a complete loss as to why Faulkner is required reading in US educational institutions, and why he is considered among the "greats". I think anyone who believes Faulkner "great" is out of his fucking mind.

R146, you sound like a lot of fun at parties.

I loved The Sound and the Fury because it was like a puzzle. I can see why a lot of students detest it. It has no flow and you never get immersed in the story. But it’s a great character study and contrast of perspectives—the story is really in what’s left out and the way the story changes from character to character. In its way it’s kind of like a detective story or make your own adventure book in requiring the reader to participate.

I think Faulkner gets such acclaim because writers see the difficulty of what he does on a technical level.

But I don’t know that this “writer’s writer” qualification is enough for the Great American Novel. My picks were Huck Finn, Beloved, and Lonesome Dove. I disagree with the argument above that it could never be a popular novel and has to have high literary merit.

[quote] No love for A Tree Grows In Brooklyn?

r25, sentimental fool that I am, ATGIB, is, by far, my favorite piece of popular fiction. Betty Smith originally wrote it as a memoir, however, her editor persuaded her to make it a novel. I don't share the reaction that some have of it, namely that it's "corny".

I recognized so much sadness and hope; the stuff of real life, in it.

[quote] The Great Gatsby is not my fave but I really think it's the quintessential great american novel. Set in a period of MAJOR change, introspective, it's about the falsity of the Great American Dream. It's less about the people in it and more about the times.Word for word with r25 about "The Great Gatsby".

Word for word with r24. I finally got around to TGG about 15 years ago. I devoured it almost in one sitting, mostly because it's a pot-boiler, tawdry, soap-opera wrapped in gorgeous writing. From page one, I was caught in its tractor beam.

I think the genius of Fitzgerald's writing in TGG is found in r24's observation that it's about "the falsity of the Great American Dream", however, Fitzgerald shows that via encasing it in a pulp fiction plot, thereby reinforcing not only the falsity, but also the garish, crude, base core of American life.

1984 = orwell

Parts of Moby Dick are so beautifully written that they make me delirious. Glorious writing.

And other parts of Moby Dick gave me more information about whales than I ever thought existed.

It's about a whale?

Would love to look into the contemporary GWTW reviews from the snobby critics of the day. Was it considered great literature? Or just, as the poster above mentions, a terrific potboiler? The Pulitzer designation has always puzzled me, since it usually goes to serious literature, even if the winners are questionable for a other reasons. Yet looking at the winners of the era, you find GRAPES OF WRATH and THE YEARLING, side by side with (unknown to me) LAMB IN HIS BOSOM, HONEY IN THE HORN, and NOW IN NOVEMBER. Pretty sure these last three are forgotten. Wonder if the bookish intelligentsia were appalled by the Prize.

It's about THE whale.

"Moby Dick" and "Huckleberry Finn," with all their "language" intact.

[quote]Parts of Moby Dick are so beautifully written that they make me delirious. Glorious writing.

Melville's description of Ishmael and some of the other mariners with their hands in vats of whale sperm squeezing the globs out is some of the most homoerotic prose ever written. Especially if one remembers that Melville wrote it in 1850!

R158, GWTW was modestly received - critics didn't gush. It was one of those runaway successes because it gained a significant widespread popularity.

Re R158, Faulkner's great Absolom! Absolom! was published the same year as GWTW, and it has a very similar subject as Mitchell's book, although it covers more time, pre-Civil War up until somewhere in the early XXth Century. It is a kind of prequel to The Sound and the Fury. Faulkner was steamed about the recognition that Mitchell's book received, over his, when it was published, and rightly so although his book is not an easy read. It's an incredible book, if you have the patience to let him tell the story the way he wants it told - the story is based on some big family lies, and the narrative sort of colludes with the characters to conceal what's really happening, so that the reader has to figure it out for himself. I think it is his masterpiece, and would qualify as a Great American Novel, for sure.

So the Pulitzer committee bowed to popular opinion?

[quote]pre-Civil War up until somewhere in the early XXth Century

Are you writing from 200 BC Rome?

You think the use of "XXth Century" is somehow improper? Nuts...

Well, I never read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in school, but this year I read the linked essay by Jane Smiley.

Shortly after, I saw a comedian who took Jordan Klepper's Ask-Magats-At-One-Term-Loser-Rallies-Questions-and-Let-Their-Idiocy-Create-The-Laughs shtick. Some flag-bedecked yahoo in a folding camp chair responded to something the comedian asked by getting SO PISSED about "...that BITCH Harriet Beecher Stowe..." starting the Civil War. He was shitting himself and hissing about how it never would have happened if she never wrote that book.

I decided to get it from the library and read it, if a racist cracker breached his depends on tv while he tried to drag it, the novel must be good! I ended up agreeing with what Smiley wrote in that essay. I was pleasantly surprised at how funny the digs, jabs and scratches were, Harriet was sly! Poor Tom was a sucker for his christianity and ultimately that means he was tragically duped and pacified by the systems of racism, slavery and capitalism that controlled him.

So, I would nominate "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for a great American novel. It is well-written, with a spectrum of characters whose life experiences are two sides of a coin that puts the moral onus on one side to correct. It dared to tell the hideous truth of its time and influenced society. One can argue it is still influencing people to this day.

I read Uncle Tom’s Cabin in college and it was dreck. It has a place in history because it was groundbreaking in its era, but it’s aged like milk, while Huck Finn (for example) has stayed worthwhile.

R166, improper? No. Weird and pretentious? Yes.

It's neither. A search for the phrase on google finds 2.67 million hits. It's not uncommon at all, not weird, and not "pretentious". Don't bother trying to read Absolom! Absolom!, you're not smart enough to follow it.

Sure, R170. There are 932,000 results for "xxth century" and 4,490,000,000 results for "20th century". But you go ahead and keep pretending you're not, to use your esteemed word...nuts.

