Am I correct in remembering that Oscar Wilde only wrote one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray? And what a great novel it is. All of his other great works were plays and such.
…wasn’t Confederacy of Dunces also published posthumously?
(Running upstairs)
Yes. According to Walker Percy in his introduction to the paperback I bought sometime in 1983, Toole’s mother, Thelma, began calling Percy at Loyola in 1976, about this great novel that her dead son had written.
So Dunces was published posthumously.
So then The Neon Bible, a much lesser novel, was published in the last few years, which means that Mr. Toole belongs on his own list, as he has two books to his credit.
And, dtilque, I say Salinger goes on the Single Novel Authors.
But…he did write a number of other books that, IMO, are on a par with (or better then) Catcher. Mostly collections of short works, tho.
How about Ilene Greer Gilman? (Hope I have her name right.) She published an abosolutely amazing fantasy novel, Moonwise, and as far as I know, nothing else.
If I’m wrong, someone please say so – I’d love to find more by this author.
For the record, Jim Lehrer has written a whole bunch of novels. Just check Amazon.
As for the OP, I’d throw out the name of Dante for his Divine Comedy. Not really a novel, but I think it’s in the spirit of the question.
Joseph Heller wrote only one GOOD novel worth his name. If you consider Saliner, what about him?
Unless otherwise, Robert M. Pirsig just has ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAITENENCE to his name.
Oops. Okay, I’ll withdraw Lehrer and substitute Sir Winston Churchill. Churchill wrote a single novel, Savrola, in 1900.
Lest anyone check into this and get confused, I’ll point out that Winston Churchill was a best selling author a hundred years ago and released his eighth novel, Richard Carvel, in 1900. However, Winston Churchill the author and Winston Churchill the politician were two different people.
Dante also wrote La Vita Nuova (The New Life).
Well, I’m not considering Salinger. And I’m not considering authors with just one good book. That was the other thread in Cafe Society. See the link above.
According to amazon.com, he’s now written a second novel Lila : An Inquiry into Morals.
When I looked up Pirsig on amazon, I got a kick out of this offer:
Ilene Greer Gilman seems to have only written Moonwise, at least according to amazon. The question is, is it a well-known book? I’d never heard of it and I suspect most people have not.
Yes, I knew Dunces was published posthumously, and so it doesn’t really go with the other Posthumous Second Novels, although technically it does. I was lazy and didn’t want to add another category.
As for Little Nemo’s list, I’m not going to add it to mine. Rather keep it as a separate List of Novels by People Famous for Other Things. Carl Sagan should be added to that list, although his novel is sufficiently well-known (if only because they made a movie of it) that it belongs on my list too.
As far as Dante, Cervantes, and such, you might note the the OP is (preferably) asking for stuff from the last couple centuries, when the novel had become a well-defined artform.