I guess Judith Krantz, Danielle Steele, and Sidney Sheldon didn't make the list. Instead, he's given us a choice of the following:
Hawthorne,The Scarlet Letter
Melville, Moby-Dick
Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
James, Portrait of a Lady
Twain, Huckleberry Finn
Cather, My Antonia
Wharton, The Age of Innocence
Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Warren, All the King's Men
Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March
Ellison, Invisible Man
Chandler, The Long Goodbye
Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Updike, Rabbit, Run
Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor
Heller, Catch-22
Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
Nabokov, Pale Fire
Roth, The Great American Novel
At the time I cast my first vote, Huck Finn was in the lead, with the Tequila Mockingbird flapping closely at his heels, while Moby-Dick swam a distant third.
I've always had a difficult time deciding which novel is best of all American works. Some days I love the way Twain marries humor with the deepest conscience. Other days, I savor the poetry of Ray Bradbury's prose in Dandelion Wine (but I guess that sorta gets tossed aside as a "collection of short stories along a theme", so he -- and they -- went with F. 451. ). Still, there are times when I seek the comfort of a crisp, powerful piece such as Raymond Chandler put together in The Long Goodbye. I'm not a big fan of Nabokov or Roth or Wharton, and I can't say why, other than stylistically they don't suit me. It's a little like asking do I like Jimmy Choo shoes. They're cool and all, but I'd rather keep my Red Wings or leave my feet completely nekkid.
Still, if I had my druthers, I'd have put To the Last Man by Zane Grey near the top of my list.
I guess the real fact of the matter is, "best" and "favorite" don't always mean the same thing.
1 comment:
What on earth is Roth's "Great American Novel" doing on this list?? Phhhttt.
I tried to read it several times and found the first and last sections to be the worst piles of mental ooze that I've ever seen. And the stuff in between wasn't all that remarkable, even though it was about baseball.
Other than that, I sort of liked the list. The reason? Even though I'm a semi-literate Philistine, I've actually read seven of the books listed (and none in classic comics format), and I can sort of remember two or three of them.
The one that stuck with me the most is Catch-22.
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