The Twentieth Century - Best Novels (First Cut)

It’s now 2006. I was just looking at psuedotriton ruber ruber’s thread about The Great American Novel, and got to thinking: The Twentieth Century is dead and gone. What would a group as eclectic as The Dope claim for the best novels of the Twentieth Century?

First some definitions: For a book to qualify it must be [ul]
[li]Fiction[/li][li]Initially published in an English Language edition between Janurary 1, 1901 and December 31, 2000. I’m choosing this limitation because, frankly, I don’t think that there would be a sufficient quorum of Dopers to speak about things that are only available in languages other than English. (I realize that by insisting on having the English translation publication date count we’ll have some fuzziness around the edges on my timeline, but I think it’s a reasonable arbitrary cut off.)[/li][li]Title/author citations are acceptable, but I would prefer a sentence or two explaining why the nominator believes that XXX should be included on this list. Likewise, keep your citations to no more than a short paragraph. We’re not looking for Cliffnotes here. [/li][li]Feel free to write your nomination as a chance to sell others towards your view that book X deserves to be on this list. But keep it short. [/li][li]This thread is meant to be a positive one, only: Do not shoot down other poster’s nominations. If this thread takes off, I’ll collate everything in a week, or so, and then put up a full list to allow those interested to vote. (Provided the Mods do not object.) Likewise, if your choices are already nominated, please keep any secondings to a bare minimum. [/li][/ul]

One last word about rules: I don’t really care what book is the best-selling of the titles that end up being nominated. Best-selling books can be great, timeless works that will reward deep thinking, and re-reading. Or they can be flash-in-a-pan phenomena, with no more staying power than that. Don’t avoid nominating a book because it was wildly popular; just don’t use that as the only reason to nominate it, please.

I did take the precaution of getting this idea vetted by C K Dexter Haven, so this poll/discussion shouldn’t cause much ire from the PTB.

Examples: My idea of an ideal suggestion would be along these lines -

One Day in the Life of Ivan Dennnisovitch, by Alexander Solzenhystin. I find this book haunting, with images and a feel that can stick with the reader for years. It’s a book that I enjoy reccomending to other readers, confident that it’s one that will be found worthwhile.

The War of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien. A truly ground-breaking work - one of the more influential works of the twentieth century, almost single-handedly creating a new fiction industry.

Poor nominations would be -

Harry Potter, by J. K. Rowling

The DaVinci Code, by Dan Brown. Awesome Book!

A Confederacy of Dunces by William Kennedy O’Toole. (Begin a 2000 word essay about the symbolism, and deep thinking in this work, and then continue it in the next post… Sorry, I’m not up to making it up off the cuff.)

To get the ball rolling, I’m going to include a few titles, here. I hope other Dopers will join in with their suggestions.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Dennnisovitch, by Alexander Solzenhystin. I find this book haunting, with images and a feel that can stick with the reader for years. It’s a book that I enjoy reccomending to other readers, confident that it’s one that will be found worthwhile.

The War of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien. A truly ground-breaking work - one of the more influential works of the twentieth century, almost single-handedly creating a new fiction industry.

Well,

Ulysses by Joyce is the obvious, conventional-wisdom choice. It’s the best novel noone’s ever read. For a number of reasons to detailed to go into here it is super-influential and, if you choose to check it out, it is actually really good, above and beyond being, well, Ulysses

Beyond that, I would nominate

  • A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway

  • The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald

  • As I Lay Dying by Faulkner

  • Tortilla Flat by Steinbeck (Grapes was never a favorite)

  • Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

If pushed, I would select Gatsby as the best of them all. I really enjoyed a number of non-U.S. novels, but as a collector of U.S. First Editions, these are really my passion and the ones I think of first. I would vote for books like Dune, Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett and countless others, but these are the ones that come to mind…

The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth. It’s a bit obscure today, but it is both brilliantly written and laugh-out-loud funny (check out the secret of the sacred eggplant). It also works on many different levels.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. THE magic realist novel – an amazing piece of storytelling (assuming you allow languages that were translated into English – and Garcia Marquez has praised the tranlation here).

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Not only the source of a catchphrase, but highly influential, showing that you can be both serious and hilarious.

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. Many regard it as a story about (and against) racism, and it is that. But much more than that, it’s about the fact that we’re all human, whatever our race, religion, status, views, or behaviour, and deserve to be treated as such.

I second As I Lay Dying and A Farewell to Arms and submit:
The Scarlet Letter–Nathaniel Hawthorne
Uncle Tom’s Cabin–Harriet Beecher Stowe
Grapes of Wrath–John Steinbeck
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn–Mark Twain

These are all books that lit a fire in me beyond being assigned in school, but because I did read them in school I was given an insight and understanding of them that I might not have gotten just reading them on my own. They are great works of fiction, and they also colorfully fill in parts of American history in a way that textbooks cannot.

Indygrrl, I do agree that all three of these books are great novels. However, this is specifically meant to be a thread about great books published in the Twentieth Century. And these all were published in the Nineteenth Century.

