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Dark horse picks for the Great American Novel
My experiment has been run, and I must blog for a few days about The Great American Novel. I won't give you my top pick today, nor my immediate runner-ups, but here are a few odd choices which at least crossed my mind...
Herman Melville - Mardi. Guess what, another obsessive quest. Imagine Melville retelling Dante, but hating Christianity and seeking to revise it. This is no less conceptual than Moby Dick, anthropologically more sophisticated, and utterly metaphysical. Fans of Herodotus should pick this one up. Typee is also much underrated, it is more than just a popular novel.
Vladimir Nabokov - Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle. I had to read the first two hundred pages twice and I still do not quite understand them. The book is a dizzying array of puns, word plays, criss-crossing plots and voices, a treatise on the nature of time, and a catalog of erotic perversions, including incest. This is Nabokov at the peak of his powers, much better than Lolita. Someday I might think it is better than Pale Fire. And yes it is fun reading, whether or not you know what is going on.
Ender's Game trilogy, by Orson Scott Card. These books are about virtual reality, the brutality of youth, game theory, the nature of war, and the implausibility of speciesism. One hundred years from now the series will still be changing people's lives.
Some fat potboiler probably belongs here but I can't bring myself to write down any particular title. Am I too hooked into the analytical and the symbolically complex?
Soon you will get my winner and the runner-ups. Natasha tells me her winner is Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel, although she warns she read it in Russian when she was nineteen. Comments are open; do not yet put down your winner, but you are free to list your dark horses.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on February 9, 2006 at 10:48 AM in Books | Permalink
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Comments
Wow! I read Ender's Game in High School for some project. I really liked it, and don't think I ever really thought of it in terms of ideology at that time. Furthermore, I didn't even know it was a trilogy. I will have to get those again. Who knew that back then, in my days of government education that I had a capitalist spark ignited.
Posted by: JT at Feb 9, 2006 11:29:45 AM
When you talk about the Great American Novel, are you referring to a novel that most accurately represents the spirit of the United States at the time of its publication, or in general the best novel written by an American author?
Some dark horse picks, definitely not front-runners:
JD Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
Philip K Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Posted by: Zac at Feb 9, 2006 11:31:10 AM
I believe there is a fundamental flaw in trying to name a single Great American Novel, because the American experience is so ridiculously diverse. Still, some dark horse candidates:
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas—A eulogy for the American dream. The passages about how and why the 60s counterculture failed are poignant and witty and insightful (pp. 68 and 178 of the Vintage paperback edition).
Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian— in some of the most poetic language I’ve ever read, McCarthy captures the brutality of the American frontier and Americans’ perverse drive to conquer. "If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now?"
The novel I started in college but never finished (a claim I share with many others).
Posted by: halleck23 at Feb 9, 2006 11:31:53 AM
Ender's Game is also noteworthy as the finest novelization of a short story I've ever encountered. Multiple additional story lines added to the original without any sense of filler. The short story stands on its own even after you've read the novel.
I'm not big on thick potboilers, but I consider Louis L'Amour the greatest writer of American fiction, distinct from any judgement of American fiction. Note that he didn't simply write within the brief era associated with Westerns. The heroes in his tales of the American frontier span from members of Shakespeare's audience to Korean War veterans.
Posted by: triticale at Feb 9, 2006 11:54:09 AM
Heller's Catch 22 and something (not sure what) by Saul Bellow. Ragtime by Doctorow.
Given the "new morality" in the US, let's add Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, just for fun.
Posted by: Martin at Feb 9, 2006 12:06:32 PM
some dark horses:
Harlot's Ghost ~ Norman Mailer
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre ~ B. Traven (does the Great American Novel have to be set in the US?)
Red Harvest ~ Dashiell Hammett
But it really has to be The Adventures of Augie March. No question.
Posted by: ricardo at Feb 9, 2006 12:11:03 PM
Ender's Game is a fine series, but I have found that Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and The Diamond Age are even better. Why?
a) Snow Crash is a wonderful exploration of post-nationalism, cyberspace, language and the near future
b) The Diamond Age is a wonderful primer on how modern computers work, an exploration of an even further post-nationalist future, nanotechnology, the evolution of the Internet and the ramifications of a "post-needs" society.
c) No aliens or Ansibles.