Goodnight Moon

GONE WITH THE WIND is simply a bloated historical romance novel. If not for the legendary Golden Age of Hollywood film, it would be forgotten today, Pulitzer or no.

[quote] So the Pulitzer committee bowed to popular opinion?

Sometimes, the committee bowed to the demands of the Pulitzer board of trustees: in 1960, the committee recommended that the prize be given to Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King, but the board overruled the committee and gave the award to Allen Drury's Advise and Consent, which was the #1 bestselling book of the year.

Serious question here - what defines a book as “The Great American Novel”?

Popularity? Prose? Theme? Characters? Period defining?

Sales, baby. This is America!

Steinbeck, Baldwin, Edith Wharton, Richard Wight, Ralph Ellison, Dos Passos, Dreiser, Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Truman Capote, IMO they are the "greatest of all time..."

r177 left off Jacqueline Susann.

R151 The Sound and The Fury is his most difficult novel by far.

I'd suggest reading "Light in August", Absolom!, Absolom!," or "As I Lay Dying". Much more accessible and his prose is otherworldly.

The Pulitzer board also prevented Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf from winning the award. Albee when twice after that.

Anyone opining that Moby Dick is boring either hasn’t read it or is an utter cretin.

R181, you won't even admit that the endless descriptions of the minutiae of whaling was a little much? Yes, I know you'll defend it in various speculative ways (because I don't think Melville actually explained it) but the vast majority of people who have read it do find it bloated with that minutiae. I'm not saying all of it is unnecessary but a lot of it is, at least in the sheer volume it is present.

I am fine with being an utter cretin.

A professor once mentioned to me that the key to "The Great Gatsby" is that the narrator is lying. Is this true or was that a lie?

Lynig about what?

I don't know if it's the "key" to GG, but the narrator (Nick Carraway) is suspect. He witnesses (and describes) all this horrible, unjust behavior (other characters), yet sits back and takes another sip of his drink.

Christopher Hitchens: Why does Moby Dick stink? Why is it revered?

Gore Vidal: I wouldn’t say it is all that bad, but it is not very good, either, unless one wants to know a great deal about whales. It is revered because it is very much in the American manner -pompous, humorless, self-important, and ill-written. There are some interesting annotations in Melville’s copies of Shakespeare where you can see him aiming at magnificence and falling with a splash into the old-man-and-the-sea shallows.

And here's E.L. Doctorow and Margaret Atwood having a debate about Moby Dick.

[quote]It is revered because it is very much in the American manner -pompous, humorless, self-important, and ill-written.

Sounds like this thread.

R152 And, you don't sound like much fun at all...

A Catcher in the Rye

On the Road

Tropic of Cancer

The Color Purple

R190, that was ten hours ago. If your nose is still out of joint you may need a chiroprctor.

R192 Oddly enough, I'm not on DL 24 hours a day.

Like SOME people.

No, but you'e awfully easy to rile when you are, doll.

Moby Dick is funny as hell. It’s like the Seven Samurai of novels, it has everything: action, drama, sex, friendship. The works!

R194 Yeah...it is pretty crazy of me to confront assholes when they snark on me. I guess I should just lay there like a passive bitch and take it like a man when some dickstick comes for me.

What’s interesting is the sheer importance that whaling was to the world and the history of the United States economically, and yet it’s all but completely forgotten except for this enigmatic tome of a novel. It’s almost like it’s primary importance is as a placeholder in history so that we don’t completely forget. I feel like consumption in La Boheme is remembered in the same way, one of the most deadly diseases that ever existed, yet almost forgotten except for its importance as a plot device in one of the most famous operas. How these two huge things that did so much to shape the nineteenth century barely registered today is staggering.

Both Butterfield 8 and Breakfast at Tiffany’s are under appreciated books due to the films whose scripts completely changed them. They are both worth (re) reading

R197, thanks for adding that post, interesting comment history, disease, economics and how they're recorded for us. Not related to this thread's topic, but I'm reading an article on diphtheria... a horrible childhood disease... who of us understands how common or deadly it was? And yet, it was prevelant into the early 20th century.

I really disliked Moby Dick. Sorry :-(

Don't forget to add, "AND WHY???" in the title and OP of these threads, OPs. It's boring when people just throw out names. Their reasons are what's interesting.

I'm still waiting for a Moby-dick fan to explain to me why the novel is so great, even though I've explained I'm quite open to believing it. All I've got so far is "it's beautifully written". So were Kenneth Tynan's theatre reviews, but they're not the Great British Novel. Someone admired a homoerotic section, but again, not quite enough to pitch it to the top of the pops. I could see Atwood thought it was some kind of allegory of capitalist America swamping nature, but I couldn't tell what Doctorow thought except that he thought there was not enough basis for her interpretation.

On the other side, detractors are just saying there's way too much whale stuff and it's boring (something I've definitely noticed on my several attempts to get into it). Nobody is telling me why the main plot is unlikeable or not Great-American. And none of the admirers have explained why the "boring whale stuff" is essential.

Thus far, leaving it on the shelf is winning.

'Huckleberry Finn"--My take on the last chunk of the story differs from the poster upthread who took Tom Sawyer making Jim the focus of a "free the slave" game, to be emblematic of privileged White betrayal. No. Tom Sawyer was a child. And unlike Huck, whose love of a Black man racists might be able to dismiss because he was merely "trash," Tom was respectable. And to this respectable child of White society, nothing could be more fun than . . . helping a slave escape. More: breaking the law of his society by helping a slave escape. Yes, it could have endangered Jim by not giving him his freedom sooner, but Tom is like 11 years old. His delight in playing "Let's help a slave escape," is one of the most subversive, transgressive-for-the-times elements of the story. It's not just Huck who wants to run away with Jim and "light out for the Territories" to start a business away from the South. Tom wants to go too.

This is America's greatest novel, and one of the greatest novels of all time.

Tom Sawyer is a little schmuck and I won’t hear otherwise.

