One novel I'd point to is Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. His masterpiece really digs at the core of how significant the notion of "The Frontier" has been in American history. Like Pynchon as well, he also highlights the American propensity for violence. Of course, it also deals with what is left out of most other novels mentioned, namely the people who inhabited America before the colonists arrived- the Native Americans. In this way, his novel attains a historical perspective that covers the ground of almost all of American history. The fact that he wrote it in the 80s during the heyday of postmodernism adds a further layer of complexity as its historical gaze is one of the post colonial era, yet his style never narrows his vision to a mere post colonial critique. For me, it's The American Novel. Great video and keep up the great content Bookchemist!
I think Moby Dick is the best novel by an American, but as far as "Great American Novel" I would go with Blood Meridian, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or Light in August.
Way to start a debate! This is fantastic. Whether there actually is a GAN (it's *The Great Gatsby*), what's more compelling is that because of the concept (much like the holy grail) it's caused so many American writers to go out & literally attempt to write it, like prospectors in a gold rush. Franzen, Wallace, Pynchon, DeLillo (& going farther back, Twain, Wolfe, Dos Passos), I think they all deliberately tried to write the GAN. Taking it a step further, the GAN may need to be written by an outsider who sees what those within the culture can't see, a foreigner (refugee? immigrant?) may need to write it ... . More please!
Exactly! The main reason why I don't think the concept exists in other national literatures (that I know anything of!) is that, if asked to pick a Great English Novel, I'd be feeling like I'm imposing a type of reading onto a book; whereas with books such as Infinite Jest or Franzen's novels (but Gatsby too of course), this idea of offering an all-encompassing, be-all-end-all view of something quintessentially American is something that emerges (and pretty loudly!) from the text.
1) Blood Meridian 2) Gravity's Rainbow 3) The Recognitions 4) Call It Sleep 5) Moby Dick 6) Huckleberry Finn 7) Beloved 8) The Sound and the Fury 9) The Things They Carried 10) Stoner 11) By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept 12) Lolita 13) Underworld 14) The Adventures of Augie March 15) Uncle Tom's Cabin 16) Invisible Man 17) Jesus' Son 18) Suttree 19) The Great Gatsby 20) The Sheltering Sky 21) V 22) Native Son 23) The Underground Railroad 24) The Color Purple 25) Infinite Jest
Just want to say, I absolutely love your content! There are very few youtube channels that engage in thorough discussions on literature and yours is my favorite by far!
couple of suggestions: firstly Mason and Dixon. it is, ostensibly, a novel about America like, about how America started and what it was all for. and, I know this probably sounds like I'm defining the characters as simple mouthpieces for pynchon- they're not, they are pynchons best characters, but I think Mason and Dixon are analogies for the hopefullness of the pilgrims. I would also suggest that post war and depression era novels, specifically Steinbeck's, specifically travels with Charlie, captures something close to the "soul of America" which, I think is the goal of great American novelists like franzen. also road novels and the beats, I'm thinking on the road and naked lunch, which seems, oddly, to be a distinctly American genre. and lastly, admittedly it's a series of epic poems, but the leaves of grass is simply the most American novel of all time. It is grand, pompous, witty, self important, profound, remarkably unsubtle and absurdly excessive but is utterly brilliant.
@@liamshope2838 Guard Of Honor The Eighth Day Absalom, Absalom The Ambassadors Moby Dick The Scarlet Letter The Rise Of Silas Lapham Blood Meridian The Rector Of Justin Death Comes For The Archbishop, Invisible Man, L.A, Confidential the Portrait Of A Lady
Blood Meridian, Invisible Man, Underworld, The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom, The Color Purple, Call It Sleep, Lolita, Catch 22, The Adventures of Augie March, Stoner, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Women and Men, Mulligan Stew, Jesus' Son, Lolita, The Things They Carried, Gravity's Rainbow, Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Good Earth, East of Eden, The Stones of Summer, Tobacco Road, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Beloved, Moby Dick, The Left Hand of Darkness, Dhalgren, The Tunnel, Slaughterhouse-Five
I've been living in the US for almost a year now, and I can see many instances of IJ in American culture, especially a kind of obsession that from a Third World perspective is really appalling. The way that Desire (in the Buddhist sense, or libido in Freudian terminology) occurs in the US seems to me just like that crazy IJ world, full of people with so many quirks that it's very overwhelming to try to make sense of.
