The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Moby-Dick, or, The Whale by Herman Melville
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Other
Results 21 to 38 of 38
In terms of ambition I'd name From Here to Eternity by James Jones as a contender for the "Great American novel." For those who've only seen the regressive movie version, put your memories of that aside.
At 800 pages it addresses race, class, anti-semitism, heterosexual relations, homosexuality, religion and working class rebellion. One of the main characters is a Wobbly who appears in the section about life in the stockade and gets a lot of good anti-capitalist and anti-establishment dialog.
The book is awkwardly written in places but it's worth reading. Although it takes place in the months before the attack on Pearl Harbor in the American colony of Hawai'i, it's clear that Jones was talking about the prosperous and privileged contemporary US of the 1950s, and linking the origins of that prosperity to the post-war US hegemony that was established in the 1940s.
Mccarthy's blood meridian novel is THE American novel.
Formerly dada
[URL="https://gemeinwesen.wordpress.com/"species being[/URL] - A magazine of communist polemic
What about The Wonderful Wizard of Oz?
Maybe that would be a serious contender for a sub-category, the Great American Children's Novel. Its influence is above and beyond.
I've thought about it, and it might have elements which suggest a criticism of the idea of the "American Dream".
Here's an article which goes into detail about possible political interpretations.
It's interesting, I think the scarecrow is the farmer, or farmworker, the "Tin Woodman" (called Tin Man in the movie) is the industrial/factory worker. The Witches of the four corners might be the railroads, and the Wizard of Oz is probably the President. Maybe that's reading too much into it, though.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey is my pick
"Take away the right to say "fuck" and you take away the right to say "fuck the government." - Lenny Bruce
"The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple." -Oscar Wilde
I was always taught it was a piece of satire that had something rather arcane to do with the silverback movement, that's what was the contradiction in the yellow brick road and "over the rainbow" (all dealing with a gold backed currency) and the idea of the magician being a paper tiger, and how it was meant as a piece of satire that the movie made into a totally different cultural phenomena
百花齐放
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la luz
de un Rojo Amanecer
anuncia ya
la vida que vendrá.
-Quilapayun
So it's a nationalistic literary canon which excludes poetry (you big shitters) and drama (you immense shitters)?
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Vive le Revolution
there's nothing inherently nationalistic about the great american novel, but it is a great american novel for a reason as it portrays life in america
I see no reason why poetry and drama should automatically be excluded because something is a "national epic". The Tale of Sundiata (Mali), for instance, is probably best categorized as poetry, as are the the homeric epics of Greece. The wayang-wong of Bali is, and has always been, a theater production.
It remains to be seen whether a talented poet or playwrite can produce a masterpiece that sums up the accomplishments of a people. In fact, some will argue that Coppola has already done this.
百花齐放
-----------------------------
la luz
de un Rojo Amanecer
anuncia ya
la vida que vendrá.
-Quilapayun
Yes, but the great American novel. Anyhoo, the spirit of American life, as with any culture, evolves. England, for example, is nothing like what you read about in Beowulf.
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Vive le Revolution
Catch-22 is definitely waaay up there.
Yeah, I've not read that one, but I think Roth's about as close to a Great American Novelist as they come. He'd definitely get my vote for the Great Jewish-American Novelist, anyway.
Umm, Sylvia Plath - the Bell Jar? Does that get a place anywhere?
The "Great American Novel" seems to be a male dominated endeavor, but Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans is a pretty good contender.
Catcher in the Rye is my favourite novel of all time so it gets my vote. Closely followed by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest which has been mentioned a couple of times.
"Direct Action is a notion of such clarity, of such self-evident transparency, that merely to speak the words defines and explains them. It means that the working class, in constant rebellion against the existing state of affairs, expects nothing from outside people, powers or forces, but rather creates its own conditions of struggle and looks to itself for its means of action. It means that, against the existing society which recognises only the citizen, rises the producer. And that that producer, having grasped that any social grouping models itself upon its system of production, intends to attack directly the capitalist mode of production in order to transform it, by eliminating the employer and thereby achieving sovereignty in the workshop – the essential condition for the enjoyment of real freedom.” Emile Pouget
I have to say I totally agree. I started reading it earlier on this week and I just cannot bother to keep on reading. Even though Fitzgerald is critical of this bourgeois lifestyle every thing they say and do sickens me. I need to have some affinity with the protagonist in a novel else the book is wasted on me.
"Direct Action is a notion of such clarity, of such self-evident transparency, that merely to speak the words defines and explains them. It means that the working class, in constant rebellion against the existing state of affairs, expects nothing from outside people, powers or forces, but rather creates its own conditions of struggle and looks to itself for its means of action. It means that, against the existing society which recognises only the citizen, rises the producer. And that that producer, having grasped that any social grouping models itself upon its system of production, intends to attack directly the capitalist mode of production in order to transform it, by eliminating the employer and thereby achieving sovereignty in the workshop – the essential condition for the enjoyment of real freedom.” Emile Pouget
Damn it - I have to cancel my travel plans again. At least it saves me the trouble of having to check my word-horde at the gate. Damn, and I was looking forward to that famous Meade I've heard so much about too.
Generally national epics have been overtly nationalistic but it also depends on the era when they were written. Classical and imitation classical epics tend to be about the founding of the nation and what defines the "national" charter.
At other times, National epics have also been very anti-nation and pro-populace: Inferno and Canterbury Tales were written in the "national" language and are generally critical of their local rulers as well as of the church and feudal structures.
Also Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor.
I'm also of this faction. Given that the novel is all about plot, what interest is there in the life of somebody who has nothing but luxury and oftentimes totally miserable while suffering nothing.
Mind you, I have this book of Pinter essays and somewhere's referenced a play about self-indulgent rich people, but that sounds interesting because gradually the 'outside' develops.
And no love for An Inspector Calls? I love it because it shows how the bourgeoisie suffer over nothing.Priestley. I might even pointlessly draw attention to him being a Yorkshire lad
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