To some degree, Snow Crash could be considered a sequel to Cryptonomicon, and The Diamond Age seems to be a sequel of sorts to Snow Crash.
I think they both show more of the 'American Gung Ho' spirit than Ender's Game, which is more of a world-government style 'everyone bands together' epic.
Posted by: John Brothers at Feb 9, 2006 12:12:03 PM
Perhaps an obvious choice, but surely Gatsby's in with a shout?
Posted by: Matthew at Feb 9, 2006 12:19:19 PM
Don DeLillo. Surely.
Posted by: Joerg at Feb 9, 2006 12:30:23 PM
Tyler-
What exactly do you mean by the Ender's Game "Triology?" There are at least 7 sequels I'm aware of. Three about Ender in a very distant time on a very distant world and four about Bean on Earth immidiately following the original book. I think it would be better just to say Ender's Game, because while both of the seperate threads of the Ender sequels and the Bean sequels are quite good, they don't have the simultaneous intensity and introspection of the original novel. (Ender's sequels being largely contemplative, Bean's being heavy on the action).
But I think Ender's Game is a great pick. Science fiction has no right to be so profound and so entertaining all at once.
Posted by: mtc at Feb 9, 2006 12:34:46 PM
Dark horses, but defensible:
To Kill a Mockingbird, because the Great American Novel really should be something that is actually accessible to the average American (which sad to say Nabakov is not)
The Big Sleep, because Phillip Marlowe is the archetypical American, both as we are and as we wish ourselves to be.
Posted by: dave at Feb 9, 2006 12:39:16 PM
As Zac asks, I always thought the "Great American Novel" was not the "Greatest Novel by An American", but rather the entire genre of novels specifically expressing (or critiquing) a version of the American Dream. Which usually means it has a journey or attempt at self-reinvention; a crazily optimistic goal; and a sense that even if the original goal fails either that the struggle was noble or that some hope remains for someone else to try again.
Ender's game is a great choice for this, but it wouldn't be if the novel ended where the short story did.
My dark horse would be the Foundation Trilogy (goals don't get any bigger than that!).
I never understood why people like Snow Crash so much. perhaps I read it too late, after all the virtual reality and tech ideas in it came to seem obvious.
Posted by: DK at Feb 9, 2006 12:49:40 PM
The Monkey-Wrench Gang, Ed Abbey. True, it's in the 'male fantasy' genre, but so's Huck Finn.
Posted by: Tim at Feb 9, 2006 12:50:20 PM
"Am I too hooked into the analytical and the symbolically complex?"
Yes, based on your pick of Mardi. After the first 200 pp. or so it really ceases to be a novel at all, becoming something more like Invisible Cities. Moby Dick is also structurally deviant as novels go, but it is undeniably a novel plus, as opposed to a novel manque. Typee is an interesting choice, but being "good of its kind" does not a great American novel make.
My darkhorse "literary" pick would have to be The House of the Seven Gables. Less sententious than The Scarlet Letter, with a strong sense of the forces pulling at industrial America.
My darkhorse pick among "fat potboilers" would be Gone with the Wind. Yes, I'm serious. It's actually a good historical novel, and even at its most outrageous (its portrayal of Reconstruction) it is, as far as I've been able to tell, pretty close to the conventional wisdom among historians when it was written (mid-20s to mid-30s).
Posted by: John P. at Feb 9, 2006 12:52:16 PM
I suppose the criteria for the great american novel should not be constrained to the intrinsic/local merits of the book. I think it should also consider such things as the influence it may have on shaping an American ethos. Books in this vein include Uncle Tom's Cabin, a wonderful book, not tremendously innovative, but nevertheless so powerful that upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lincoln said (or is said to have said) "So you're the little lady that started this war." Clearly a book believed to have (in jest) precipitated the Civil War merits attention, not for aesthetic reasons, but for cultural. I suppose this is what people are getting at when they suggest something like Atlas Shrugged. Not near the winner, but in this vein, I would include Elmer Gantry, Main Street and Babbit by Sinclair Lewis. These books captured the red state blue state tensions 80 years ago. While not filled with stylish fireworks, or exquisite prose, they were Lewis' attempt to, as he said in his Nobel acceptance speech, "give America a literature worthy of her vastness."