I think that the idea of "the great american novel" is very much alive especially the age of today, but that it's desperately struggling against it's own nation with so many national themes and conflicts that are inherently represented and are expected to represent the ideal nature of and real future of america as a whole. granted it's self deprecation are aspects that make it reminiscent of all the themes of a depressing cculture as shown in your list's contemporary authors, but overall I think that question at this point is merely a ghost of it's former significance as of comparing it to classic literature, but progressively the idea of the question will change overtime, just probsbly in s few decades later and from there on we can assure that when asked what the great american novel is, most if not all the books you mentioned, including classics like Gatsby and such, qould not be included or even suggested as a candidate.
My most recent pick for GAN would be Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion. Great read. Also, I see Chris Ware’s Building Stories behind you. Could that be the Great American (Graphic) Novel?
The Great American novel about WW2 is almost unknown. In 1949, James Gould Cozzens won the Pulitzer Prize for Guard Of Honor,a stunning account of three days of crisis at a huge Army Air Force base in Florida at the height of WW2. Cozzens,-a deeply conservative and in some ways reactionary man- offered a powerful, dispassionate exploration of America's sexual and racial contradictions, which affirms traditional values while also showing how hard it is to uphold them.
I think there are great American novels for each period. So a great American novel in the 19th Century is different than one today. So for the 19th Century it's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick. Pre-60's 20th Century America is a different era. Beat Era through early 21st Century is its own period as well. Too many choices for me to nail it down. And I think we have recently arrived at a new era. What are the contemporary novels? I can't say yet.
DUDE. HUCK FINN. No contest! It's a silly debate, but for the sake of debate: My requisites ask for a text that could only have come from the U.S. It must speak in the highly specific vernacular of America, in one time period or another. It should contain sights and behaviors and traditions that can only come from America. Finally...It should deal with the inhumanity of what birthed this place --- and something about the humanity of the peoples here. The only novel that boils all that down, and at the same time manages to be a novel, is Huck Finn. A few things things come close: Their Eyes Were Watching God, To Kill A Mockingbird, & the play Angels In America.
Here's some great reads by American literary fiction authors: American Pastoral and Human Stain by Philip Roth; Independence Day by Richard Ford; Rabbit at Rest by John Updike; Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck; Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser; Another Country by James Baldwin; Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner; The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon; Underworld comes close but for me, it lost its way a little towards the end. All the above novels have great character development and an interesting plot and comment on various aspects of the American way of life.
Last semester I took a literature course defining and poring over what might be the Great American Novel. We concluded that generally, the Great American Novel would have to in some way address or tackle the psychological effects of race or slavery on the American consciousness, which by its exploration favors books following the Romantic rather than the Realist tradition. That said, I think that certain novels that more explore the stoicism of the prototypical, idealized American are also quite valuable in the conversation. To my estimation, the novel that fulfills all of these requirements would either be William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! or Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Both novels function as children of a Romantic style of writing, both novels find at their core the conception and boggling over of race in the white (and black) mind respectively, and both exhibit the stoicism and the cracking of the stoicism of the people living in those realities (in Quentin Compson and the 'Invisible Man' Narrator, respectively). In terms of scope, Moby-Dick is pretty clearly the winner of the conversation, although at times Moby-Dick is so transcendent of the bounds of the American that it might be hard to list it as just a 'Great American Novel'. Stoner may be the greatest representation of an American novel where that stoicism dictates the novel and refuses to break, as to reaffirm the convention as opposed to the other novels mentioned. Overall though, it really is just a matter of preference, but certain qualifiers such as these make the narrowing of the topic a little simpler, as can be justified.
Think Infinite Jest would be the GAN if it was better (I loved it at first, now find it more flawed) I'd say the GAN is The Sound Of The Fury, but maybe my opinion is not so valid cuz 1) Im Spanish, not American 2) Havent read Gatsby 3) The Sound And The Fury is also my favourite novel so I may be kinda biased, for me it's the great Human Novel, but idk about the GAN. Anyway, I think the GAN concept is kinda overcovered, I mean, I've heard a lot of people (And not ignorant ones) call Franzen's works great American novels. I think its an interesting debate, but we should focus on what is the great human novel (which doesnt equal the best novel ever)
Robert McCammon's Swan Song, post apocalyptic novel that goes from president, to mediocre professional wrestler, to young child with special powers, to bike riding demons, to hobos with magical items, to stock brokers, cannibals holding down a Wal-Mart type of store, and i forget the other 50 plus characters, but ya, read it nearly 10 years ago, still the best pleasure read. Doesn't expand on their history in America, just post nuclear war in America involving many types of people in America. Plus it is really good, maybe not literature though. Just a very good read. Plus it is nearly 1000 pages long and keeps you wanting more, one of the best guilty reads if you want to be entertained and not have to get philosophical about the world and the people that make it up. It is literally one of the best post apocalyptic books that exist and has been out for decades. If anyone is into that type of thing.
