Personally, I thought that the major theme in Huck Finn was fatherhood: On the one hand, you’ve got Huck’s biological father, a loathsome monster of a man who never had anything to do with him but what he could get out of him, but on the other hand, you’ve got Jim, who (despite being as unlike Huck as it was possible to be, in that time and place) acts as a good father should towards him.
I agree. I think Twain’s skill came from clubbing us on the head with the monstrous quality of Huck’s father, but Jim’s quality is released more subtly. Only at the end do we find that Jim had kept Huck out of the floating house because the dead man there was Huck’s father. Jim’s qualities have to be perceived through the sum of his actions, something that people’s prejudices would have prevented had they been explicit.
Finished As I lay dying today, coincidentally - it’s easily one of the most impressive pieces of American lit I’ve read, although I think I’d rate the sound and the fury even higher, I’d need to let it settle a wee bit for a fair comparison. Whether Faulkner encapsulates something uniquely American in the way that other books mentioned do, I’m not sure. Maybe not IMO.
An epic work square in the essential American lit tradition is The adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow. Beautiful account of the American dream in the 40s/50s, very accessible, straight-forward writing for a Nobel prize winner (in total contrast to Faulkner). Don’t see this book mentioned much in these sort of threads - I wonder if Bellow is read as much as his late-twentieth century contemporaries these days.
I offer no excuses for my list.
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym - Poe
Armor - Steakley
Two Years Before the Mast - Dana
Of Mice and Men - Steinbeck
The Shadow Rising - Jordan
Illuminatus! by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea
The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles, by Robert Anton Wilson
Principia Discordia, or, How I Found Goddess and What I Did to Her When I Found Her, by Malaclypse the Younger
The Book of the SubGenius: The Sacred Teachings of J.R. “Bob” Dobbs
Revalation X: The “Bob” Apocryphon
By comparison with these compendia of pure awesome, nothing else mentioned in this thread deserves to called “American,” or “literature,” or “books.” So there.
All the other books suggested are great. It wouldn’t make it on most top 5 lists – I’m not sure it’s on mine – but The Red Badge of Courage is American, literature, a pretty damn good read, and you can polish it off in an evening.
Huckleberry Finn leaves enough room for many interpretations, I suppose. I’m not sure about this, though. Certainly Jim is a good guy, and nice to Huck, but my personal feeling is that Jim’s not much more than good…lacking father-y qualities, if you will. I’m not disputing that you *could *read Jim as a father figure (a not particularly bright father figure, though), but then I’d say you’d have a problem with Huck setting off to free Jim from slavery. It’s a no-brainer if you accept Jim as a better father; it’s a reflection on the need to make difficult decisions for one self, and thus ties in with the journey metaphor of the river escape, if Jim’s a slave that Huck shouldn’t free, but does.
Although not widely known, I think something by Jim Harison (Dalva or The Road Home for example) should be on the list.
Maybe I’m a rube, but I don’t see the appeal to Moby Dick.
This was 3 of the 5 on my last but I had The Invisible Man by Ellison and To Kill A Mockingbird instead of Catcher in the Rye and Of Mice and Men.
I could be persuaded to include Absalom, Absalom and All the King’s Men.
I’m no expert on literature, I prefer non-fiction (it’s an occupational hazard - I’m an engineer).
But I opine that Thomas Harris’ novel The Silence of the Lambs may belong in that category, for its compelling dialogue on the nature of evil and my inability to put the damned thing down.
Well with Hemingway, great prose. IMHO less great novels. But that’s a matter of individual taste.
I mentioned King for horror, Shawshank isn’t exactly the depths of horror, but King and others should be considered. What are your horror recommendations?
If only just to put some things up here that nobody else has:
Stephen King: Either The Stand, or IT. Both quintessential King, and looong, to boot. (Although my favorite of his is The Shining).
Clive Barker: Weaveworld. I’m not a big Clive Barker fan. I’ve tried reading several of his books and couldn’t. But this one is special. It’s epic, it’s magical, and it ends right where it began, so it begs to be read over and over.
Richard Bach: Illusions. One of my favorite books, simply wonderful. Very Zen.
Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club, or Invisible Monsters. (I enjoyed Fight Club as a movie, but I’m reccommending Palahniuk for his writing style, and Fight Club is an excellent example.)
Jonathan Safran Foer: Everything is Illuminated. Funny, moving, touching. I laughed, I cried, I laughed again.
Oops. Barker’s British. Scratch that.
That’s OK. I kept wanting to list Orwell’s greats.
We’re Americans. It’s our job to steal stuff. 
I was going to mention that book, as well as From Here To Eternity.
In addition to Huckleberry Finn, I’d read these to get a feel for slavery and Civil War period:
Margaret Mitchell - Gone with the Wind
Toni Morrison - Beloved
Michael Shaara - The Killer Angels
Harriet Beecher Stowe - Uncle Tom’s Cabin
William Faulkner - As I Lay Dying
Henry James (American who lived in England)- Daisy Miller/The Portrait of a Lady/Washington Square
John Steinbeck - East of Eden/The Grapes of Wrath
Edith Wharton - The Age of Innocence/Ethan Frome/The House of Mirth
Nathanael West - Miss Lonelyhearts/Day of the Locust
Short stories – John Cheever, Flannery O’Connor.
We read To Kill a Mockingbird in tenth grade. Seeing so many people recommending it, I’m going to read it again now and I’m sure will appreciate it more.
My entirely subjective list:
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin- As good a work as any for the beginnings of America (which yes, I know, had been inhabited by Euros for a century when Franklin was born, BUT it was in his life that a national identity emerged and a nation formed [in highly debatable order])
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (OR one of about five other Twain books I’d accept as a substitute) as Twain, in addition to being still readable and enjoyable (unlike Harriet Beecher Stowe or some of Hawthorne or other entury florid melodramatic authors of the 19th century)
In Cold Blood OR To Kill a Mockingbird (either way you get Capote & Lee in some order or form)
A Confederacy of Dunces- set in New Orleans ca. 1962 but also great for its takes on religion, race relations, the beatnik:hippie movement, and “the lack of a proper geometry” in late 20th century America
Bonfire of the Vanities or A Man in Full
[ul]
[li]Michael Chabon -* The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay*[/li][li]Jonathan Franzen - The Corrections[/li][li]John Irving - A Prayer for Owen Meany[/li][li]Marilynne Robinson - Gilead[/li][li]Wallace Stegner - Angle of Repose[/li][li]John Updike - Rabbit books[/li][li]Tom Wolfe - Bonfire of the Vanities[/li][/ul]
I’m a Brit and when I was in Uni I discovered American Literature as someone, much like the OP, wanting to read books I thought I should know (I was studying French btw !).
Salinger - my preference is for “For Esmé with Love and Squalor”, and that actual short story above other in the collection
Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby
Steinbeck - I feel “Of mice and men” is a finely tuned work of genius but perhaps “The Grapes of Wrath” gives more of a feeling of place and time.
More contemporary - the sheer craft of the writing in Cormac Mccarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses”.
I’d like to include a female writer and am tempted by The Color Purple but, having read it recently, would go with “THeir eyes were watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston.
As someone else said “The Devil’s Dictionary” is a great dipping into book and very definitley of its time.
Whispering … I didn’t really enjoy “The Scarlet Letter” & Huckleberry Finn or Tom Sawyer.