"Huckleberry Finn" (my thoughts above at R203)

"Their Eyes Were Watching God"--Zora Neale Hurston--has this been name-checked yet? Another masterpiece in which the unsung Black America sings.

"Blood Meridian"--This, not "The Road," is Cormac McCarthy's Great American Novel. "Anti-Western" doesn't begin to describe this hallucinatory, Hieronymous Boschean vision of Western Expansion and the genocidal ethnic cleansing that occurred along the way, as well as the demonic aspect of the greed and impulse to own and dominate that fueled it.

"Moby Dick"--speaking of the demonic aspect of the greed and impulse to own, dominate and destroy that is so fundamental to America . . .

"The Chosen"--The movie was hokey, but Chaim Potok's novel of Jewish Brooklyn in the 1940s is an under-appreciated masterpiece. And there's baseball, too.

"Handling Sin"--Hilarious and big-hearted Southern picaresque by Michael Malone . . . a pinched insurance salesman gets his life and his heart busted open and we get to go along for the ride . . .

Blubber

Babbitt. He's still there everywhere.

Sometimes A Great Notion.

Surprised no one has mentioned Leslie Fiedler's essay on the homoerotic implications of Jim and Huck on the raft. Quite an eye-opener in its day.

I think this thread proves one thing: The GAN doesn't exist, except in one's own mind.

There's homoerotic fan fic out there about Ishmael and Queequeg. That flies better than the Huck and Jim relationship, in which Jim provided the good fathering that Huck did not get from his alcoholic, physically abusive bio dad.

Of course . . . there's a meta-fiction counter-narrative novel focused on Huck's bio dad. "Finn," by Jon Clinch.

Fiedler was a first-rate literary critic. He wasn't talking fan-fic with ]his Twain essay.

I'm kinda thinking that taken as two volumes in one big work, James Ellroy's two relatively recent novels of Los Angeles five minutes after Pearl Harbor as the US is getting into WWII, might end up on a GAN list. "Perfidia" and "This Storm." Racisim, police corruption, the internment of Japanese-Americans, White American Nazis and Nazi sympathizers . . . Crime features in them, but they're not really "crime novels," more like sprawling cast-of-thousands tapestries that drew mixed reviews including raves, but mixed. I'm thinking when viewed further down the road they may gain serious stature.

Yeah, I understand Fiedler was writing serious criticism. It's a fascinating theory that doesn't really fly for me, my literary critic view, not a very original one, being that Jim became Huck's true father. Another for-the-time transgressive strain in this novel.

Gone With The Wind

The Great Gatsby

Catcher in the Rye

On The Road

To Kill a Mockingbird

Cormac and Toni need to be on any updated list. They're the two most important American writers of the last 40 years.

The Bluest Eye for Morrison. What a fucking novel that is.

The Road or Blood Meridian for McCarthy.

50 Shades of Grey.

[quote]I'm still waiting for a Moby-dick fan to explain to me why the novel is so great,

R202 Put it in context. Most of us read Moby Dick as early to mid teens, in the mid 1960s to 1970s. The combination of adventure, animals (to say nothing of the homoerotic aspect for gaylings who didn't yet know they were), the description of an unknown world to a bunch of naive, unworldly city kids who knew little of life beyond their neighborhood. Melville grabbed us with his first sentence "Call me Ishmael", took us on a heart-stopping, wild ride, via a thoroughly engaging narrative, introduced us to fantastical characters, and didn't let us catch our collective breaths until his last sentence "And I alone survive to tell the tale". I was 12 years old when I read those words; and they remain with me 58 years later.

I don't believe Moby Dick would have the same impact on an adult with adult experiences. There are authors that can only be read as a child, such as Melville, London and Twain, whose stories would simply not have the same memorable impact when read as an adult.

The "great American novel" transcends race, ethnicity, gender, belief, sexual orientation and class. Writers such as Steinbeck, Hemingway, Lewis, Sinclair and to a lesser extent Updike and James, were far more social commentators than fiction writers. Their novels endure and remain vibrant and relevant exactly because they are about the "Everyman", the universal character who can be understood, related to and embraced, whether in English or in translation, whether read in 1920 or 2020. Authors who write about a particular racial or ethnic experience cannot capture the same universality of character. In the same way that Dickens and Shakespeare were relevant 100 years ago and 500 years and will continue to be relevant in another 100 or 500 years. That universality, that ability to capture and hold the reader regardless of his nationality, language, social status or living situation is what makes the truly "great novel".

[quote]and they remain with me 58 years later.

R217 Erratum: 56 years later.

[quote] Authors who write about a particular racial or ethnic experience cannot capture the same universality of character.

This is so wrong. And all authors write about particular racial or ethnic experiences.

I will give an example so I don’t seem as harsh - Toni Morrison’s Beloved is about a formerly enslaved woman, and focuses on that experience. Because of this - not despite it - it tells a universal story about how the cruelty of society can tear families apart.

[quote]And all authors write about particular racial or ethnic experiences.

R219 Not quite. They write about people in situations in such a way that anyone can relate to; Lennie, Ishmael, the Joads, ALL have universal experiences that are easily understandable by the reader regardless of background. Potok's Reuven or Wright's Bigger are specific to a particular race/ethnicity and are often foreign and difficult to comprehend.

[quote] it tells a universal story about how the cruelty of society can tear families apart.

Again, that's not universal. Because, in reality, there are just as many families/communities united by cruel societies, such as the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath.

I wish Blood Meridian weren't so indigestible. I've tried, but no. I'm a simple guy who prefers The Road.

[quote] and are often foreign and difficult to comprehend

Two words missing from the end there - “for me”

R223 Uh, no. The vast majority of people will find Potok's Reuven or Wright's Bigger foreign and difficult to comprehend because they have no experience of Haredi communities or minority existence.

