Best American literary novel

[jobycom]

I'm slanting these towards my favorites. I hate Faulkner. Not fond of Ayn Rand. Left of 1984 purely because I don't think of it as literary, though it is easily one of my favorite books. Wanted to put Tolkein, but he got bumped for Steinbeck. Yadayada.

[Faygo Kid]

1. "Grapes of Wrath"

THE great American novel (not that others aren't worthy).

[BurtWorm]

2. Moby Dick.

I voted for Lolita, though. Tolkein is British.

[jobycom]

5. Geeze, forgot Melville! On Tolkein-- Doh! I knew that. Glad I bumped him.

.

[VOX]

43. Gotta go with the White Whale, too.

Even with its excruciatingly detailed forays into the New England whaling industry, "Moby Dick" has to top the list.

[Jack The Tab]

3. Hemingway all the way....

loved Sun Also Rises...Mockingbird is up there...it was a close call.

[Wickerman]

4. slaughterhouse 5

[curse10]

52. agreed, Slaughterhouse Five

:-)

[HawkerHurricane]

6. Tom Sawyer

Leave out Mark Twain, the first American novelist, would you?

[BlackVelvetElvis]

64. Not a novel but...

"Letters From the Earth" is an incredible read.
Wicked stuff.

[GURUving]

7. I voted for Tropic of Cancer

its impact on me was not tremendous, but it gave me a good idea, in a wordly kind of way, what people are about.

[roughsatori]

28. That book moved me like injecting Meth

I have read all of Miller's works including the found manuscripts of early work--but the Tropics are in my top ten or so favorite books.

[jobycom]

35. Yeah, did that to me, too

After T of Cancer, I read every book of his I could get my hands on. Finally wore out on Big Sur. None had the passion of Cancer. Easily the least contrived book I've ever read.

[supernova]

8. Hawthorne

The Scarlet Letter. Just to add to the confusion.

[Jandar]

9. Umm... Catch 22, anyone? N/T

[jobycom]

14. Great book, but same category as 1984.

Not literary. In fact, the writing is just painful at parts. One of my favorites, truly great, just not literary in writing style. My opinion, though. Form your own.

[supernova]

10. Where is Faulkner?

Absalom, Absalom and The Sound and the Fury?

[markses]

13. Good goddamn question: Absalom Absalom

being up there, and certainly better than any of the tripe that hack Hemingway ever wrote. Natch.

[jobycom]

21. Answered that in the original post

I HATE Faulkner. Damned pretentious blowhard. Henry Miller called Joyce a sadistic pedagogue, but I think the term works on Faulkner, too.

But go ahead, bring him up, the world is a very diverse place, and this isn't CBS.

[SOteric]

25. Well, I have my tastes too. I love Faulkner's writing

It has a depth, a kind of compassion. I'm not impressionable enough to believe other people's opinions about people I have met, so..I tend to cut even more slack to those I haven't.

From his writing alone, however, I'm fairly convinced that Hemingway was a misogynistic, psychotic fuck of human being. And I don't think he wrote brilliantly, but rather adequately with good publicity.

[jobycom]

29. Ah, there are Hemmingway people and there are Faulkner people

Hemmingway's writing sends shivers through me, Faulkner's just angers me. Alas, we are not the first two to have this debate, are we?

[dofus]

11. The Great Gadsby was written by

F. Scott Fitzgerald. I think the F is for Francis, and I think he was related to Francis Scott Key who wrote "The Star Spangled Banner".

The Edmund Fitzgerald was an ore carrying ship that sank in a storm on Lake Superior on November 10, 1975, immortalized in a song by Gordon Lightfoot. The Edmund Fitzgerald was, at the time of its launching in 1958, the largest ship of its kind on the great lakes.

"The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy.

With a load of iron ore - 26,000 tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early

The ship was the pride of the American side
Coming back from some mill in Wisconson
As the big freighters go it was bigger than most
With a crew and the Captain well seasoned.

Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
When they left fully loaded for Cleveland
And later that night when the ships bell rang
Could it be the North Wind they'd been feeling.

The wind in the wires made a tattletale sound
And a wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as the Captain did, too,
T'was the witch of November come stealing.