What is this, Literature as geography? Add that to "obsessive quest".
Posted by: Horse Whisperer at Feb 9, 2006 1:01:54 PM
Martin Amis called Augie March the Great American Novel.
Posted by: harryh at Feb 9, 2006 1:15:38 PM
I don't suppose Stranger in a Strange Land is "dark horse" enough...
Posted by: Bergamot at Feb 9, 2006 1:17:49 PM
Second Gone With the Wind. Margaret Mitchell managed to create at least four of the most memorable characters in fiction, and while one has to ignore the blatant racism, as a work of art it gets far too little credit.
Posted by: Jane Galt at Feb 9, 2006 1:24:11 PM
I think that the contribution of the GAN has to do a great deal with the timing. How about picking them by decade or era? Or, even by issue topic. I'd put my dark horse on Dick's, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
Posted by: Conks at Feb 9, 2006 1:51:58 PM
To Kill a Mockingbird and Grapes of Wrath would be my suggestions. I could even see something by John Updike, maybe Run, Rabbit. Might want to include something from the 19th century, too, but i don't know which one. When i think of the GAN, i think of things that are universally accepted, but not too far "out there". Catcher in the Rye would be okay, too.
Posted by: mike at Feb 9, 2006 2:02:53 PM
I agree with Matthew that The Great Gatsby deserves the nod. The many Honorable Mentions should include Raintree County (Ross Lockridge) and Guard of Honor (James Gould Cozzens). Both deal with the impact of America's greatest wars on the lives of ordinary people.
Posted by: Ralph Hitchens at Feb 9, 2006 2:15:37 PM
Ayn Rand? Are you serious?You may like her politics, but I would assume that actual artistic merits play some part in this contest--criteria which would immediatly elminate anything Ayn Rand has ever written. Read her books and it becomes obvious that english is not her first language--and not in the good Nabakovian obsessed-with-english-as-a-beautiful-tool way. Incidentally, Lolita would be my pick, though I have yet to read Ada.
Posted by: Van at Feb 9, 2006 2:21:53 PM
Dos Passos, USA
Posted by: Kent Guida at Feb 9, 2006 2:31:28 PM
Sorry to comment again, but I wanted to register a bit of a "complaint" with this topic. I thought that Tyler was going to be blogging on a subject he knows little or nothing about? Our illustrious MR bloggers frequently discuss current and historical literature, American and otherwise.
We need to not let Dr. Cowen off the hook so easily next time.
Posted by: Zac at Feb 9, 2006 2:42:49 PM
The first dark horse that comes to my mind is Walter Miller's _A Canticle for Liebowitz_, though it may be the great 20th century American novel. It probably doesn't have enough freakishly weird and depressing Southerners for academia, though.
That's a good question, for whom is this the Great American Novel? For academia, NYC intelligencia, the average reader, Tyler Cowen, or other?
Posted by: Sandy at Feb 9, 2006 2:43:44 PM
I would hope that Tyler talks about the *concept* of the Great American Novel rather than simply discuss the features and merits of individual candidates.
For all its cliche-ness, I'm not convinced that "the great American novel" is real - I suspect that everyone knows about it but nobody knows what it means. Tyler should discuss what it means for a novel to be great, and to be American, and to somehow fulfil the nebulous archetype of TGAN.
After all, the experiment is to blog about "other topics". We've seen plenty of posts on MR describing favorite foods, favorite restaurants, favorite music, favorite artists, and so forth. Ruminations on the topic in general rather than any particular instance would be a much more interesting exercise.
Posted by: eddie at Feb 9, 2006 3:03:34 PM
Of course Zac (two posts above) is right, but the readers voted.