This summer i tried to read City on fire because you suggested it in one of your "best of year" video and because i read that it was considered the Great American Novel of 2015, therefore i thought of it as a reading like Underworld... the problem was that i tried to read it two times and i always stopped at the first 60/70 pages... maybe i'll retry in the future, now i'm enjoying an old classic like Moby Dick :)
The parallel with Underworld is one lots of people make (long novel, ambitious, New York, 1970s), but they're really apple and oranges. A better comparison would be Franzen; an even better comparison would be Dickens, or really any other serialized big 19th century work. I do think it's a great novel but it's no GAN, and it's by no means a must read. If you can't digest it, just leave it be ;)
Some of my contenders for The Great American Novel: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn A Confederacy of Dunces To Kill a Mockingbird Infinite Jest Breakfast at Tiffany's Slaughterhouse-Five Cat's Cradle The Catcher in the Rye Naked Lunch and The Red Badge of Courage
Confederacy of Dunces is actually an excellent pick, and offers a marvelous variety of characters and registers. It's definitely a Great New Orleans Novel and is a good candidate for the whole nation.
The_Bookchemist I never understood why it was considered even a good book. I recall when it was "discovered." I read it and understood why it was unpublished.
Agree with Prankster's choice of Huck Finn and The Red Badge of Courage; both truly great 19th century novels. Huck Finn would be hand's down the GAN if not the poor ending.
Eustace Chrisholm and The Works by James Purdy is written in a freewheeling American idiom. I think it's his best work honestly. Plus it avoids the grandeur of an attempt to define our shared national character, which not the healthiest way to write. The G.A.N. as a genre can end up in a rather satinized and mawish place, and, for me, Underworld was about this process. The artist ends up in the Americana curio cabinet with the other kitsch. But that's my two cents.
I don't think the Great American Novel exists. Most American novels capture the culture of a particular region but the country is too big and diverse to explain in entirety.
Not really - first and foremost because I'm not sure anyone ever set off to write one! Seems to me like the literary canon as a whole serves roughly that same function, but no single work could be called The Great Italian Novel. Italy is a very fragmented cultural reality, but it seems to me that one would equally struggle to find, say, a Great Milanese Novel, or a Great Sicilian Novel. And the same could be said of other national literatures (though I'm far from an expert). I can't think of any Great German Novel, or a Great English Novel for that matter. Is Middlemarch the Great English Novel? Far From the Madding Crowd? One could make such a case, but it would seem to me that we'd be applying an awkward category to these works from the outside, rather than finding something that's inside the text... it's a topic I find very fascinating.
@@TheBookchemist As an Italian, I agree with you, although there are some “patriotic” 19th century novels that were in fact written “sort of” sort the intent of capturing the Italian values and the Italian national spirit: Cuore by Edmondo De Amicis or “Le Confessioni si un Italiano” by Ippolito Nievo come to my mind.
What about moby dick? I always see people writing about that book with the honour of the 'great american novel'. i personally could never see the connection beyond the surface level observations of hierarchical meritocracy, fraternity and capitalist enterprise.
Hey, great vid -- what about 10 or 15 min on 'The American Dream,' wd love to hear your take. And what do you think 'Americans' think it is? How has it become cheesy, as you say, what's still good about it if anything? And then, of course, all the shit in there that will influence the lit -- love yr channel!
@@TheBookchemist ...I need to amend my statement 3 weeks ago. And, I have a different title to put forward as my vote for the Great American Novel. I just re-read Huck Finn for maybe my 5th time...it is deeply weird. An incredible work, but deeply weird. It comes to us from an older, weirder America. Understanding the postwar Gilded Age (when it came out) + prewar antebellum South (when it's set) may be necessary to follow much of the satire. The "race issue" is merely one aspect: one must also understand that dime novels & violent young boys was a topical issue at the time (much like video games today!) and Twain was raising his own children with some disdain for the moralizing "Sunday school reader" stories so popular in his day.
@@TheBookchemist So while I still feel it's a worthy "competitor for rightful title" to Great American Novel...I want to urge, with all my might, a different title: "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston. This is, hands down, my vote. Not only that. I will re-read it once a year 'til I die. It is also, possibly, my favorite love story in all literature. Yet it is not, generically speaking, a romance. And, its characters sound so real because Hurston writes in their vernacular...but combined with some of the most lyrical, eerie, beautiful prose I've read. Read "Their Eyes Were Watching God"! Even by the end of page 1, you'll know.
For my money, it's Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Other contenders: East of Eden and/or The Grapes of Wrath; To Kill a Mockingbird; Lonesome Dove, which is brilliant but grossly underrated. In short, to me the Great American novel is concerned with an experience that is uniquely American rather than a generalized human experience. In addition, while not necessarily having to be high art, it should have some literary merit. So, I think the list can be quite long and can encompass diverse authors from the 19th century to the present.