The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
When the gales of November came slashing
When afternoon came it was freezing rain
In the face of a hurricane West Wind

When supper time came the old cook came on deck
Saying fellows it's too rough to feed ya
At 7PM a main hatchway caved in
He said fellas it's been good to know ya.

The Captain wired in he had water coming in
And the good ship and crew was in peril
And later that night when his lights went out of sight
Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the words turn the minutes to hours
The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay
If they'd fifteen more miles behind her.

They might have split up or they might have capsized
They may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters.

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the ruins of her ice water mansion
Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams,
The islands and bays are for sportsmen.

And farther below Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the gales of November remembered.

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed
In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral
The church bell chimed, 'til it rang 29 times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
Superior, they say, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early."

[jobycom]

18. OMG! Don't know where that came from!

I might have been thinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

I really do know who wrote it. Really! I promise! My four year old was playing Polly Pockets and distracted me!

[supernova]

22. Edmond Fitzgerald

is a song by Gordon Lightfoot. :P

[jobycom]

33. Hey, at least I didn't say Ella Fitzgerald!

Got the right gender. We all know how important gender is in the world today.

[Jim Sagle]

12. "The Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison.

[jobycom]

23. That was number ten, and it got bumped for "other."

Not easy choice.

[markses]

15. Pynchon: Gravity's Rainbow

Can't beat it.

[MrBenchley]

56. I'd vote for that, too

Or Huckleberry Finn.

[JanMichael]

16. "To Kill a Mockingbird" is the ULTIMATE "one hit wonder".

Period.

A perfect short novel. It had a begining, a middle, and an end.

Not my favorite novel however I can vote it a #1.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

17. Huckleberry Finn... Sooo many levels and banned in many schoolhouses

today.

[jobycom]

26. Man, that's a whole world of debate

Not on the novel, which I almost included. The whole ban issue, though. I'm against banning any book from a library that has any merit whatsoever (and I give that a broad interpretation). I can understand it being left off reading lists, though, or at least required reading lists, until the last two years of high school. At least until a student reading the book can understand the difference between narrative and message.

[Richardo]

57. American? Literary? Novel? I'd say Huckleberry Finn

Hands down.

[Jeff in Cincinnati]

60. Hemingway on "Huckleberry Finn"

Hemingway wrote in his introduction to The Green Hills of Africa, "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.... All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."

[Richardo]

62. I remember that quote...thanks for reminding me, ritc!

:thumbsup:

[BlackVelvetElvis]

65. Huck

I still get chills when he has his epiphany, "All right then, I'll go to hell!"

[mac56]

78. Second on Huckleberry Finn.

nm

[Zero Gravitas]

19. Tolkein was English

so it's just as well as you left him off the list of "Best American literary novel". Which begs the question of why limit it to only Americans? why not just ask for the best English language novel, or even include books written in other languages that have English translations!

[The Bish]

59. So was Orwell

So 1984 is also not an American novel. I agree that we should include all novels, american or not, in a poll.

[bicentennial_baby]

20. Gatsby

[kodi]

42. best of the best.

great story, outstanding writing.

[jobycom]

48. Yeah, to me it's the best written

Tight yet nimble plot, unbelievable prose. The writing alone is stunning. There are points in the novel where I just stop and reread a passage, the way I'd stare at a painting or listen to a musical production. And the way he always knows where the reader is, what the reader will know or remember, even how the reader's emotions will play out, is uncanny. In the scene where the narrator figures out what happened in the car, your emotions change several times in just a few sentences. I've never seen another writer that on top of a novel.

Other novels have more emotional impact, more of a universal message, but I've never read anything close to that quality of writing.

[kodi]

75. fitzgerald is like that and was a brilliant at using just the right words

when i started reading his stuff in high school i had to carry a small dictionary around with me as i learned words that were new to a 16 year old.

years later while teaching, a student i knew was getting ready to take some gre exams and she asked me if i knew anthing which might be able to improve her verbal skills and test scores and i suggested reading fitzgerald's "tender is the night" since he used so many near-obscure words. i then asked her if she knew the meaning of "sybaritic" and said the word was in the aforementioned novel.

hours after she took the exam, she called me all excited and told me that one of the exam questions was to state the meaning of "sybaritic" and when she saw it in the exam room she wanted to shout.."i know this one! thanks f. scott!"