The point of literature is that you experience the world from a perspective different from your own. Most readers don’t find it difficult to comprehend a book centered on characters of a difference age, gender, sexual orientation, birthplace, etc. It is very telling to claim that race or ethnicity is some kind of hurdle to understanding when so many other things are not. Do you think female students can’t understand Lord of the Flies or Catcher in the Rye? Can modern people not understand the Odyssey? The Bible? Etc.

Most people read to be entertained, enlightened. Perhaps you find Haredi communities and ghetto minorities entertaining/enlightening. Most people don't.

The subject was author universality. Potok and Wright are examples of authors writing fiction stories that are not universal, but of limited interest.

Ah, I see. You’re just an everyday bigot, not making an interesting argument.

R227 Bigot? Because I don't happen to agree with your opinions? Seriously?

Moby Dick was written in 1850 and is still read today. Neither Potok nor Wright will be read in another 50 years. Like Murdoch. Like Bellows.

^^^ Bellow ^^^

Gatsby or the House of Mirth. Always thought Rip Van Winkle was the quintessential American story—about the dream of being left alone.

I don’t think Great Novels remain stuck in their time, or even need to be reflective of it really. Art should ideally be able to transcend the time in which it is written.

The Great Gatsby is rooted in its time, but there is a lot in it which could be recognised by people from any time. A story of self-delusion and privilege, and emptiness. It’s a story of humans, and how weak we are, despite the importance we put into (and derive from) the trappings of success. It says a lot about the America it was written in, but the basic story could have been written in Ancient Rome or in Britain or France as they took on global power in the late 18th century.

R229, sez you. You have no idea what will be read or not read in 50 years.

For what it's worth, Gatsby, to me, has the best last line of any great American novel.

Mr. Pines Purple House.

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

I am still trying to understand The Great Gatsby. I was reading some stuff online (spurred on by whoever on this board said that his or her English teacher said that Nick is lying). So Nick could be in love with Gatsby. That actually makes a lot of sense. Gatsby could be black. I couldn't find much else.

R209, the whole point of the "Great American Novel" idea is to spark discussion. It's like "GOAT" argument in sports--the beauty of it is that it can never be resolved.

[quote]Most people read to be entertained, enlightened. Perhaps you find Haredi communities and ghetto minorities entertaining/enlightening. Most people don't.

[quote]The subject was author universality. Potok and Wright are examples of authors writing fiction stories that are not universal, but of limited interest.

I'm not Jewish, let alone Haredi, but when I was in college I found Chaim Potok's "The Promise" and "The Chosen" so interesting, I've read each at least twice. And I proceeded to read "My Name Is Asher Lev" and other of Potok's writings. His writing has been both entertaining and enlightening, r226.

R237, I myself do not understand the idea that Nick in The Great Gatsby is an unreliable narrator. Usually when an author creates such a character there are easily-spotted red flags. For example, Lolita is presented, in a fictitious forward, as the work which was found and edited by a professor of abnormal psychology. We're on notice that Humbert Humbert's interpretation of reality might be a bit off. I can't remember anything that suggests that we should question what Nick is saying.

My mother is a WASP from Detroit. She loved Chaim Potok's books.

The Great Hannah Gadsby

R240 It’s implied in the way Nick describes himself at the beginning iirc.

No love for Mark Twain?

[quote]The Great Hannah Gadsby

She was a humourless person, Hannah Gadsby - she smashed up shellfish and wings and then retreated to her vast porcelain toilet and let other people clean up the mess she'd made.

R244, he's been mentioned numerous times.

I'm really enjoying the decided lack of Heminway titles in this thread. If this was a straight guy forum, he'd be all over the thread. Oh, they wouldn't be able to name any of the titles but they'd just write "Hemingway" and then grunt in grand Hemingway fashion.

[quote]the whole point of the "Great American Novel" idea is to spark discussion

R238 gets it. Discussion. Not consensus, agreement or reiteration. WW!

I think The Awakening by Kate Chopin is every bit as good as many claim Gatsby to be. I'm saddened by how little this novel is taught. I had to wait until a Women in Lit class in college. It should be taught as a companion to The Scarlet Letter in every literature class.

I loved the Awakening by the way too! My vote though goes to Huckleberry Finn. I read both in the same lit class.

The Stand A Confederacy Of Dunce’s Silent Spring Stranger In A Strange Land

But what is The Great Armenia novel?

The Awakening is fantastic. It doesn't get as much love as it should. Neither does the work of John Dos Passos.

I also would like to offer John Fante's Ask The Dust. It's not as big in scope as, say, Grapes of Wrath, but it's a searing look at the American Dream lost to daydreams. I love it.

I used to teach the Awakening as a sort of companion piece to Their Eyes Were Watching God (high school American lit class).

I'm seeing little to no mentions of Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser and Upton Sinclair, who'd all be all over this thread 50 years ago.

R255, I think literary critics have preferred to focus on the fantastic and Gothic aspects of American literature. Fiction that involves business and money is not treated with as much respect.

It’s really too broad a term or concept for there to be one definitive answer. Because the books named so far are understandably tilted toward the late 19th/early 20th Century, I’m going to instead nominate two that came out in the 1980s — Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” and Don DeLillo’s “White Noise.”

“Beloved” is a highbrow horror novel that looks back at the terrible toll of slavery on those forced into it. “White Noise” starts as a satire of academia but what it really does is forecast 21st Century life with its ever more inescapable sense that our lives are dictated by forces — mass media, corporate irresponsibility and government fecklessness,, the inevitability of death itself — that are fully outside our control.

R255 Fifty years from now, you'll see little to no mention of many of the authors posted on this thread, e.g., Potok, Wright, Morrison, DeLillo, McCarthy, Baldwin, Capote. Just as there is little to no mention today of writers that were read/relevant in the 50s, 60s and 70s, e.g., Murdoch, Bellow, Heinlein, Pynchon, Styron, Wolfe, Vonnegut, Updike. Required reading in my high school in the mid 60s was John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me. I'd be surprised if more than one or two posters on this thread have heard of it.

r258: I graduated from high school in 1987; required reading in middle school was Black Like Me and 12 Angry Men, in high school it was Romeo & Juliet, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Glass Menagerie, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in addition to a ton of short stories (Edgar Allan Poe was popular).

