According to this webcomic’s final panel, the most American novel of all time (as in, the one that best exemplifies the United States, not necessarily the greatest) is Moby Dick.
I’m torn between Robert Heinlein’s Have Spacesuit, Will Travel (Its moral is that by your own efforts, you can save the world and go to the stars!) and Blue Willow, by Doris Gates. Its moral is to always get a receipt.
What do you think?
Look Homeward, Angel.
Huckleberry Finn.
Thread over.
Yep
I gotta go Blood Meridian.
Another Huckleberry Finn.
Last of the Mohicans in 2nd place.
Considering Twain’s utter loathing for the works James Fenimore Cooper, this is a funny answer.
http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/rissetto/offense.html
*To Kill a Mockingbird *or *The Great Gatsby *come to mind.
I’ll put in another vote for Huckleberry Finn. I just re-read it in the form of The Annotated Huckleberry Finn a couple of years ago. It combines American characters, American settings, American dialect, a slew of American customs and beliefs, and at its heart is the conflict between human conscience and dealing with the rights and wrongs of slavery. It’s by turns comic and tragic. It’s hard to imagine its being written in any other country - it would have to be so completely changed that it would be a different novel.
As a added bonus, it’s been banned multiple times, in different places in the US, and for different reasons. Louisa May Alcott hated it, and saw to it that it was banned from the Concord, MA public library (they have copies there today). She saw it as low and vulgar, celebrating atypical characters with poor grammar. Today it still gets banned simply for using the word “nigger”. But there’s a reason the book uses the word, and it goes far beyond the customs and language of the time, and is rooted in the conflict at the heart of the story. Pretty clearly, Huck Finn is still relevant.
I can understand. I didn’t care for many books written in the 1700s and early 1800s.
Huckleberry Finn is not just the most American novel of all time, it is the archetype for all modern novels. There is just no argument in this category.
The first thing that popped into my mind was “Tom Sawyer,” but you’re right, Huck beats him out. Although Tom Sawyer was first, Huck has more to it, how can you beat a travelog along the Mississippi?
The cause of most of the bans in the 19th century was the chapter, “You Can’t Pray a Lie,” where Huck decides he’d rather go to hell than turn in Jim. Lots or religious types of the time thought that blasphemous; nowadays, few would even see anything to object to.
Just as tough as picking “the” quintessential American movie. In the running for me:
The Killer Angels
To Kill A Mockingbird
The Great Gatsby
On the Night Plain
The Great Santini
Await Your Reply
In Cold Blood
Coal Black Horse
In the Lake of the Woods
What, no love for The Grapes of Wrath?. But yes, I’d agree with Huckleberry Finn, with Grapes a close second.
Most American movie will prompt a discussion. Most American Novel will be a runaway: Huckleberry Finn.
On the topic of Steinbeck, I actually prefer East of Eden.
East of Eden
All the King’s Men
Catch-22.
The World According to Garp