Strictly as a mental exercise, you could set loose parameters for what should be included in such a topic. Setting... America. Breadth/scope... perhaps set in different parts of America, or travel... I think road trips, vehicles, the social habit of going from one coast to another, seeing such a journey as a cross section of America coupled with the JOY of such a pursuit. A broad spectrum of characters. Too many would declassify it from great to overbearing. Social classes clashing, perhaps a novel that devotes the fraction of each class of people to the amount discussed in the novel... hmm... unclear... Iike 1% of the book is about the ultra-rich, about half the book is about the middle class, and a sizeable portion is devoted to the lower class. It needn't be crude, but it could represent America in the financial sense. Amongst those characters, much like modern tv shows in which casts tend to be more representational of race, creed, age, gender, etc... the Great American novel could be a hodge-podge of characters and how their conflict drives the plot, victimizes others, benefits others. Perhaps plot points that include national contention (climate crisis, school shootings, corruption, etc.) See this is fun, yes?
Plot Against America is actually a brilliant pick because it's true that behind the apparency of being about a very specific thing (and falling into a very specific genre) it's actually a broader reflection on American life at large.
I can see why this has few thumbs up, granted it's a hard topic to pin down when you're an outsider but this could have been better without the generalizations; there's little to take away here, the comments are more enlightening. This is from six years ago, I will try something newer.
Yo Bookchemist dude Ha--- gotta do Buck's " Post Office" ...but really- something I been waiting for-- How about some Norman Mailer? "Tough Guys Don't Dance" over the top one liners- twisted -true Americana
Sandra Weilbrenner Its more like a novel about a character thousands of people can relate to about anywhere in the world than about any utterly American thing in it
To show the two sides of American society, how about The Great Gatsby and The Grapes of Wrath? Definitely NOT Moby Dick, as it is less a novel than a handbook for whalers. The "novel" part was probably less than a quarter of it. Ahab was a fascinating character, but there was just too little of him. All the details of whaling (some quaintly anachronistic) were just tedious.
The_Bookchemist And a good review of it. There are aspects of novel in the beginning and at the end, sandwiching a handbook of sailing, natural history, etc.
Totally disagree. To me, not only is Moby-Dick a brilliantly wrought novel, it is the first American post-modern novel. Specifying "the novel part" is missing the picture.
@@malexander4094 Maybe. But Moby Dick was also the first novel that US academia decided to promote as “the” great American novel, for a sort of sense of inadequacy that American literature felt when comparing itself to others. If it sounds like a conspiracy, it’s because in a certain sense, it was. Moby Dick was rammed down students’ throats as the GAN, and that ended up convincing many.
I think the idea just shows their inferiority complex toward Europeans. And while we are talking about it, there could be a great novel in Asia, Australia, Africa ... There is no more stupid question than that
One novel I'd point to is Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. His masterpiece really digs at the core of how significant the notion of "The Frontier" has been in American history. Like Pynchon as well, he also highlights the American propensity for violence. Of course, it also deals with what is left out of most other novels mentioned, namely the people who inhabited America before the colonists arrived- the Native Americans. In this way, his novel attains a historical perspective that covers the ground of almost all of American history. The fact that he wrote it in the 80s during the heyday of postmodernism adds a further layer of complexity as its historical gaze is one of the post colonial era, yet his style never narrows his vision to a mere post colonial critique. For me, it's The American Novel. Great video and keep up the great content Bookchemist!
Or Willa Cather and her prairie sagas.
I think Moby Dick is the best novel by an American, but as far as "Great American Novel" I would go with Blood Meridian, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or Light in August.
10 and 12
That’s a great list.
I vouch for East of Eden!
The Great Gatsby.
Gravity's Rainbow may not be set in America, but it is a Great Novel of The Western World.
Way to start a debate! This is fantastic. Whether there actually is a GAN (it's *The Great Gatsby*), what's more compelling is that because of the concept (much like the holy grail) it's caused so many American writers to go out & literally attempt to write it, like prospectors in a gold rush. Franzen, Wallace, Pynchon, DeLillo (& going farther back, Twain, Wolfe, Dos Passos), I think they all deliberately tried to write the GAN. Taking it a step further, the GAN may need to be written by an outsider who sees what those within the culture can't see, a foreigner (refugee? immigrant?) may need to write it ... . More please!
Exactly! The main reason why I don't think the concept exists in other national literatures (that I know anything of!) is that, if asked to pick a Great English Novel, I'd be feeling like I'm imposing a type of reading onto a book; whereas with books such as Infinite Jest or Franzen's novels (but Gatsby too of course), this idea of offering an all-encompassing, be-all-end-all view of something quintessentially American is something that emerges (and pretty loudly!) from the text.