But we also had a used book store in our small town with a fabulous selection of paperbacks from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and so in my high school years, I also read Peyton Place, Valley of the Dolls, Airport, The Poseidon Adventure, etc. You know, the genuine classics.

[quote]The Stand A Confederacy Of Dunce’s

Oh, dear.

What's your point, r258? That the masses inevitably don't remember quality literature of an earlier era? Hard to disagree with that. But people in 50 years looking to understand our current era will certainly look to many of the writers you are quick to cast off as likely-to-be-forgotten.

(Morrison won't be, btw. Her stature is likely to grow and her work will endure. Look at the current debate over "Beloved" in Virginia schools.)

Rhythm Nation 1812

Agree, r261, and to be fair, there isn't much discussion of any serious writers from the past several decades; very few serious readers out there. Morrison is the exception, for a lot of reasons. But today it's mostly about Franzen, Sally Rooney, Ishiguro, Atwood. In my college days it was Roth, Bellow, Nabokov, Vonnegut, Updike, Malamud, Pynchon, Welty, O'Connor, O'Hara, and . . . John Barth (still alive at 91!) And in the late 60's, Joyce Carol Oates was a wunderkind meant for greatness; Whether she achieved that status is up for discussion. Fiftyish years later, most of those writers are still read and respected, with opinions about their work rising and falling as the tides. Maybe it's time to reconsider James Gould Cozzens, Marquand, James Jones, etc.

Ironically, the censorship controversies will only aid in keeping Toni Morrison's legacy alive, so there is that.

For fiction focused on business and money, R256, there's always Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener," a Great American Short Story/Novella nominee for the ages.

"I would prefer not to."

[quote] I am still trying to understand The Great Gatsby. I was reading some stuff online (spurred on by whoever on this board said that his or her English teacher said that Nick is lying). So Nick could be in love with Gatsby. That actually makes a lot of sense. Gatsby could be black. I couldn't find much else.

Try the Cliff's Notes. Gatsby has lots of symbolism.

Re: Great Gatsby and Nick as an unreliable narrator.

To some extent, all narrators are unreliable in that you see things through your own lens.

Nick was cousins with Daisy, IIRC, so there's a family connection there. You don't really expect Nick to skewer Daisy in his narration due to their blood relationship.

Nick also saw a woman (mistress) get killed and, IIRC, he slunk away from that. He is somewhat complicit.

Overall, though, I think Nick was somewhat reliable and his observations are that of a newbie, an outsider like the reader. Just his name "Carraway," symbolizes a seed, something young, new, unsprouted, etc.

Gatsby is one of those novels I admire, but don't really like.

I’m 36 and have read Black Like Me. Morrison and Baldwin will both endure, of those you posted.

[quote] Jesus Christ, if you're arguing that a piece of populist fiction like GWTW, which IS a very entetaining potboiler, is a piece of brillliant literary fiction then you really are a mouthbreathing moron with questionable taste.

Chill out, Little Miss High Dudgeon, or you'll strangle yourself with those pearls.

r269, if you don't specify to which post you're addressing no one will know.

Black Like Me is not a novel but a memoir.

[quote] all narrators are unreliable

I've rarely enjoyed first-person stories and novels; the idea that someone can recreate entire conversations is too unbelievable for me to accept.

An unreliable narrator is usually the protagonist of a story and is writing to try to justify or excuse something that he has done. Poe’s hopped-up narrator in Ligeia, who’s trying to explain why both his wives are dead (trust him, it’s not his fault) is a classic, as is Lolita, whose narrator assures us that he is irresistibly handsome and that Lolita seduced him. We understand that something quite different is going on; there’s an ongoing counter-narrative all through the book.

I don’t recall evidence of a counter-narrative in Gatsby; I’m not even sure that Nick’s presence affects the story at all. I don’t think we are meant to question the ultimate truth of what he is saying.

Agreed, R68. The plot of Gatsby is ridiculous. An overcooked potboiler. And all the characters are repellent.

I am being haunted!

The counter-narrative is that Nick may be gay or bi (especially given the incident in Mr. McKee's bedroom at the end of chapter 2) and in love with Gatsby.

He also has information (that Daisy was the actual driver of the death car) that could have saved both Gatsby's and Wilson's lives had he told it to the police before the murder of the former and the suicide of the latter.

Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ramona had more power over society than these others.

[quote] Most people read to be entertained, enlightened. Perhaps you find … ghetto minorities entertaining/enlightening. Most people don't

100 straight years of American popular culture, the most dominant the world has ever seen, begs to differ.

I don’t know if it’s THE Great American novel, but so first read The Catcher In The Rye in my mid-30s, out loud to my my father, after he became quadriplegic and wanted to knock out as many Great must reads as he could. To his credit, he there weren’t that many left on his list. We Couldn’t find CITR on Audiobook so it was down to me to narrate.

I had listened to some podcasts and read some articles by rereaders for whom it did not stand up decades after their teens.

I am happy to say we both loved every second of it. I don’t think I would have gotten as much out of it if I had read it like most (Americans), as a young adult. But it was so, so funny, so sad, a good a grief memoir novel as I have come across, and my heart shattered for Holden Caufield.

As for The Great Gatsby, a high school teacher friend said that the ESL students he taught the novel dearly loved it, and took it at face value. The American Dream held no irony for them.

^^^ Nice story of sharing CitR with your dad.

