Posted on 07/07/2025 7:33:00 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Not to disappoint Philip Roth, but the fact that you title your book, The Great American Novel, does not make it a great American novel. My definition of Great American Novel is pretty straightforward: a first rate fiction, by an American, that tells us something large and expansive about the American experience. One other condition—it has to be readable.
A caveat upfront for the sensitive: seven of the ten novels listed below use the word “nigger,” not the infantile “n-word,” but the actual word itself. For the last many years, we have collectively refrained from using “nigger,” even in an explanatory context, as a form of dhimmitude to our woke overlords. By censoring books that use the word, we deny blacks their central role in the American experience. Time to get off our knees.
Here goes, starting from 10. Feel free to tell me what I got right and what I got wrong.
10—No Country for Old Men
Although many critics think Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian the more likely candidate for Great American novel, I thought it too dark and cynical, not to mention bloody, to qualify. McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men has more heart. Those who have seen the Academy Award-winning film, know the book. The Coen brothers adapted the 2005 novel almost word for word. The book is not exactly a stroll in the park, but it gives the reader someone to root for.
9—Gone With The Wind
A huge bestseller when published in 1936. Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind has never fallen out of popularity. This sprawling, arguably feminist, epic of the Civil War-era South was ranked second only to the Bible in popularity as late as 2014. Readers have gone underground in the woke era, but the tale is too powerful to suppress. As the ever hopeful Scarlett reminds us at the end of the book and movie, “After all, tomorrow is another day.”
8—Grapes of Wrath
While hitchhiking one January long ago through the pre-homogenized South, I caught a ride out of New Orleans with some Mexican migrants of dubious legality. Soon after, they stopped for three runaway Texas girls who joined me in the back of the flatbed. Thinking I was having too good a time, the driver insisted we trade places. Later that might, while I was driving, a back tire fell completely off, and the spares all bounced out of the truck. After about two hours searching for the spares and replacing the missing tire, we warmed up around a huge bonfire. Said one of the girls to no one in particular, “Kiss my ass if this ain’t the Grapes of Wrath,” That’s how universal was the truth that Steinbeck captured in his 1939 novel, and thirty-some years later it still rang true even to teenage runaways.
7—Confessions of Nat Turner
William Styron deservedly won the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for this sympathetic, fictional recreation of the confessions of the real Nat Turner, the man who led a bloody slave insurrection in 1831 Virginia. No sooner did Styron win the Pulitzer, however, than critics countered with “William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond. The arguments boiled down to—how dare a white writer try to imagine how a black slave might have thought. The book has been largely memory holed ever since.
6—Absalom, Absalom
Although much of William Faulkner’s opus is unreadable or nearly so, Faulkner’s 1936 novel, Absalom, Absalom!, is not. It chronciles the hair-rising tale of an up-from- nothing plantation owner in Civil War-era Mississippi. Imagine a sweaty Gone With the Wind without a hint of glamor.
5—The Bonfire of the Vanities
Distressed by the failure of contemporary novelists to capture the great carnival of American life, “Right Stuff” journalist Tom Wolfe decided to fill the void. He did so masterfully in this prophetic epic of life gone haywire in 1980s New York City. Although comic in tone, The Bonfire of the Vanities captures the emerging racial dynamic that would paralyze urban America for years to come. Skip the movie version, the worst botch of a good book in memory.
4—Moby Dick
For years, I quietly concealed the darkest possible stain on the soul of any American studies Ph.D.—I had never read Moby Dick. A few years ago, as a form of bucket list atonement, I dove into this 1851 classic. I speed read through the whale particulars but otherwise a worthy read. What no one had told me was the book was comic. Maybe, I thought, no one had actually ever read it. To put the plot in contemporary context, imagine Donald Trump as the white whale and the Democratic leadership as Captain Ahab. Spoiler alert: the whale wins.
3—American Pastoral
Set In Newark, NJ—the setting for my 2023 non-fiction book Untenable—the 1997 American Pastoral is the late Philip Roth’s best candidate for Great American novel. I confess to being partial in that we tell much the same story, namely how the political and racial upheavals of the 1960s derailed the American dream. Roth would never admit it, but his Newark experience turned him, like multiple thousands of us, conservative.