1) Blood Meridian 2) Gravity's Rainbow 3) The Recognitions 4) Call It Sleep 5) Moby Dick 6) Huckleberry Finn 7) Beloved 8) The Sound and the Fury 9) The Things They Carried 10) Stoner 11) By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept 12) Lolita 13) Underworld 14) The Adventures of Augie March 15) Uncle Tom's Cabin 16) Invisible Man 17) Jesus' Son 18) Suttree 19) The Great Gatsby 20) The Sheltering Sky 21) V 22) Native Son 23) The Underground Railroad 24) The Color Purple 25) Infinite Jest
The Recognitions by William Gaddis
Just want to say, I absolutely love your content! There are very few youtube channels that engage in thorough discussions on literature and yours is my favorite by far!
couple of suggestions:
firstly Mason and Dixon. it is, ostensibly, a novel about America like, about how America started and what it was all for. and, I know this probably sounds like I'm defining the characters as simple mouthpieces for pynchon- they're not, they are pynchons best characters, but I think Mason and Dixon are analogies for the hopefullness of the pilgrims.
I would also suggest that post war and depression era novels, specifically Steinbeck's, specifically travels with Charlie, captures something close to the "soul of America" which, I think is the goal of great American novelists like franzen. also road novels and the beats, I'm thinking on the road and naked lunch, which seems, oddly, to be a distinctly American genre.
and lastly, admittedly it's a series of epic poems, but the leaves of grass is simply the most American novel of all time. It is grand, pompous, witty, self important, profound, remarkably unsubtle and absurdly excessive but is utterly brilliant.
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Absalom, Absalom is the best novel about the South at least.
I would argue that its the best novel that an american has wrote.
@@liamshope2838 Guard Of Honor The Eighth Day Absalom, Absalom The Ambassadors Moby Dick The Scarlet Letter The Rise Of Silas Lapham Blood Meridian The Rector Of Justin Death Comes For The Archbishop, Invisible Man, L.A, Confidential the Portrait Of A Lady
@The_Bookchemist is that t-shirt a reference to Pynchon's V? If so, well played Sir!
Holy crap, I just remembered the chapter about the alligators in the sewers!
8-)
Many of them are very big books. But I'd point to Delillo.
The Nix from 2016 is a more modern instance of the Great American Novel. Great book!
Blood Meridian, Invisible Man, Underworld, The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom, The Color Purple, Call It Sleep, Lolita, Catch 22, The Adventures of Augie March, Stoner, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Women and Men, Mulligan Stew, Jesus' Son, Lolita, The Things They Carried, Gravity's Rainbow, Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Good Earth, East of Eden, The Stones of Summer, Tobacco Road, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Beloved, Moby Dick, The Left Hand of Darkness, Dhalgren, The Tunnel, Slaughterhouse-Five
Come on, you can't choose all of them!
@@paulhagendyk1689 Blood Meridian
@@timkjazz The Good Earth ?? Isn’t it about China?
I've been living in the US for almost a year now, and I can see many instances of IJ in American culture, especially a kind of obsession that from a Third World perspective is really appalling. The way that Desire (in the Buddhist sense, or libido in Freudian terminology) occurs in the US seems to me just like that crazy IJ world, full of people with so many quirks that it's very overwhelming to try to make sense of.
The 🐇 series by john Updike gets my vote
Without a doubt - the lasr two in particular
The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner
Rabbit is Rich by Updike
On the Road by Kerouac
The Big Money by John Dos Passos
I think that the idea of "the great american novel" is very much alive especially the age of today, but that it's desperately struggling against it's own nation with so many national themes and conflicts that are inherently represented and are expected to represent the ideal nature of and real future of america as a whole. granted it's self deprecation are aspects that make it reminiscent of all the themes of a depressing cculture as shown in your list's contemporary authors, but overall I think that question at this point is merely a ghost of it's former significance as of comparing it to classic literature, but progressively the idea of the question will change overtime, just probsbly in s few decades later and from there on we can assure that when asked what the great american novel is, most if not all the books you mentioned, including classics like Gatsby and such, qould not be included or even suggested as a candidate.
My most recent pick for GAN would be Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion. Great read.
Also, I see Chris Ware’s Building Stories behind you. Could that be the Great American (Graphic) Novel?
The Great American novel about WW2 is almost unknown. In 1949, James Gould Cozzens won the Pulitzer Prize for Guard Of Honor,a stunning account of three days of crisis at a huge Army Air Force base in Florida at the height of WW2. Cozzens,-a deeply conservative and in some ways reactionary man- offered a powerful, dispassionate exploration of America's sexual and racial contradictions, which affirms traditional values while also showing how hard it is to uphold them.