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

Great list on wikipedia of books that have been seriously termed the GAN by critics:

*The Last of the Mohicans by Cooper

*The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne

*Moby-Dick by Melville

*Uncle Tom's Cabin by Stowe

*Huckleberry Finn by Twain

*The Red Badge of Courage by Crane

*McTeague by Norris

*The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald

*Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Loos

*Absalom, Absalom! by Faulkner

*The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck

*The Catcher in the Rye, by Salinger

*Invisible Man by Ellison

*The Adventures of Augie March, by Bellow

*Lolita, by Nabokov

*To Kill a Mockingbird, by Lee

*Gravity's Rainbow, by Pynchon

*Blood Meridian, by McCarthy

*Beloved, by Morrison

*American Psycho, by Ellis

*Infinite Jest, by Wallace

*Underworld, by DeLillo

*Freedom, by Franzen

*Telegraph Avenue, by Chabon

Always meant to read The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow as it was on our home bookshelf throughout my growing years (I'm the poster who went on about another of our family's books, Raintree County). Can anyone recommend it and why they liked it?

I'm also curious about McTeague and The Invisible man if anyone cares to expound.

TIA.

I love McTeague, r284. Fantastic novel. I also love Norris’ The Octopus, as well.

Angie March is the quintessential “American” novel in that looks at the experience of the children of immigrants, is a novel of education and setting out (Bildungsroman), and a novel of leaving home. It is beautifully and robustly written and has more heart and humor than anything by Bellow (and I think Bellow is genuinely great 90% of the name and never anything less than smart).

Invisible Man (no article) is in a universe all it’s own. It has one of the most gripping opening episodes in all literature and the novel as a whole has transformative power—I read it in AP English in 1975 and it, cliched as it sounds, changed my life. As a suburban white boy, it opened up worlds I had never seen or felt. And Ellison was a master stylist. His output is small, but if all he had ever done was write this novel, he would still hold a place as one of the greatest writers this country has ever produced.

Augie not Angie. Damn autocorrect

Don DeLillo’s Underworld.

A Prayer For Owen Meany.

Rich Man, Poor Man - Irwin Shaw

Dawson’s 50 Load Weekend: The Novel

Little House In The Big Woods - 1932 - First in Laura Ingalls Wilder's series, of 8 autobiographical children's novels.

Johnny Tremain by Esther Louise Forbes

Moby-Dick Lolita Gravity’s Rainbow Pale Fire The Scarlet Letter

“I am as American as April in Arizona.” — Vladimir Nabokov

Fear of Flying

"Having a Baby Can Be a Scfeam" - Joan Rivers

Can some of you who have said Lolita explain why you think so?

"The Magnificent Ambersons" -- known mainly from the Orson Welles film, I read it to find see how the film followed it (very well) and for the missing scenes, as the film was notoriously cut. It's an excellent and enjoyable read, and it won the Pulitzer back in the day.

I was actually disappointed in The Magnificent Ambersons, the characters just weren't very engaging (except for the aunt played so memorably by Agnes Moorehead in the film) but I loved Tarkington's Alice Adams, with a smaller cast of characters. I think both books won the Pulitzer.

Thanks to the posters upthread who were generous enough to answer my questions about McTeague, Invisible Man and Augie March. I'll be looking into all 3 of them.

Magnificent Ambersons resonates particularly well today because the young child is such a brat turns in to an overbearing selfish young man who the whole town hope will get his comeuppance resembles a certain former head of a superpower nation. Alice Adams, with one of Katharine Hepburn's best roles, surprising since she plays someone distinctly not-upperclass, in the book, has a very different ending.

If I had to pick books from this year alone “The Great Circle” is quite an epic tale with a large swath of American history including glimpses of celebrity culture with is contemporary storyline. In many ways it reminds me of East of Eden. The other nominee would be “The Prophets,” about two Gay slaves in antebellum South and the swirling community around them that both supports and undoes them.

No one reads Tarkington any more. But he was so popular esteemed in his day.

[quote] No one reads Tarkington any more.

Including myself, at least 4 people in this thread have read him.

The list at R283 is interesting, but I wouldn’t have picked either of the Franzen or the Chabon they selected, even if you mandated that those authors be included. I’d leave Franzen off entirely and pick Kavalier and Clay instead of Telegraph Ave for Chabon.

I'm in the middle of Franzen's latest CROSSROADS and it's terrific. It may well be considered The Great American Novel someday soon.

I submit Wolfe’s The Right Stuff and Richard Ben Cramer’s What It Takes as contenders, if their novelistic style can qualify them for the list even though they’re non-fiction.

If we are compiling a list of Great American novels, then Raymond Chandler should definitely be represented.

[quote] ^^^ Nice story of sharing CitR with your dad.

Thank you, r281. He wasn’t perfect but so miss him every day.

R307 What about Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities? That is, at least, the great American novel of the 1980's.

What about The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett?

The Godfather - Mario Puzo

[quote] What about The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett?

That’s actually a good suggestion, OP.

The “Great” novel is supposed to be coming of age into adulthood/middle age/old age, about man’s inhumanity to man, redemption, self-forgiveness.

But crime fiction does all this stuff.

[quote]Most people read to be entertained, enlightened. Perhaps you find … ghetto minorities entertaining/enlightening. Most people don't

[quote]100 straight years of American popular culture, the most dominant the world has ever seen, begs to differ.

Teens and young adults from Krasnoyarsk to Kandy to Kabul, from Beirut to Bialystok, from Porto to Penang know and have read (in translation mostly) Twain, Steinbeck, Melville, Stowe, Salinger, Hawthorn and Cooper. Wright, Baldwin, Morrison, Angelou, and Ellison remain mostly unknown.

[quote] Wright, Baldwin, Morrison, Angelou, and Ellison remain mostly unknown.

You continue to universalize your quite narrow (and narrow-minded) life experience.

R314 Walk down a street in Krasnoyarsk or Kabul and say Twain or Melville. Chances are faces will light up in recognition. Now do the same for Baldwin or Wright. Chances are you will be met with bewildered incomprehension.

That's the difference between universality and limited appeal.

R313 it’s your the supposition that “most people” don’t find “ghetto minorities entertaining/enlightening”.