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Feb 9, 2006 3:06:46 PM
Some of my dark horses:
Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins
Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
Posted by: J. Goard at Feb 9, 2006 3:18:15 PM
BTW, I'm thinking more "confronts themes of particular importance to some kind of American collective psyche", and less "caused or presaged major historical change" or "captured a time period in all its diversity". I've taken this tack mostly because I'm not very enthusiastic about novels in those latter categories, and so haven't read most of the major ones, let alone enough others to have a point of comparison.
Posted by: J. Goard at Feb 9, 2006 3:27:49 PM
Just want to add a heartfelt note of thanks to Van for daring in these pages to point out that Rand was not a writer in any sense of this thread.
(I might add that she was the Karl Marx of the right. But that would only stir up a hornet's nest of fury and cause this dialogue to veer wildly off the track Tyler intended. So I won't.)
Augie March seems to be the choice among the thread's literati for the Bellow work. Can't argue there.
Posted by: Martin at Feb 9, 2006 3:31:08 PM
My vote is cast for "The Sotweed Factor" by John Barth. Set in colonial America, but with just a splash of postmodernism.
And there's game theory. And syphillis. And hudibrastic!
Posted by: John at Feb 9, 2006 3:35:12 PM
Anything by Borges or Cortazar. Think about it.
Posted by: WC j at Feb 9, 2006 4:15:09 PM
More darkhorses:
Absalom, Absalom, Faulkner;
The Moviegoer, Walker Percey;
Call It Sleep, Henry Roth;
We Have Always Lived In The Castle,
Shirley Jackson;
A Fan's Notes, Frederick Exley
Posted by: alan at Feb 9, 2006 4:21:19 PM
Maybe you could talk about the economics of novels. Why did novels originate when they did (when was that?), and how have they changed over the years? Are there too many novels being written? What does the author of a typical novel earn?
Posted by: Paul Dietz at Feb 9, 2006 4:55:42 PM
If this is a series of blog articles about a subject Tyler's supposed to know little about, then it seems like he should spend some time discussing what makes a Great American Novel such. What about these novels qualify them for consideration? Otherwise, we'll just get a list of books Tyler thinks are Great, that are written by or about Americans (or America), and happen to be in Novel form. That seems weak to me. For a novel to qualify it seems like it should deal with the idea of America - what it means to be an American, the problems and tragedies (as well as the hopes) of the American experience, etc. (which someone rightly noted is ridiculously diverse). Perhaps on the next list of titled we'll be told why they seem to qualify for consideration.
Someone once said that where Britain has its major social division along class lines, America's great divide is along racial lines. This seems right. America also had one great, profound historical divide that will (or at least should) always live somewhere in the back of the minds of those who claim to be Americans - the Civil War. So there are two big issues to consider for the Great American Novel (not necessary conditions - the diversity of the American experience allows that many things will qualify, but sufficient to be counted as essentially American).
And what deals with these two divides better than anything I've encountered?
Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom.
Still a darkhorse (and not my winner), but always to be considered, and for the reasons I mention.
Posted by: k at Feb 9, 2006 5:23:21 PM
Dark horse novels? Obviously Black Beauty and My Friend Flicka.
Posted by: triticale at Feb 9, 2006 5:39:01 PM
Second on Absolom, Absolom, & Blood Meridian, for the same reasons mentioned above; would also suggest: All the King's Men; and Gatsby probably can't be ignored. Include Arrowsmith with the 3 Lewis novels mentioned, maybe Drieser's "American Tragedy"....
Shocked (and thankful) nobody has mentioned Confederacy of Dunces, although probably deserves a revisit after/due to recent history.
Posted by: LaSota at Feb 9, 2006 5:52:14 PM
Fun posting and blog-game! But one question?
"Typee is also much underrated, it is more than just a popular novel."
There's something wrong with a book that's just a popular novel?
Posted by: Michael Blowhard at Feb 9, 2006 6:21:03 PM
Based on nothing more compelling than personal preferences, I must nominate The Barefoot Brigade, by Douglas Jones. Now for the $20 question: has anyone else read it?
Posted by: Noel at Feb 9, 2006 6:49:13 PM
The Great Gatsby
Huckleberry Finn
Babbit (sp?)
I am a big fan of Sci-Fi, but, IMHO, the Great American Novel should be set in America, and reflect on American culture.