Cool ironing board.
I like your t-shirt Dudeee! (Thomas Pynchon liked this comment)
My contender would be the East of Eden by John Steinbeck.
I think there are great American novels for each period. So a great American novel in the 19th Century is different than one today. So for the 19th Century it's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick. Pre-60's 20th Century America is a different era. Beat Era through early 21st Century is its own period as well. Too many choices for me to nail it down. And I think we have recently arrived at a new era. What are the contemporary novels? I can't say yet.
DUDE. HUCK FINN.
No contest!
It's a silly debate, but for the sake of debate:
My requisites ask for a text that could only have come from the U.S.
It must speak in the highly specific vernacular of America, in one time period or another.
It should contain sights and behaviors and traditions that can only come from America. Finally...It should deal with the inhumanity of what birthed this place --- and something about the humanity of the peoples here.
The only novel that boils all that down, and at the same time manages to be a novel, is Huck Finn. A few things things come close: Their Eyes Were Watching God, To Kill A Mockingbird, & the play Angels In America.
Any thoughts on the sot weed factor?
Here's some great reads by American literary fiction authors:
American Pastoral and Human Stain by Philip Roth;
Independence Day by Richard Ford;
Rabbit at Rest by John Updike;
Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck;
Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser;
Another Country by James Baldwin;
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner;
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon;
Underworld comes close but for me, it lost its way a little towards the end.
All the above novels have great character development and an interesting plot and comment on various aspects of the American way of life.
Last semester I took a literature course defining and poring over what might be the Great American Novel. We concluded that generally, the Great American Novel would have to in some way address or tackle the psychological effects of race or slavery on the American consciousness, which by its exploration favors books following the Romantic rather than the Realist tradition. That said, I think that certain novels that more explore the stoicism of the prototypical, idealized American are also quite valuable in the conversation. To my estimation, the novel that fulfills all of these requirements would either be William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! or Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Both novels function as children of a Romantic style of writing, both novels find at their core the conception and boggling over of race in the white (and black) mind respectively, and both exhibit the stoicism and the cracking of the stoicism of the people living in those realities (in Quentin Compson and the 'Invisible Man' Narrator, respectively). In terms of scope, Moby-Dick is pretty clearly the winner of the conversation, although at times Moby-Dick is so transcendent of the bounds of the American that it might be hard to list it as just a 'Great American Novel'. Stoner may be the greatest representation of an American novel where that stoicism dictates the novel and refuses to break, as to reaffirm the convention as opposed to the other novels mentioned. Overall though, it really is just a matter of preference, but certain qualifiers such as these make the narrowing of the topic a little simpler, as can be justified.
Very interesting points! Invisible Man would be a choice I'd back up
Think Infinite Jest would be the GAN if it was better (I loved it at first, now find it more flawed) I'd say the GAN is The Sound Of The Fury, but maybe my opinion is not so valid cuz
1) Im Spanish, not American
2) Havent read Gatsby
3) The Sound And The Fury is also my favourite novel so I may be kinda biased, for me it's the great Human Novel, but idk about the GAN.
Anyway, I think the GAN concept is kinda overcovered, I mean, I've heard a lot of people (And not ignorant ones) call Franzen's works great American novels. I think its an interesting debate, but we should focus on what is the great human novel (which doesnt equal the best novel ever)
Robert McCammon's Swan Song, post apocalyptic novel that goes from president, to mediocre professional wrestler, to young child with special powers, to bike riding demons, to hobos with magical items, to stock brokers, cannibals holding down a Wal-Mart type of store, and i forget the other 50 plus characters, but ya, read it nearly 10 years ago, still the best pleasure read. Doesn't expand on their history in America, just post nuclear war in America involving many types of people in America. Plus it is really good, maybe not literature though. Just a very good read. Plus it is nearly 1000 pages long and keeps you wanting more, one of the best guilty reads if you want to be entertained and not have to get philosophical about the world and the people that make it up. It is literally one of the best post apocalyptic books that exist and has been out for decades. If anyone is into that type of thing.
Grapes of Wraith?
Yes!
This summer i tried to read City on fire because you suggested it in one of your "best of year" video and because i read that it was considered the Great American Novel of 2015, therefore i thought of it as a reading like Underworld... the problem was that i tried to read it two times and i always stopped at the first 60/70 pages... maybe i'll retry in the future, now i'm enjoying an old classic like Moby Dick :)
The parallel with Underworld is one lots of people make (long novel, ambitious, New York, 1970s), but they're really apple and oranges. A better comparison would be Franzen; an even better comparison would be Dickens, or really any other serialized big 19th century work. I do think it's a great novel but it's no GAN, and it's by no means a must read. If you can't digest it, just leave it be ;)
Some of my contenders for The Great American Novel:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
A Confederacy of Dunces
To Kill a Mockingbird
Infinite Jest
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Slaughterhouse-Five
Cat's Cradle
The Catcher in the Rye
Naked Lunch
and The Red Badge of Courage
Confederacy of Dunces is actually an excellent pick, and offers a marvelous variety of characters and registers. It's definitely a Great New Orleans Novel and is a good candidate for the whole nation.
