Some of the alternate choices people here are suggesting strike me as famous movies that aren’t as well or as widely known as books: From Here to Eternity, Pat Conroy.
While I have noting against East of Eden, I think The Maltese Falcon is just as, if not more “famous” than the Steinbeck book.
Could be. But there are a lot of well-read people around here. And movies are usually made because the book was popular.
The Business Insider list is of the most famous book set in each state, not the most famous novel. That’s why Walden makes the cut for Massachusetts. It was the OP who specified novels, and I missed that on first reading. I see how it might seem strange to think of Our Town as a book, but that’s how I was exposed to it. I have never seen a stage production of the play.
Oh, absolutely! But a popular movie adaptation certainly helps make a book much more famous, doesn’t it? If a book is famous, it’s famous, regardless of the reasons.
Humphrey Bogart made Dashiell Hammett’s ***The Maltese Falcon ***a lot more famous than it already was. Marlon Brando made Mario Puzo more famous than he already was. Judy Garland made L. Frank Baum a lot more famous. And the Oscar-winning movie version of ***From Here to Eternity ***definitely helped James Jones sell a lot more books. But Jones’ novel had already won the National Book Award before the movie was made.
But the reasons are almost irrelevant- everyone has heard of those books, and almost everyone has some idea what they’re about. Even if that’s because of movie adaptations, those books are FAMOUS.
I just noticed something: why did Tennessee get two books?
True. The ‘rules’ are hidden from us, and my guess is that East of Eden, and Steinbeck overall, has a much higher California identification than The Maltese Falcon. If you’d asked me where Maltese Falcon was set, I might have said New York as easily as San Francisco.
I think they went to each state, and asked themselves, “What’s the famous book most associated with this state?” rather than taking a list of the most famous novels in order, and then whatever the highest ranking [California]-set book is gets the nod.
Still, I’d have gone with Grapes of Wrath.
I don’t think Little House in the Big Woods is all that well known.
For Wisconsin, I would have gone with Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, or the relatively recentThe Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach.
If we’re looking at any book, not just novels, I would go with Wisconsin Death trip.
This is what I was going to say.
Someone mentioned Sister Carrie for Illinois, but much of that took place in New York.
Good call on books for my native state. Although Laura Ingalls Wilder is hugely popular with young girls (my daughter ate the “Little House” books up in grade school).
And there’s got to be anything better for my favorite state, Washington. Yeah, I’m disqualifying books that are written so badly as to be embarrassing to an entire state.
Hmmm… something from Tom Robbins? (So…Woodpecker or Another Roadside Attraction…?) Or, is Snow Falling on Cedars famous enough?
The movie technically takes place in Kansas but in the book Oz is a very real place and Dorothy never dreams any of it. In subsequent books she goes back to Oz many times.
I’m guessing they gave the book to Kansas because of the movie.
I don’t know anything about her, but I have thought about reading that book. I’m just glad it wasn’t something about Jeffery Dahmer or Ed Gein.
Surely Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street trumps The Virgin Suicides.
Now the movie is how most people are familiar with Dorothy, Oz and so forth. But the books were huge in the early twentieth century.
I wondered about that too; Notion is a better book, I think, but Cuckoo’s Nest is much more well-known…the movie and all that.
I’ve never even heard of the one for Idaho…I’d have thought Angle of repose…
SS
I would have thought *The Executioners * (which was made into Cape Fear twice) was more famous than A Walk to Remember for North Carolina.
I would choose the Virginian (over the Laramie Project) for Wyoming, and Executioner’s Song for Utah.
I’m confused because both are on the list. Main Street for Minnesota and The Virgin Suicides for Michigan.
The Jungle is a tough one to argue with for Illinois. However, I was hoping it would be The Man With The Golden Arm.
One’s Minnesota, the other is Michigan, right?