The Thinklings

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- J.B. Lightfoot

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Posted by Jared @ 9:06 pm CDT
Filed under: Literature, History

What are the essential American novels?

Thinking of books not just by American authors but that capture a significant aspect of the American experience relative to the author's historical place.

Some candidates:

The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne
Moby Dick by Melville*
Huckleberry Finn by Twain
Intruder in the Dust by Faulkner
To Kill a Mockingbird by Lee
The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck
Blood Meridian by McCarthy
The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald
The Rabbit Angstrom Novels by Updike
White Noise by DeLillo
American Pastoral by Roth
The New York Trilogy by Auster
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay by Chabon

What would you add? Go.

* I confess to not having read this one but plan to soon.

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Comments on "Essential American Novels":

1. Manders - 09/20/2011 9:15 pm CDT

I submit as another postmodern candidate A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.

2. Joseph McBee - 09/20/2011 9:21 pm CDT

I would also add BABBITT by Sincalir Lewis and THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger.

3. Matthew Johnson - 09/20/2011 9:26 pm CDT

If we're only doing one Faulkner, I might go with Light in August or Go Down, Moses. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston.

As much as I don't want to - The Catcher in the Rye

Please no Ayn Rand. :-)

4. Kristi - 09/20/2011 9:26 pm CDT

Flannery O'Connor. Granted most of her stuff is short stories but she's essential.
Others to consider: Invisible Man by Ellison; Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe; Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison; Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara; Wendell Berry novels, like Jayber Crow.

5. Bill - 09/20/2011 9:32 pm CDT

I've never understood why Catcher in the Rye is considered a classic. :-)

Moby Dick is awesome - love that book.

6. Bill - 09/20/2011 9:35 pm CDT

Oh, also

Isaac Asimov's Robot Visions

7. Joseph McBee - 09/20/2011 9:35 pm CDT

I agree. I was defining CATCHER using Jared's term "essential." Which, perhaps unfortunately, it kind of is.

8. Raindream - 09/20/2011 10:05 pm CDT

For Faulkner, why not The Sound and the Fury over the other choices?

I think Toni Morrison's Beloved should be in the running, and Walker Percy's The Last Gentlemen. Winesburg, Ohio by Anderson. The Last of the Mohicans by Cooper.

9. Bill - 09/20/2011 11:28 pm CDT

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Groundbreaking and fully American

10. Shrode - 09/20/2011 11:38 pm CDT

With this as the criterion: that capture a significant aspect of the American experience relative to the author's historical place.

I think I must add:
Laura Ingalls Wilder books
The Great Brain books by J.D. Fitzgerald
Call of the Wild by Jack London
My Dog Skip by Willie Morris
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

And lest you think me non-intellectual - I have read Moby Dick. :-) And I have also read Updike, McCarthy, Toni Morrison and Flannery O'Connor. So many of my "lit-cred" suggestions were already suggested above. :-) (I haven't read Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, but I read and really liked the Border trilogy a lot.)

I can't believe nobody has suggested Larry McMurtry.

11. Andrew - 09/21/2011 12:05 am CDT

If we could only pick one Faulkner novel, I would say The Sound and the Fury. Nearly every idea he ever tackled is in that book.

Cane - Jean Toomer

Lolita - Nabokov (not technically American, but written in English by a man living in America, and set in America).

Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close might more closely meet the criteria above, but EII is a better book)

The Moviegoer - Walker Percy

Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace

Though I'm not really a fan, I would think Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises deserves a place.

Flannery O'Connor needs to be read by everyone. Of her two novels, Wise Blood might be more essential but The Violent Bear it Away is a better novel. As someone already said, though, her short stories are second to none.

12. Ryan Plantz - 09/21/2011 4:10 am CDT

I've always felt like Kerouac's "On the Road" was really, really "American". And Bellow's "The Adventures of Augie March."

13. nhe - 09/21/2011 7:48 am CDT

Wow, I feel "literate" - I have actually read "some" of those books on that list.....though not necessarily by choice.

Moby Dick (the book) plays a prominent role in the new movie "Warrior".....which I highly recommend, even for non MMA fans (I didn't know anything about MMA).....and my wife even loved it.

I'd sub in "Of Mice and Men" for "Grapes of Wrath", simply because I liked it better.