Posted by: Doug at Feb 9, 2006 10:08:50 PM
Ah, but Doug, Ender's Game is in America... just one radically changed by world catastrophe and supernationalism brought on by said catastrophe (make up a crisis and you're allowed to do anything... first rule of civilization)
Posted by: Neal at Feb 9, 2006 10:41:06 PM
No contest. Huck Fin, Tom Sawyer, Wizard of Oz.
Posted by: dearieme at Feb 9, 2006 10:44:29 PM
Marge Piercy, Gone to Soldiers. A wonderful WWII-era tapestry of lives on the war front and the home front.
Edith Wharton, Age of Innocence. Or almost anything else she wrote.
Jane Smiley, Moo. A weaving of the lives of undergraduates and faculty at Moo University, a large land-grant state university in the Midwest.
And, yes, Faulkner (though I would pick Light in August).
Posted by: O at Feb 9, 2006 11:16:23 PM
Oops, forgot some good ones (which I see have been mentioned): Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (and also Main Street); and John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath.
Also:
Armistead Maupin, Tales of the City.
Richard Wright, Native Son.
Posted by: O at Feb 9, 2006 11:25:50 PM
The Caine Mutiny. Wouk made a meta-claim for the designation by having one of the characters furiously working on The Great American Novel throughout his novel.
But I mostly think of all the young men (~20-40) I meet who say that they are writing the great american novel. Women who are working on novels never say this. So other than the occasional literary proclamation, I think of the GAN as a tremendous number of unfinished manuscripts, whose authors have resolved their identity crises in more conventional ways. A critical survey of these might reveal a set of themes or another Confederacy of Dunces.
That said- howabout The Outsiders by SE Hinton?
Posted by: Matt Fulvio at Feb 10, 2006 12:04:12 AM
Please, anything BUT The Great American Novel by Roth. The first chapter, especially, is dreadful.
But perhaps THAT is the challenge, Tyler: Blog about Roth's The Great American Novel. Why did Roth write that first chapter the way he did? How well did Roth capture or not capture the essence of baseball? Or was he even trying to?
Posted by: The Eclectic Econoclast at Feb 10, 2006 5:21:49 AM
My other dark horse picks:
1. For Faulkner, "As I lay Dying"
2. "Deliverance". (actually, that would be my high school english teacher's pick. really.)
3. "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
4. Breakfast at Tiffany's, the novel
5. and I second the mentions of "Death Comes for the Archbishop" and "Gone With the Wind"
Posted by: DK at Feb 10, 2006 8:21:59 AM
Second the recommendation for "As I Lay Dying". My other picks would be Nabokov's "Pale Fire" and (here's a dark horse) Brad Leithauser's "Hence".
The great Mid-Atlantic novel, on the other hand, is "Money", by Martin Amis.
Posted by: Derek Lowe at Feb 10, 2006 10:28:43 AM
Here's my votes :
Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey
Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
East of Eden, Steinbeck
Pot Boiler : Kavalier and Clay
I do agree with Enders Game. All the sequels are very good but nothing as outstanding as the original book. Thanks for reminding me of that book, it's one of my all time favs and will have to be revisited.
Posted by: Sarah at Feb 10, 2006 11:58:46 AM
Some of these "dark horses" seem awfully mainline canonical to me--Gatsby, Huck, Scarlet Letter, even Pale Fire if pomo is the direction you're coming from.
My answer (sorry if I'm not supposed to give you my top dark horse--I'm not sure of the rules): Miss Lonelyhearts.
Posted by: js at Feb 10, 2006 12:35:22 PM
Fight Club is a terribly mediocre book. Fincher did the book justice with an excellent movie.
Gatsby has to be the first among equals although I have sentimental leanings towards Catcher in the Rye.
LaSota's comments are right on the mark.
Posted by: Farns at Feb 10, 2006 11:33:30 PM
Absalom, Absalom! is not a "dark horse" for the Great American Novel.
It *is* the Great American Novel.
Posted by: Anderson at Feb 13, 2006 6:18:12 PM
Technically its "The Great American Novel" by Philip Roth.
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