2—Huckleberry Finn
I was halfway through Ron Chernow’s newest blockbuster Mark Twain when I decided to call it quits. Writing through the George Floyd era, the skittish Chernow was exactly the wrong biographer for the job. Instead of letting Huck and Jim float down the Mississippi, Chernow continually stops the voyage to dissect their understanding of race and class. For the record, Ron, calling a “slave” an “enslaved person” adds nothing to the conversation but syllables. Twain was a great observer of human nature, but he was first and foremost a humorist. By the way, gas in Hannibal two weeks ago was $2.49 a gallon. I recommend the Becky Thatcher diner. To the generations coming up forbidden to read Huckleberry Finn, don’t expect to see Becky working the register.
1—Lonesome Dove
When you are sad to see the book end after 800 or so pages, you know you have read one hell of book. Larry McMurtry’s 1985 classic has it all: great chacters, epic setting, brilliant diaolgue, high drama, ample humor, and a little romance. Unlike many rcent westerns, it resepects the characters, their vision, and the country that gave them free play. The mini-series is excellent too.
And Ben Hur swept the nation, written by a civil war general and governor of New Mexico Territory there in New Mexico.
A masterpiece.
Another fine selection, two years before the mast.
Captains courageous is in a class of its own. Both the book and the film.
My definition of Great American Novel is pretty straightforward: a first rate fiction, by an American, that tells us something large and expansive about the American experience. One other condition—it has to be readable.
Hemingway is my favorite. But his stories are largely Americans in Europe, Africa, or the Caribbean, not so much “the American experience” suggested for inclusion here.
I think Fitzgerald should be on this list.
I would have included:
To Kill a Mockingbird
A Tree Grew in Brooklyn
Red Badge of Courage
The Great Gatsby
“American Pastoral” is probably Roth’s best book. It forms an informal trilogy with “I Married a Communist” and “The Plot Against America,” but is better than either. Some of Roth’s early stories are also good. A lot of what he wrote isn’t that great. “Nemesis” wasn’t that bad. “Indignation” wasn’t that good. Roth undercuts himself with too much childishness about sex.
“The Sound and the Fury” and “As I Lay Dying” are Faulkner’s great modernist books. His later work is more in a popular/conventional vein. “Absalom, Absalom” and “Go Down, Moses” are perhaps his most “American” works — mythic and with a lot about race.
Although they are non-fiction, Mark Twain’s “Roughing It” and “Life on the Mississippi” should have a place in any list of great American books. I’d also make room for “The Great Gatsby,” though we probably hear way too much about it. Edith Wharton’s and Willa Cather’s books might also deserve a mention.
I read the entire John Galt speech! Every word. Lol.
The author of this post has pretty much no idea what he is talking about.
Catch-22.
or Jacqueline Susann?
"ah yes, the giants"
Potrnoys Commplaint.
**That’s ten. Not the ten I would choose.**
I last read a novel over 35 years ago. While it was interesting, I felt disappointment in that I spent all that time reading fiction instead of an actual story about real people.
I wrote a Bible study book, over the course of about 7 years (recently adding another chapter that closes it out better). That was difficult, because the subject matter cannot be played with or altered.
I remember thinking at times, during the project, that writing a novel would be much easier, since there is the liberty to make things up.
Literary purists might disagree, even vehemently, due to its subject matter and overall low reader circulation, but its translation into film became a core influence on many Americans' behavior and life outlook. It's a work of fiction that many viewers ingested and integrated into their mental frame to thus affect their reality. They live with their translation of it and even pass that mindset and outlook onto successive generations.
It's not just what they personally took from it, it's reinforced by others around them who also viewed the cinematic interpretation of the novel.
LOL
Last of the Mohicans, The Deer Slayer, and the rest of The Leatherstocking Tales by James Fenimore Cooper, were very good.
...calling a “slave” an “enslaved person” adds nothing to the conversation but syllables.
Thanks for this thread. Hearing various FReepers' opinions ...just great.
Most boring list ever. I hated reading the ones I had too. Quite surprised the worst book on earth wasn’t listed….beowolf!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.