The_Bookchemist I never understood why it was considered even a good book. I recall when it was "discovered." I read it and understood why it was unpublished.
Agree with Prankster's choice of Huck Finn and The Red Badge of Courage; both truly great 19th century novels. Huck Finn would be hand's down the GAN if not the poor ending.
Personally, I actually do not mind the ending all too much although it certainly could have been much better.
Naked Lunch, The Red Badge of Courage and TKAMB don't really fit the bill.
"The Statue of Liberation." Love it!
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American Pastoral by Philip Roth.
Okay… I know we are talking about the great American novel but I have to ask where you got that incredible shirt?
Eustace Chrisholm and The Works by James Purdy is written in a freewheeling American idiom. I think it's his best work honestly. Plus it avoids the grandeur of an attempt to define our shared national character, which not the healthiest way to write. The G.A.N. as a genre can end up in a rather satinized and mawish place, and, for me, Underworld was about this process. The artist ends up in the Americana curio cabinet with the other kitsch. But that's my two cents.
Without a doubt the best American novel is Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison and also Watercolor Women / Opaque Men by Ana Castillo.
The_Bookchemist Where can I buy this t-shirt man?
I got it in a shop in Monza, my hometown - the company that makes it should be this one though! www.headlineshirts.net/
I don't think the Great American Novel exists. Most American novels capture the culture of a particular region but the country is too big and diverse to explain in entirety.
The Great Gatsby. Ended.
Jr by William Gaddis would have to me the great American novel as its about what Americas all about.... Money!
Blood Meridian. Because it makes me feel gross and dirty and I have to take a moment to process it. Just like American history
No William Faulkner?
Another great shirt!
Beloved by Toni Morrison
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
I think that novel explores a too specific time period and focus on a specific fringe group of people to be considered a Great American Novel.
BillyPilgrim also, it isn't good
It's a tad bit overrated, but I don't think it's bad
On the road- Kerouac.
In cold blood- Capote.
Hollywood- Bukowski.
Funny theyre all roman a clefs, are we just talking pure fiction?
Thoughts?
Would you posit there to be a Great Italian novel? Or any other nationalities for that matter?
Not really - first and foremost because I'm not sure anyone ever set off to write one! Seems to me like the literary canon as a whole serves roughly that same function, but no single work could be called The Great Italian Novel. Italy is a very fragmented cultural reality, but it seems to me that one would equally struggle to find, say, a Great Milanese Novel, or a Great Sicilian Novel. And the same could be said of other national literatures (though I'm far from an expert). I can't think of any Great German Novel, or a Great English Novel for that matter. Is Middlemarch the Great English Novel? Far From the Madding Crowd? One could make such a case, but it would seem to me that we'd be applying an awkward category to these works from the outside, rather than finding something that's inside the text... it's a topic I find very fascinating.
@@TheBookchemist As an Italian, I agree with you, although there are some “patriotic” 19th century novels that were in fact written “sort of” sort the intent of capturing the Italian values and the Italian national spirit: Cuore by Edmondo De Amicis or “Le Confessioni si un Italiano” by Ippolito Nievo come to my mind.
What about moby dick? I always see people writing about that book with the honour of the 'great american novel'. i personally could never see the connection beyond the surface level observations of hierarchical meritocracy, fraternity and capitalist enterprise.
Hey, great vid -- what about 10 or 15 min on 'The American Dream,' wd love to hear your take. And what do you think 'Americans' think it is? How has it become cheesy, as you say, what's still good about it if anything? And then, of course, all the shit in there that will influence the lit -- love yr channel!
I'll think about it man - thanks for the comments :)
...Have you read Huck Finn yet!
Only America could've produced a book like Huck Finn.
I'll be reading it pretty soon!
@@TheBookchemist ...I need to amend my statement 3 weeks ago. And, I have a different title to put forward as my vote for the Great American Novel.
I just re-read Huck Finn for maybe my 5th time...it is deeply weird. An incredible work, but deeply weird. It comes to us from an older, weirder America.
Understanding the postwar Gilded Age (when it came out) + prewar antebellum South (when it's set) may be necessary to follow much of the satire. The "race issue" is merely one aspect: one must also understand that dime novels & violent young boys was a topical issue at the time (much like video games today!) and Twain was raising his own children with some disdain for the moralizing "Sunday school reader" stories so popular in his day.