They most certainly do.

African Americans dominated 20th century and 21st century American art and culture in in exponential proportion to their culture.

[quote] Walk down a street in Krasnoyarsk or Kabul and say Twain or Melville. Chances are faces will light up in recognition

Nah. They rot their brains on Netflix and Call Of Duty and Pornhub like the rest of us.

Tolstoy lol

I knew this thread would devolve into a triumph of patience and diplomacy.

The Great American Novel doesn’t exist because there isn’t a critical or popular consensus. Instead, we should discuss the American novels that might be considered a canon of classics. I would include Mexican and Canadian writers.

[quote] Instead, we should discuss the American novels that might be considered a canon of classics.

The (North) American canon is an interesting proposition, but I find the idea (and ideal) of the Great American novel more interesting - because what defines it?

A Woman of Substance by Barbara Taylor Bradford

The Eighth Day by Thornton Wilder

Talk about a writer whose novels are rarely read today! Wilder is way high on the list.

I had a teacher (male) who was crazy about Willa Cather; I never hear her mentioned anymore either. I tried re-reading My Antonia a few years back but couldn’t get into it.

Cather is one of those writers whose reputation ebbs and flows over the years. My guess is that she overall, like Wharton and Fitzgerald and Faulkner, will have a permanent top-shelf place in American lit. She's passed the test of time, even though she's not to everyone's taste.

Scruples by Judith Krantz

I did a four-session online course on Cather's late periods with gay writer/teacher Benjamin Taylor. through the 92nd Street Y. While My Antonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop are often heralded as her best (and they are both great, in very different ways), he made a compelling case for The Professor's House. Cather's short stories are quite wonderful, too.

I agree with you, OP. Grapes of Wrath.

I know it's not considered highly today, but I loved Cather's One of Ours, which won the Pulitzer Prize; a moving portrait of a lonely young Nebraska farmer who gets unhappily married, then finds true love with another soldier in the battlefields of France during WWI. It's not explicitly stated, but that's what it's really about.

One of Ours is enjoying a kind of renaissance. I think it was viewed as lesser Cather, in part because the "major" ones are really so superb. But, in our era of endless wars, there is a renewed interest in it. I think part of its neglect was that she received the Pulitzer for "THAT," when her more highly praised ones went home empty-handed.

Cather's selected letters (published in 2013) are supposed to be a great read. And I recently heard Sam Sacks, fiction critic of the WSJ, say that of all the writers living or dead he'd most like to sit down and chat with, ol' Willa was the one.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Why? Because it’s a humble, somewhat simply written book that covers the mundane, the tragic, and the inevitables of everyone’s life in a way that reaches readers at every age level. But it’s not written in a way that makes the reader feel too young, too old, too stupid, or too smart to be reading it. I read it when I was 9 or 10 and I’ve read it at least 15 times since. I’m now 50 and it still reaches me, still draws and keeps me hanging to the story, to the characters, without feeling like it’s been dumbed down, or that I’ve outgrown it.

The Little House books are pretty fucking good, and timeless. But, they’re pretty simple.

As I Lay Dying, Faulkner, brilliant.

Martin Eden, Jack London, painful, brilliant.

But ultimately, the Great American Novel has to be compelling and well written of course, American (duh), and must reach (and affect) a very broad audience. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn nails every category.

R333, you nailed it about ATGIB. It's, by far, my favorite work of pop fiction for all of the reasons you stated.

Mr. Tomony is gay.

[quote] The “Great” novel is supposed to be coming of age into adulthood/middle age/old age, about man’s inhumanity to man, redemption, self-forgiveness.

I've never heard anyone say that except you.

Hollywood Wives, by Jackie Collins

[quote] Teens and young adults from Krasnoyarsk to Kandy to Kabul, from Beirut to Bialystok, from Porto to Penang know and have read (in translation mostly) Twain, Steinbeck, Melville, Stowe, Salinger, Hawthorn and Cooper.

I would hope they knew how to spell Hawthorne's name correctly, then.

R334: Definitely gay. I’d read an entire novel about Mr. Tomony and his Saturday night/Sunday morning excursions about town. And Betty Smith would have written him well.

To R327...What 2 pages have the "blowjob scene" in Scruples?? And he came from Darien Conn. to get that blowjob!! I cannot believe I remember that scene in the book! GOD...I'm soooo Dirty!!

Deservedly or not, there is a current backlash against the Little House books for their racist treatment of indigenous people. Not sure they'd make the shortlist for GAN.

It’s probably easier to pick the Great American Hovel.

[quote] Teens and young adults from Krasnoyarsk to Kandy to Kabul, from Beirut to Bialystok, from Porto to Penang know and have read (in translation mostly) Twain, Steinbeck, Melville, Stowe, Salinger, Hawthorn and Cooper.

[quote]I would hope they knew how to spell Hawthorne's name correctly, then.

R337 Teens/young adults in the above-mentioned cities would spell HawthornE in transliteration in their own language. In their case, the English spelling of the author's name is irrelevant.

R203, I just finished reading Huck Finn for the first time as an adult. Tom Sawyer is by no means a happy abolitionist as you suggest. The only reason he agrees to join in Huck's plan to free Jim is that he knows, before he leaves their home town, that Miss Watson has died and freed Jim in her Will.

To Tom (who is, I agree with the earlier poster, odious even for an 11 year old), Jim is absolutely nothing but a piece of property, ergo a perfect plaything for Tom's games about breaking him out of prison.

Huck, despite all he's been taught, from the beginning can't make himself see Jim as anything but human, and the more experience he has with him the stronger this conviction grows. He can't make himself be loyal to his own society at Jim's cost. Huck clearly has twice the brains of Tom Sawyer and he and Jim together have 100 times more common sense, but he's poor white trash, which as we know from GWTW is considered barely a step up from the slaves by "polite society".

