What is the Great American Novel?

[colbhoy]

A Prayer For Owen Meany - John Irving. Every time I read it (once every couple of years) I find new things in it. I want to love it and hug it to my chest.

Probably Irving's best, actually. The wholesomeness has overtaken the strangeness in the last ten years or so.

A great novel I agree but I actually enjoyed The World According to Garp better.

Regarding the greatest American novel, The Grapes of Wrath is a very good shout as it focuses on very global themes of family and survival.

 

[colbhoy]

I wouldn't call it the G.A.N., but I do love Jonathan Frantzen's The Corrections very, very much.

It was an extremely unsettling read, but I kind of enjoyed it in a strange way.

 

[colbhoy]

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee must be included in this category as well.

 

[Santino]

I'd like to nominate a Thomas Pynchon book.

But I've never read one, so I can't.

 

[El Jefe]

i don't think it's been written, in the sense the OP means. The heavyweights like Bellow, Roth, Pynchon and Delillo have been trying to outdo each other and write it for years, although they'd deny it

 

[DotCommunist]

some good stuff for the reading list on this thread.

I've never finished gravities rainbow, had to force my way through Vineland. Pynchons prose is maddening

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I, the supreme by Augusto Roa Bastos would get my vote.

There's a lot of competition, though. For the view 'from the bottom', I'd go for Roberto Arlt's Juguete rabioso. Juan Rulfo's El llano en llamas also deserves a mention.

Latin American literature is generations ahead of North America, both in terms of formal innovation and wider social and political sophistication.

The best the US has to offer is probably John Fante. US writers seem, in the main, unable to write about anything beyond the alienated individual set in an apolitical context. Of the plethora of US writers who do this, Fante's probably the best.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Too many and varied contestants to list, IMHO.
A few of my faves:

Gore Vidal - The City and the Pillar. Because the struggle of the protaganist is so vividly put across.
John Irving - A Prayer for Owen Meany. Because it addresses the "big themes" (life, sex, death and nuns), but does it with humour.
Robert Coover - The Origin of the Brunists. Because it was a real "wow!!" read for me. The emotions of the characters are conveyed brilliantly.
Robert Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath. Just because.

some "left-fielders".
William Wharton - Birdy. Deft and sensitive.
Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle. Irony abounds!

 

[ViolentPanda]

i don't think it's been written, in the sense the OP means. The heavyweights like Bellow, Roth, Pynchon and Delillo have been trying to outdo each other and write it for years, although they'd deny it

And with each attempt they slide back a little further from ever achieving it.

IMHO once you've got colleges running courses telling you why you must enjoy Roth, Bellow et al, then those authors are as good as condemned to forever struggle to excel themselves in the eyes of academe, rather than writing for the joy of it.

 

[phildwyer]

Phillip Roth: "The Great American Novel."

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Jack Kerouac - On The Road
Mark Twain - Huckleberry Finn

These, or Don Delillo's Underworld.

 

[sojourner]

I'd put Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole in the running - she writes simply and heartbreakingly about the change of landscapes, the loss of a certain way of life, and the effects it has on the people

 

[spawnofsatan]

Moby Dick should be a contender

 

[goldenecitrone]

Moby Dick should be a contender

Yes, definitely. Great book.

 

[DotCommunist]

I might have a stab at Moby, it's decaying in the attic.

 

[al]

not seen a Gatsby vote yet.



must read that fucker one day

I'll vote for it　－excellent book, and highly readable...


and for extra cred it's what hunter s called 'the great american novel'

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

The great novel of the American Golden Era, is The Last Picture Show, by Larry McMurtry.

 

[El Jefe]

it's a fantastic book, one of my very favourites, but it's simply not a contender for G A N.

Which isn't even a criticism

 

[Idris2002]

Did anyone say Kerouac's On The Road yet?

 

[spawnofsatan]

One flew over the cuckoo's nest

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

The great american novel, to my mind, isn't necessarily the best work of literature written by an american author. It's the novel that does the best and most complete job of catching the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times, for a given time. That being the case, there can be more than one.

McMurtry's book, imo, does that for what I call the golden age, now over, that lasted from sometime after the war, maybe 1950 - 1975. After that, things changed in that country.

