Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, Catch-22, Of Mice and Men, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Native Son, and Leaves of Grass. If you’re looking for an all-encompassing novel, then it’s Leaves of Grass (can be distounced due to poetry).
If we’re looking for something that’s distinctly “American”, it’s a novel about the West. Now, is that the literal “West” or the metaphorical one?
I’d have to say “To Kill A Mockingbird” or “The Catcher In The Rye”
mm
I came in here to nominate Lolita, but someone beat me to it so instead I’ll nominate Sherwood Anderson’s novel-disguised-as-a-short-story-collection Winesburg, Ohio.
Read it. Over half of it is a nonfiction essay about whaling – how it’s done (with detail enough for it to be used as a research source) and the philosophy of it. The rest of the book consists of two narratives: the early section focusing on the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg (which is dropped completely after about a third of the book) and the tale of Ahab and the Whale, which is sprinkled one or two chapters at a time in the essay. The actual story is probably only novella length, if that.
Also, the conventions of the sentimental novel of the time are all too apparent.
Big Steinbeck fan here, so I could imagine casting my vote for EoE.
Of course the greatest American novel would probably have to be The Gypsy’s Curse or A Feast of Snakes by Harry Crews. I think HC is uniquely able to probe the loving honorable pith of the American spirit.
First of all, wanted to echo the sentiment for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Maybe its because of Keesey’s exploits or the subsequent movie, but I find that this book rarely gets the praise it deserves.
Great Gatsby also has to be on the list. I didnt get the love for the book the first few times I read it. But what this book does better than any, is explore how far one man would go, to somehow recapture a few sublime moments that have passed. In my mind, perhaps the most universal of all human desires. I do think, however, that like The Catcher in the Rye, this book turns some off due to its unlikeable narrator. I know that was my issue with the book and thats why I still can’t take Catcher.
I admit to only having read it once in high school, but I have never got the love for To Kill a Mockingbird. The story itself just isn’t all that interesting and comes off as kind of disjointed. Its the south, we know the poor guy is going to get railroaded; and I just don’t get the significane of the whole Boo Radley element of the story. To me it receives undo praise because of the fact that it takes on the issues that it does. The fact that Harper Lee has never really written another remarkable book kind of backs up this view, in my opinion.
I think there is a criteria. I think Lolita could be a contender, but Nabokov isn’t Native born American (he was a naturalized citizen, but spent only a short - critical but relatively short - amount of his life here). And “The Great American Novel” needs to have been written by an American. Also “The Great American Novel” has to speak to/about America. It has to describe something about America. It has to be popular enough that its been read by many, but critically acclaimed enough to be widely recognized as “Literature.”
Huck Finn
To Kill A Mockingbird
Much of Steinbeck (I think Grapes of Wrath if I had to pick just one) - although unlike Dins I HATE Steinbeck.
The Scarlett Letter
Ethan Fromme
The Great Gatsby
To Kill a Mockingbird isn’t about Tom Robinson - hell, he doesn’t really enter the story until part II. Its about the loss of innocence. Its about running away or not being able to or chosing not to. Its about how monsters aren’t the people you thought they were and sometimes the monsters are the people you don’t expect. It isn’t a great novel because it has a page turning plot - if that made a great novel we’d give Dan Brown a Nobel Prize for Literature. Its a great novel because Harper Lee manages to evoke childhood - and the process of leaving it - so effectively - and its disjointed because in order to accomplish that, she takes time to build a snowman. There are books that speak more directly to the racial issues in To Kill a Mockingbird - those are secondary.
I’d say Lolita meets all your criteria except “native born” – but I’d also argue that a naturalized citizen is “an American” (though this is a topic for another thread).
I’d put it on my list too, I think its a great novel and does a great job of describing America. I think it pretty much meets all the criteria, but I have a hard time thinking of Nabokov as an American author - a man born in Russia, lived in Europe, spent WWII in the U.S. and as soon as Europe stablized moved back to Europe (he lived in the U.S. from 1940 - 1960). He is so Russian and European in his sensibilities - he wrote “The Great American Novel” from the outside looking in.
The Boo Radley subplot was about the irrational fear of the unknown. Through rumor and reputation, Boo is considered a violent outcast. But it is he who comes to the children’s rescue when they are attacked by the one truly ugly character in the novel, Bob Ewell. Irrational fear of the unknown is what drives the racism in the story.
Then you suspect wrong. I’ve read it several times (only once voluntarily, mind you. I liked it less each time I’ve read it) and I don’t think it’s the best book written by an American.
People often call it “daring” but was it really? It was written nearly twenty years after the civil war, so it’s not nearly as brave a work as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which was released with a far more uncertain potential reception due to the polarized politics of the day. By the time Huck Finn was released, slavery was over and done with. The north won, so most people who fancied themselves thinkers would be open to a book on the issue of slavery and by extention the Jim Crow laws enacted soon after. Where was the controversy in writing about a hero that saw the light and fell onto accepting the mores of the winning side? What’s left is an adventure story about a boy who changes his thinking and his own life.
I’ll be honest with you: despite the fact that I have an English degree and read a great many “American Classics” throughout my years as a student, and I never found the book. The book that grabbed me by the throat and told me in no uncertain terms that it was the greatest book ever written. Generally speaking, analysis of these great works served only to highlight their flaws rather than reveal their brilliance, but I suspect that’s not how it was supposed to work.
That’s one of the reasons I think the idea of “The Great American Novel” is sort of bogus - rather there are Great American Novels. No book is going to speak to everyone. Books date easily. Some great slices of Americana are too regional (i.e. To Kill A Mockingbird) others are too class specific (Catcher in the Rye, arguably Gatsby). There is no “greatest book ever written” because all books are written by flawed humans - but that doesn’t mean there aren’t great books.