.....oh, and no Hemingway?...I don't disagree, just surprised

14. Dave - 09/21/2011 9:12 am CDT

Your list is a great one. I think more in terms of "bodies of work" when it comes to this. I think that pretty much everything by Twain and Steinbeck are "essential American." The novels of Toni Morrison, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison and Zora Neale Hurston, as well. Hemmingway, Faulkner, etc. The big picture of their writing says more than individual novels, though I'd put Grapes of Wrath up for candidate as the "Great American Novel." I think Morrison's Beloved is a masterpiece. And what about popular things like King's "Salem's Lot" or the the books of John Grisham? What about Doctorow's Ragtime? Slaughterhouse 5? The problem is, you need some kind of criteria to help shorten the list, or you could go on all day.

15. Richard - 09/21/2011 9:13 am CDT

"Gilead," by Marilynee Robinson. A beautiful piece of work--worth reading every word.

16. Andrew - 09/21/2011 11:45 am CDT

"Gilead," by Marilynee Robinson. A beautiful piece of work--worth reading every word.

Agreed. Housekeeping is great, too.

17. Greybeard - 09/21/2011 12:30 pm CDT

Why does a book have to depict the dark underbelly of injustice to properly portray life in America? What about books that highlight the industrious determination and hard work that brought civilization to the wilderness? Twain was one who understood that our internal conflicts were far more important than our external conflicts. I put Louis L'Amour in that camp too. For a current author, I find that Patrick F. McManus in The Blight Way and the ensueing series depicts the kinds of characters I meet every day in rural America in a way that gets us laughing at ourselves.

18. Dan Allison - 09/21/2011 2:05 pm CDT

Sister Carrie, Catch-22, The Old Man and the Sea

19. Karl - 09/21/2011 10:40 pm CDT

Great starting list.

I'd add:
works by Willa Cather such as My Antonia
Wendell Berry - Jayber Crow and others
Flannery O'Connor
Jack London - Call of the Wild/White Fang
David James Duncan - The River Why and The Brothers K
Toni Morrison
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin (postmodern morality meets fantasy writing genius in the mind of a medieval historian)
Stephen King at his early best, when it was uncertain whether he'd write "real" literature or continue writing books that would pigeonhole him as a horror writer - also The Green Mile
Twain - virtually everything he wrote
Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath
Hemmingway - take your pick but I'll go with "Old Man and the Sea"
Orwell, Animal Farm and 1984 - not American but essential to understanding an era and certain aspects of American thought during and regarding that era
Upton Sinclair - The Jungle

20. jen - 09/22/2011 9:58 am CDT

I can't really add to the lists of books already - everything I think of is not American. Except ...

I can't believe nobody has suggested Larry McMurtry.

I would add Lonesome Dove by McMurtry.

21. judy - 09/22/2011 3:45 pm CDT

Walker Percy's "Second Coming" and Willa Cather's "My Antonia" would be my additions.

22. Jared - 09/22/2011 9:07 pm CDT

Lolita - Nabokov -- Andrew, I really considered this one, but balked due to Nabokov's nationality. (I think his Ada: Or, Ardor is a better book too, btw.)

Re: Richard Wright -- I hear you, all. I might've included Black Boy but it's non-fiction. I might've included Native Son but I haven't read it. (Maybe I ought to queue it up next to Moby Dick.)

I'd sub in "Of Mice and Men" for "Grapes of Wrath", simply because I liked it better.

nhe, I went back and forth there. I like "Mice" better too, but I just figured "Grapes" had that greater scope; it feels more central.

I am hearing Faulkner's Sound and Fury loud and clear, but of the 4-5 Faulkner books I've read Intruder in the Dust is my favorite and Sound and Fury isn't one of them. :-/ I'll queue it up with Moby Dick and Native Son. ;-)

Agree on the essential *feels* of Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and Sinclair's The Jungle but I just didn't care for either one.

If we're going into the Jonathan Safran Foer generation, I'd have to trump anything of his with Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius or Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections.

23. Bill - 09/23/2011 6:37 am CDT

No one's mentioned it yet, but I really think Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 - A Space Odyssey belongs on the list.

24. Bill - 09/23/2011 6:39 am CDT

Also, no Poe? Granted, he was primarily short stories and poetry. I'd recommend The Tell-Tale Heart or The Raven.

25. Andrew - 09/23/2011 11:59 am CDT

You'd probably have to include Kate Chopin's The Awakening and Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence.

26. Alex Costa - 09/24/2011 3:07 am CDT

Kardashian Konfidential

27. Rong - 09/27/2011 11:12 am CDT

Leatherstocking series by James Fenimore Cooper
Walden by Henry David Thoreau

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