@@TheBookchemist So while I still feel it's a worthy "competitor for rightful title" to Great American Novel...I want to urge, with all my might, a different title:
"Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston.
This is, hands down, my vote. Not only that. I will re-read it once a year 'til I die. It is also, possibly, my favorite love story in all literature. Yet it is not, generically speaking, a romance. And, its characters sound so real because Hurston writes in their vernacular...but combined with some of the most lyrical, eerie, beautiful prose I've read.
Read "Their Eyes Were Watching God"! Even by the end of page 1, you'll know.
Huck Finn and it´s sequel, On the Road.
For my money, it's Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Other contenders: East of Eden and/or The Grapes of Wrath; To Kill a Mockingbird; Lonesome Dove, which is brilliant but grossly underrated. In short, to me the Great American novel is concerned with an experience that is uniquely American rather than a generalized human experience. In addition, while not necessarily having to be high art, it should have some literary merit. So, I think the list can be quite long and can encompass diverse authors from the 19th century to the present.
You're spot on with Invisible Man
Delillo? lol no
Moby Dick is the quintessential American novel.
Strictly as a mental exercise, you could set loose parameters for what should be included in such a topic. Setting... America. Breadth/scope... perhaps set in different parts of America, or travel... I think road trips, vehicles, the social habit of going from one coast to another, seeing such a journey as a cross section of America coupled with the JOY of such a pursuit. A broad spectrum of characters. Too many would declassify it from great to overbearing. Social classes clashing, perhaps a novel that devotes the fraction of each class of people to the amount discussed in the novel... hmm... unclear... Iike 1% of the book is about the ultra-rich, about half the book is about the middle class, and a sizeable portion is devoted to the lower class. It needn't be crude, but it could represent America in the financial sense. Amongst those characters, much like modern tv shows in which casts tend to be more representational of race, creed, age, gender, etc... the Great American novel could be a hodge-podge of characters and how their conflict drives the plot, victimizes others, benefits others. Perhaps plot points that include national contention (climate crisis, school shootings, corruption, etc.) See this is fun, yes?
Bukowski's Ham n Rye, maybe? Roth's Plot Against America shows us a certain face of American life
Plot Against America is actually a brilliant pick because it's true that behind the apparency of being about a very specific thing (and falling into a very specific genre) it's actually a broader reflection on American life at large.
I can see why this has few thumbs up, granted it's a hard topic to pin down when you're an outsider but this could have been better without the generalizations; there's little to take away here, the comments are more enlightening. This is from six years ago, I will try something newer.
Huckleberry Finn
off topic, I know, but you vaguely look like Johnny Greenwood from Radiohead
Have you read Ham on Rye?
Nope - I admit I've never read any Bukowski actually!
Yo Bookchemist dude Ha--- gotta do Buck's " Post Office" ...but really- something I been waiting for-- How about some Norman Mailer? "Tough Guys Don't Dance"
over the top one liners- twisted -true Americana
Ham On Rye
Definitely Moby Dick.
catcher in the rye
Sandra Weilbrenner Its more like a novel about a character thousands of people can relate to about anywhere in the world than about any utterly American thing in it
American Gods. Checks all the boxes and encompasses the nebulous concept brilliantly.
To show the two sides of American society, how about The Great Gatsby and The Grapes of Wrath?
Definitely NOT Moby Dick, as it is less a novel than a handbook for whalers. The "novel" part was probably less than a quarter of it. Ahab was a fascinating character, but there was just too little of him. All the details of whaling (some quaintly anachronistic) were just tedious.
"A handbook for whalers" - possibly the most merciless review Moby Dick ever got :D
The_Bookchemist And a good review of it. There are aspects of novel in the beginning and at the end, sandwiching a handbook of sailing, natural history, etc.
Totally disagree. To me, not only is Moby-Dick a brilliantly wrought novel, it is the first American post-modern novel. Specifying "the novel part" is missing the picture.
@@malexander4094 Maybe. But Moby Dick was also the first novel that US academia decided to promote as “the” great American novel, for a sort of sense of inadequacy that American literature felt when comparing itself to others. If it sounds like a conspiracy, it’s because in a certain sense, it was. Moby Dick was rammed down students’ throats as the GAN, and that ended up convincing many.
I think the idea just shows their inferiority complex toward Europeans. And while we are talking about it, there could be a great novel in Asia, Australia, Africa ... There is no more stupid question than that
You guys are still mad we whipped your asses 250 years ago:) Jokes aside, I'll agree the whole debate is silly.
Why do you rarely read novels written by women?