[screembloodymurder]

24. No contest

the best is Moby Dick.

[roughsatori]

27. LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) The System of Dante's Inferno

It is a little know book. But it has inspired me for years. It ranks with his early poetry. I find his output of the last 20 year to be pretty bad--but The System of Dante's Inferno displays a quirky and cranky brilliance that captivates me.

[jobycom]

31. Thanks for the recommendation. I'll look it up.

.

[roughsatori]

39. It is sort of an odd book. But it reminds me of Pound's Cantos

It is fantasy interspersed with incredible minute particulars.

Above you mention Ulysses. John Ashberry said that Ulysses was probably the most lied about book in history. He said that he realized he had never read it and confessed to some friends that he lied when he said he had--then all 4 of them confessed that they lied about reading it too.

The most lied about book has got to be The Bible.

[roughsatori]

30. Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby

Very inspiring book. The use of language is crude and poetical--a moving book.

[ThorsteinVeblen]

32. Twain and Ellison and Faulkner and Vonnegut and Bukowski and Kesey

It is Sometimes a Great Notion to cry Absalom! Absalom! to the Women who Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to the left of the Invisible Man and the Cat's Cradle Hukleberry Finn is trying to form with his bleeding hands.

[Interrobang]

34. You all are going to hate me for saying this, but...

A very recent possible contender would be John Grisham's novel _A Painted House_. It's quite literary in an unusual, almost Dickensian kind of way, and no lawyers anywhere.

BTW, Orwell was English.

[Kenneth ken]

36. I won't hate you

I read The Firm, and thought I'd never read anything by that hack ever again.

My Mom sent me a copy of A Painted House, so I reluctantly read it, good son that I am. I wouldn't say it is in the same league as Grapes, or Mockingbird, but I thought it was a very good story, and well-written. But I'm still opposed to reading his lawyerly books.

[jobycom]

38. Really?

You know, I should have realized that (Orwell, I mean), but never thought about it. I don't think I know anything about him outside of 1984 and Animal Farm.

[maggrwaggr]

37. "Rabbit Run" by Updike

Updike is just amazing.

[ironflange]

72. I love Updike

I could really identify with Rabbit. One of my favorites is S., the updated letter novel with a twist.

[jobycom]

40. Poor Richard Wright. I would have thought him a DU kind of writer

You know, someone who flees to Paris and is (alledgedly) killed by our gov't? Startling book, too.

[Cat Atomic]

41. Do you suppose Interview with the Vampire will ever join those ranks?

It's a very good book, and strangely representative of our times, really. Contrasting Stoker's portrayal of the monster with Rice's is interesting.

Sometimes classics start out as throw-away pulp stuff. *shrug*

[jobycom]

50. Do you think it's that good?

I've never read it, or really wanted to.

As for pulp fiction turning into classics, no doubt. To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic example of that.

[Cat Atomic]

54. Mmm- hard to say. Rice's writing style bugs the living shit out of me,

but I loved the sympathetic view of the monster as a lonely outcast.

I've seen it on a couple of college reading lists, so it sort of makes me wonder where it'll be in a hundred years.

[onebigbadwulf]

44. Wells' Animal Farm

Best ever.

[jobycom]

49. Orwell's British.

Great book.

[Punkingal]

45. An American Tragedy...

by Theodore Dreiser. Sister Carrie is also very good.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

46. Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon

[tishaLA]

47. Moby-Dick; or the Whale

no discussion needed

[felonious thunk]

51. On The Road - Jack Kerouac

On The Road is a beautiful book and I think shows everything that is America in the personality of two best friends. Sal Paradise manages to somehow be the biggest optimist and lover of life while also finding himself in deep depression at the ills of the world. Dean Moriarity is America. He drinks too much, learns too little, screws up too much, but goddamnit he tries to do the right thing, it just doesn't always work out that way. There's at once wanderlust and a sense of home. Kerouac gets thrown into the beatnik category too much and not recognized for the poetry of his prose.

