:rolleyes: My “qualifications” to start this thread? I must have missed the sticky where it explains that you MUST have a Ph.D. in Early American Literature to start a thread about American literature. My mistake.
If you actually read my post you’ll notice that I didn’t read Bonfire of the Vanities. I leave it up to you to judge my sanity, but TIME called it the best novel of the last decade sometime around 1992; you can take it up with them.
I started the thread because I wish to learn. If you find that somehow offensive, I will not require your participation. Fair?
Now that you’ve presumably shot VCO3, I’ll make my own Faulkner foray: Absalom, Absalom! is the best novel I’ve ever read. Since it’s American, it’s got my nomination.
Obligatory novel no one’s mentioned yet: Thomas Berger’s Little Big Man, which is much better than the movie.
To the people who voted for Mockingbird: how old were you when you read it for the first time? Did you get it straight away? How many times have you read it since?
Really Not All That Bright, it’s hard to believe you’ve been a member for four years if this is all it takes to set you off.
When you have three separate people in a thread say the same thing, it’s not them, it’s you. Why did you start with insulting half of literature and its readers rather than saying you were trying to learn? I always support that.
Now back to opinions.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas may be imaginative, but in a thread about greatest American novel? I can think of lots of great nonfiction books that say important things about America, but aren’t they really a different category? I don’t believe in the nonfiction novel, no matter what Capote said.
Speaking of whom, while I love To Kill a Mockingbird I don’t place it in the great novel category. I’m not quite sure why. The writing is not as good as in most of the other nominees, true, but the subject matter is powerful and the book stands up to rereading. Maybe it’s Scout herself, who I’ve always found to be more annoying than endearing.
I’ve read The Sot-Weed Factor at least three times; it’s a hoot. Unfortunately, I think it suffers from the same thing that all of Barth’s writing suffers from: the arch postmodernism prevents it, in fact, from being “about America.” It is, in fact, about American writing, and American writers, and American v. British idioms, etc. It’s a exercise–a monumentally impressive exercise–in cleverness, IMO. For this reason, I personally wouldn’t vote for it, though I love it dearly. YM, of course, MV.
One of the few novels I have read several times: The Great Gatsby. Why? Because it’s about the American dream, and its loss.
Moby Dick and East of Eden are great novels, and American. But there is something timeless and universal about both. The sailors of the Pequod could have been any nationality. The characters in Eden are allegorical figures from Genesis.
Good to see ‘The Sot-Weed Factor’ get mentioned - great book. My tastes are definitely towards Barth / Pynchon etc, but I don’t really think of those writers as fitting the bill for ‘The great American novel’. Best I have read for that category has to be Saul Bellow’s ‘The adventures of Augie March’, deeply impressive book that is quintessentially American.
I’d also mention Franzen’s ‘The Corrections’ as a more modern pick. Seems to be a divisive work, but for me its the best mainstream American novel I’ve encountered in recent years.
I came in here to protest that Faulkner should be allowed to compete (but not to win) and that Pynchon should be disqualified for ridiculous density-for-density’s-sake. I’ve read most of Faulkner’s works about the Sutpen family, and plowed through David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest probably six times now, loved the hell out of it, and have still never made it through Gravity’s Rainbow despite being fantastically interested in WWII, V-2 rockets, London, and the idea that thoughts can steer the way the world reacts. Can’t do it.
For my money, the award should be handed out by century. I’d give Huckleberry Finn the prize for the 19th C., something by Irving (Prayer for Owen Meany or perhaps World According to Garp) the prize for the 20th C., and put DFW’s Infinite Jest on deck for the 21st C. despite being written in 1996. Wallace is definitely “too clever by half” but I still haven’t found a recent novel that can compete with it for tone, plotting, characters, and subject matter. Sometimes I’ll go back and just re-read the Eschaton chapter for laughs.
To me, it depends on what you mean by “Greatest American Novel”. If you mean greatest novel that encompasses the experience of being American, or is specific to an American theme - then it would have to be either To Kill a Mockingbird or Huckleberry Finn, both of which encompass both a specifically American time and place, deal squarely with the concerns that specifically affect Americans, and have timeless appeal.
A runner-up in that category would be The Red Badge of Courage
However, if you mean “greatest novel written by an American”, I’d go with Moby-Dick. Hugely influental on the development of the modern novel as an art form.
FALILV is fiction. It’s not a non-fiction novel, it’s a pure novel. The main characters are loosely based on Thompson himself and his RL attorney but it’s still fiction.