Shit, sorry. I guess that should have been obvious from the thread title. lol. I’m spacy today.

NP, Indygrrl. I’ve been there myself. :wink:

“All Quiet on the Western Front”, Erich Maria Remarque. Not sure when exactly the English translation first appeared, or if the first translation is the one I know and love (beginning “We are at rest five miles behind the front”), but a painful and poetic work.

Manhattan Transfer, John Dos Passos.
A great urban novel, the city flexes and destroys.

1984, George Orwell.
It wouldn’t be my choice for best book of the 20th Century, but it would be on the list. It’s an amazing, excellently crafted book by one of the best crafters of English, and its cultural influence (vocabulary, imagery) continues today.

OtakuLoki, I’m not sure I’m clear on the transation part - do you mean that you would accept a translation of Crime and Punishment from the 20th century? Is there a limit on the date of publication of the original text (ie, would you accept Edith Grossman’s Don Quijote)?

I’m thinking more of a first translation into English. So works like John Ciardi’s translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy doesn’t count, for all that it was written in the Twentieth Century. I don’t believe that there would have been the interest in alternate translations of the Divine Comedy without it already being recognized as a great work of literature. I’m not familiar with the Don Quijote, you mention, but I don’t think it would count.

What would count would be Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of Genji - IF you can offer a cite that the** first ** translation to English were from the Twentieth Century. Even though it is widely regarded as the oldest novel in the world.

I hope that makes it a little clearer.

Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardor. I was tempted to give my vote to Lolita, which is the far more well-known and widely-banned one (and thus seen to be more influential), but AoA was written some time later in his life, when he’d had time to get really, really good. It is, quite simply, ridiculous, the feats he was able to perform in the language, and there is no better collection of such feats than Ada.

Valis, by Philip K. Dick. A mind-bending mixture of psychological dysfunction, metaphysical philosophy, and the everyday tragedies of life. Compelling and brutal. This is the most brilliantly insane book I’ve ever read.

**The Lord of the Rings ** is to me the Great Novel of the 20th Century.
**WordMan ** already said it but **To Kill a Mockingbird ** is a perfect book, better than one of the best movies ever made.
I would add Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather” I loved this book before I saw the movie. Compelling is an understatement.
I will conclude with a Science Fiction Entry. “The Moon is a harsh Mistress” is the pinnacle of Science Fiction to me.

Jim

:smack: Uh sorry, I forgot Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut.
I haven’t read it in 20 years will be my excuse, but an all time classic.

Jim

Did he write another Rings novel I’m not familiar with?

I’d nominate, in addition to those already nominated:

The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner.

Lord of the Flies - William Golding

The Dead Zone - Stephen King

The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S Thompson

Pure madness, and rich with style. I don’t think there’s particularly anything deep about it, but it is by far one of the most entertaining pieces of literature I’ve ever read.

Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

I’m sure some people are rolling their eyes on this one. I don’t care. I’ve seen this book open more eyes to science and philsopophy than any others in my short lifetime. It also had a very large impact on me, and showed me that comedy can be high on smarts, big on imagination, and be all the more rich for it.

I second 1984, and Catch 22, which is one of my all time favorite books.

I consider Of Mice and Men and The Big Sleep to be runner ups

I’ll toss in a vote for Lonesome Dove. It’s not as prominent or as heady as some of the books suggested elsewhere in this thread, but it is beautifully written. Also, it represents very well as a western, a genre almost exclusive to the 20th century.

Gatsby is my choice, too, although I see nobody else has talked about why. :slight_smile: It’s a beautifully-written book; Fitzgerald knew he was performing a “consciously artistic achievement” in creating it. If I had to pick a Great American Novel, this would be it- but since the English-speaking world saw amazing prosperity in the 20th century, often at great cost, I think the novel’s issues of gaining the world while losing one’s soul extend beyond the United States.

As I have not read Vlad’s later work, I will nominate Lolita. :wink: A marvelous achievement in language, and the allusions and wordplay is so dense that you almost have to call it a tapestry. The fact that it’s a controversial book that deals with the dark part of humanity - a continuing fascation throughout the 20th century - only strengthens the case, I think.

Since 1984 came up, I have to mention Brave New World, which I see as a better version of the same book. It’s got a little humor in it, and in hindsight, it’s a more accurate view of where the world was and is going, dealing with issues like genetic manipulation, sexuality, and overstimulation as a distraction from societal concerns.

One other totalitarian novel, since the latter part of the century was just lousy with 'em :wink: : Darkness at Noon, by Arthur Koestler. Originally written in German, it’s a close-to-life story of a party official in Stalinist Russia who suddenly finds himself imprisoned, beaten and tortured for crimes against the state.

The Maltese Falcon is another personal favorite.

I bet it’s not a popular book at the SDMB, but A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving has got to be one of my favorite books, so I’d include it in my own list.

Naked Lunch by William Burroughs, a book that I actually have not finished. There are some parts where I just love the prose, and other parts that get kind of dull. But it seems to have been an important part of 20th century literature.