 

[El Jefe]

i think people are nominating their favourite american novels. But that's not the same thing as the Great American Novel.

this from wiki, but quite apt:

"In modern usage, the term is often figurative and represents a Holy Grail of writing, an ideal to strive towards, and is a source of inspiration. It is, presumably, the greatest American book ever written, or which could ever be written. Thus, "Great American Novel" is a metaphor for identity, a Platonic ideal that is not achieved in any specific texts, but whose aim writers strive to mirror in their work."

 

[DotCommunist]

i think people are nominating their favourite american novels. But that's not the same thing as the Great American Novel.

this from wiki, but quite apt:

"In modern usage, the term is often figurative and represents a Holy Grail of writing, an ideal to strive towards, and is a source of inspiration. It is, presumably, the greatest American book ever written, or which could ever be written. Thus, "Great American Novel" is a metaphor for identity, a Platonic ideal that is not achieved in any specific texts, but whose aim writers strive to mirror in their work."

well this is why in the OP I mentioned Hunter s Thompson. Not individual works, but his output. He said of himself that his beat was 'the death of the American century/dream. As johhny was saying, the capturing of the zietgiest is also a factor. Hunter shot himself before he could see the re-affirmation of that American Lie that is obamas win. But I bet he'd be entirely cynical about it

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

well this is why in the OP I mentioned Hunter s Thompson. Not individual works, but his output. He said of himself that his beat was 'the death of the American century/dream. As johhny was saying, the capturing of the zietgiest is also a factor. Hunter shot himself before he could see the re-affirmation of that American Lie that is obamas win. But I bet he'd be entirely cynical about it

I think HST would have been one of the biggest believers. Thompson loved what america was supposed to be about, individuality and freedom, and hated how the country was moving away from that. I think that like many of his era, he would have seen the election results as a sign that it was never too late for the US to reinvent itself, perhaps into something better.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

i think people are nominating their favourite american novels. But that's not the same thing as the Great American Novel.

this from wiki, but quite apt:

"In modern usage, the term is often figurative and represents a Holy Grail of writing, an ideal to strive towards, and is a source of inspiration. It is, presumably, the greatest American book ever written, or which could ever be written. Thus, "Great American Novel" is a metaphor for identity, a Platonic ideal that is not achieved in any specific texts, but whose aim writers strive to mirror in their work."

It's a peculiarly North American trait, to speak of 'The (Great) American...'.

It is an insular, self-regarding tendency that we would do best to ignore, imo.

 

[DotCommunist]

I think HST would have been one of the biggest believers. Thompson loved what america was supposed to be about, individuality and freedom, and hated how the country was moving away from that. I think that like many of his era, he would have seen the election results as a sign that it was never too late for the US to reinvent itself, perhaps into something better.

perhaps. I know his rabid mistrust of liberals was part-joke part reality. But the individual and freedom aspects, yes he was very hot on that. For example his fierce defense of the fourth amendment.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I might have a stab at Moby.

Sounds good to me. I can't stand the whiny bald fucker.

 

[gabi]

perhaps. I know his rabid mistrust of liberals was part-joke part reality. But the individual and freedom aspects, yes he was very hot on that. For example his fierce defense of the fourth amendment.

He was a shit, totally overrated writer. Fact. Theres a lot of the emperor's new clothes about Thompson.

 

[Homeless Mal]

A Prayer For Owen Meany - John Irving. Every time I read it (once every couple of years) I find new things in it. I want to love it and hug it to my chest.

Agree it is a masterpiece.

I would say The Cathcer in the Rye is the GAM as it captures the mood of the time, but it also captures adolescence and the discomfort and sadness of moving towards adulthood.

 

[El Jefe]

He was a shit, totally overrated writer. Fact. Theres a lot of the emperor's new clothes about Thompson.

I agree. Fear & Loathing is great, some of his journalism is great. But a lot of it is really tedious and tips from 'gonzo' into 'self-aggrandising'. He had some fairly dodgy attitudes and stated the obvious a lot, admittedly with some style.

People are buying into the myth.

But then I think Bill Hicks is absurdly over-rated too, and I kind of put them in the same box somehow