[BritishHuman]

53. "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"

That's a good book.

[Bridget Burke]

66. But it's not a novel....

Just reality filtered through Hunter Thompson's unique filter. Honest!

If it was a novel, it would be one of the best.

(& the film with J Depp is pretty fine)

[BritishHuman]

70. I haven't seen the film...

On my to-watch list though.

[joeybee12]

55. All good books, but Gatsby is the greatest of all--not even close

Any of you who have read Gatsby and NOT voted for it???????????????

Not possible.

[jobycom]

68. Well

I read it, I'd put Walker and Lee ahead of it, for full impact, Miller for passion and honesty, Hemmingway for subtlety. But nothing ever written in English prose matches Gatsby for technical merit. It's the best written novel in English ever, and I don't even trust anyone who debates that point. But there are other factors to consider when judging a novel.

[Guaranteed]

69. Nuh uh.

Ulysses. James Joyce.

On edit: Hell if I know, though. I never read it. ;)

[joeybee12]

71. Irish writer--this is for American ones

I did read it--a bear to get through.

[jobycom]

74. No way!

If you have to work that hard to get through a book, it isn't in the same category, no matter how godlike the writer believes himself to be.

I still don't think Joyce was wearing any clothes.

81. advice for reading Ulysses

I took a course from Richard Ellman (the leading expert on Joyce when he was alive, also wrote a bio of Oscar Wilde)on fiction once.
Of course he had us read Ulysses. His advice was to say that there was no way that Joyce expected most people to get all the allusions and references that stymie them when people try to read it & that since this was the case there must be some other level Joyce was writing on for the "ordinary" reader. Given that, Ellman's advice was to just read it straight through without trying to figure it all out and to let the language act on your psyche. Connected to that, he suggested either reading parts of it out loud or imagining it being read out loud or imagining that it was a story being told to you by some character in a bar who was a little long winded. Then, if you wanted to try to figure it all out, read it a second time.
This worked for me anyway

58. time periods

I wouldn't necessarily vote for it, but I think something by Henry James should be considered. For example, The Ambassadors.

What I mean by time periods is that it is difficult to compare eras.

Moby Dick obviously the best of the 19th century (from my perspective)
but it has a completely different consciousness than early 21st century...

thought of that way, a more interesting question is what novel represents its era best?

Absalom Absalom or the Great Gatsby.

Grapes of Wrath or Tropic of Cancer.

Gravity's Rainbow or ?

etc.

[jobycom]

73. Good questions

I'm judging more from a current standpoint, of which novels still speak to readers today. Huckelberry Finn, for instance, is completely removed from our time, but is still exciting and understandable to modern readers. Moby Dick is not as much so. Of course, as sentiments and awarenesses change, maybe it will mean more to future readers.

I got a copy of Treasure Island on audio for my ten year for a long trip. The story was still exciting to her, but not as much so as Harry Potter. Hard to compare across eras, but not as hard to decide which she likes more. That's supposed to be a parallel.

[regularguy]

61. Phillip Roth: Zuckerman Trilogy

Also love Vonnegut,Mellville,Miller, etc, etc

[Bridget Burke]

63. "All the King's Men"

By Robert Penn Warren

(Tolkien & Orwell were British.)

[Red_Storm]

67. In Dubious Battle - John Steinbeck

[Cottonball]

76. Whats wrong with..

The Cat in the Hat!

77. this

it's a poem
Dr. Seuss is a communist
the hat's RED

[mndemocrat_29]

79. The House of Mirth

by Edith Wharton

[Emboldened Chimp]

80. Dos Passos' USA Trilogy

Okay, it's more than one book (The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money).

[politicat]

82. Other... A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Okay, call me a sentimentalist.

A lot of the "great American novels" are not about real people. ATGIB was about real people, in real dilemmas, without moralizing those dilemmas to death. The writing's clear and eloquent, the protagonists are every one of us that have had to work instead of getting the education we knew we were capable of.

Wish Ms. Smith's other works had been as good.

[Mass_Liberal]

83. In Dubious Battle

the best steinbeck ever. Truely shows that without safe unions, the world CANT work.