I found the last section problematic. I could say it's middle-class Tom coming in over po' white and po' black Huck and Jim and them both deferring to him because that's what they're trained to do. But it isn't only that, because Huck is quite happy to aid Tom in stealing from his adorable aunt and uncle, who are unstintingly kind to Huck and are not wealthy. The fact is that Huck is in thrall to Tom personally (for reasons that certainly surpassed my understanding), and lets him have his way even though he knows it puts Jim in danger and he is worried about that. I can't help thinking Twain is likewise in thrall to Tom, but I haven't read Tom Sawyer so I can't be sure.

I was worried about where it was all heading from the moment they missed the turnoff at Cairo. What was the point in travelling further and further south? Jim could not possibly hope to escape INTO the south. So that bothers me too. I still haven't reconciled it with Huck's strong narrator's voice in Jim's favour. The more rational resolution would have been for Huck to find out from Jim earlier that his father was dead, and to realise he could reclaim enough money from the Judge to buy (and then free) Jim himself, but that's not the story Twain has chosen to tell us. So I'm still on the fence.

R313, university-educated Australian here. Nobody reads Stowe. We know what it is and we're happy it had an effect but we understand it's 19th century syrup we don't need to plough through. I had to click on your link to know who "Cooper" even was. I've only ever heard his name in passing from Americans.

You also gravely overestimate what is of interest to teens and young adults in the present era. Only the top school students would even be able to read most of the authors you mentioned, much less understand and enjoy. When I was at school my class went wild for Salinger (who was not on the syllabus) and read all of it, but that was long ago. I'm not sure even he is still a hit with the kids. Top students might still study Steinbeck at school, but not routinely. Extremely unlikely they would read him for pleasure. Huckleberry Finn was on the school syllabus for a long time but I'm not sure it still is, because kids these days can't read dialect. To Kill a Mockingbird is still much beloved here, though.

People who studied literature at university would probably, but not necessarily, have read Melville, Hawthorne and Steinbeck.

Toni Morrison and Baldwin are very well known. Of all the authors I've mentioned, the two I could confidently say are widely read here for pleasure (not just study) are Harper Lee and Toni Morrison.

R344, what does any of that have to do with the Great American novel? I'm surprised you read that much American literature at all in Australian schools.

[quote] I would include Mexican and Canadian writers.

I would not. They have nothing to do with literature from the United States.

Everyone throughout the world knows "American" as a term when used by by itself (without "North" or "South" or "Latin" or "Mezo-" or "Central" before it) refers to the United States. Don't pretend otherwise.

Interesting, r344. Glad you posted. Makes me wonder what Australian writers are studied most there. Patrick White? Peter Carey? Christina Stead? Are there nominees for the Great Australian Novel?

Jil Ker Conway, though she spent the bulk of her life in the US had an international reputation for her memoir writing and nonfiction, so I hope she has some stature there. I was in love with Janet Frame in the late 20th century.

Where The Red Fern Grows

UNVAXXED NUDES #1

[quote] Are there nominees for the Great Australian Novel?

From my American (probably wrong) perspective, the two that come to mind are Picnic at Hanging Rock and Cloudstreet. And of course we can’t forget The Thorn Birds…

… nor Tim!

Candidates for the Great Australian Novel would also include:

*My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin

*True History of the Kelly Gang, by Peter Carey

*The Tree of Man by Patrick White

The Harp In The South by Ruth Park

I nominate Gift of the Magi or The Lottery as Greatest American Short Story.

It's fashionable right now to hate the well-off character. On the current thread about "The Philadelphia Story" we have posters who loathe the rich Katharine Hepburn character in the `938 "Holiday" despite the fact that she is rejecting her hypocritical, money-grabbing social class. But Tom Sawyer was, for a child, an instinctive rebel against his class and its prejudices. Literary interpretation has a huge subjective component, but it will always read to me like he couldn't think of anything more fun than helping a slave escape. Total skewering of the slave-holding South, along with the rest of the novel.

American Psycho

[quote] But Tom Sawyer was, for a child, an instinctive rebel against his class and its prejudices.

No, that was Huck. Tom was a little asshole.

Huck was not a rebel against his social class. He was low-to-no social class. Twain's point with Huck was that he saw more perceptively than respectable normies. Twain's point with Tom was, here was a child of prosperous respectable Southern society who thought it would be a blast to help a slave escape, and who wanted to run off to the Territories with Jim and Huck.

Thomas Wolfe's - You Can't Go Home Again. I read it as a book report project in high school, and just recently read it again. It's an incredible novel. Perhaps among the best 10 best American novels.

L. Frank Baum's "The Wizard of Oz," another candidate for the GAN list.

To Kill a Mockingbird

[quote]Tom was, here was a child of prosperous respectable Southern society who thought it would be a blast to help a slave escape

No. Tom knew Jim was a free man before he arrived at the Phelps'. He was helping him stay caged so he, Tom, could have "a blast".

An 11-year-old with a respectable family was not going to run to the Territories with anybody. The essence of Tom Sawyer is bullshit, which is OK in a kid but not great if he has to be regarded as a hero.

Tom Sawyer was ELEVEN. Your perspective only makes sense if he was much older. He's a child. That child didn't want to lose the fun of helping a slave escape, and wanted to run off from "respectable" Southern society with a freed slave and the white-trash son of the local drunk and no-account. Twain is saying, here is how attractive respectable Southern society is,.

Let's not forget that Tom, Huck, and Jim travel to Africa in a hot-air balloon in a later installment of their adventuires.

[quote] That child didn't want to lose the fun of helping a slave escape

Which is why Tom is a dickish, self-involved brat.

Yes, all 11-year-old boys but for Tom Sawyer are selfless, altruistic do-gooders always thinking of others.

The argument is not about 11 year-old boys, it is about someone YOU are claiming to be an avatar for Twain's views on Southern society.

It's about someone YOU are claiming to be a self-centered narcissist. RUINED at age eleven.

Thank you.