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Best Novel Ever Written
Self | June 25, 2002 | PJ-Comix

Posted on 06/25/2002 7:02:06 PM PDT by PJ-Comix

Okay, so far this evening we've had threads about the Worst War Movie Ever Made and about the Best War Movie Ever Made. Now I will ratchet up the discussions a notch with the BEST Novel Ever Written. Remember this is novel which means FICTION. I exclude science fiction from this category. In my opinion novel writing reached a peak in the late 40s and early 50s. Since then we've had some very good novels but not of the quality of that era.

So my nomination for the BEST novel ever written is an easy one: From Here To Eternity by James Jones. If you haven't read it, then READ IT. It is incredible beyond belief. In fact it was so good, that when Norman Mailer read it, he declared it to be better than his own The Naked And The Dead which is quite an admission for a novelist as egotistical as Norman Mailer to make.

One secret for the quality of From Here To Eternity (in addition to it's outstanding writing) is that James Jones based most of the characters on real people (including himself if you look closely). When I read From Here To Eternity I was stunned by the high quality of the writing. It was the only book I have ever read where I slowed down my reading rate because I didn't want to get to the end. I wanted it to go on and on.

Yes, the movie version was great (although the idea that soldiers would pay Donna Reed just for the privelege of chatting with her in private seemed ridiculous) but after you read the novel, it pales in comparison.


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To: PJ-Comix
Discrimination?

I wonder, tho'. I notice that the Modern American Classics Library list of "the 100 Best Books of the Twentieth Century" included several mysteries--such as The Maltese Falcon--but NO SF.

Do you agree that Mystery novels are ALSO kept in a separate section in the library?

I think the library does this for the convenience of its patrons, but they DON'T compartmentalize these novels as "outside the pale."

I think SF ought to be included. In fact, the lines between SF and other genres have become so blurred anyway...is Frankenstein "real" literature, or is it not SF? How about Brave New World, or 1984?

The best SF writers I know of do NOT restrict themselves to reading SF. In fact, they tend to be more well-read--certainly wider-read--than just about anyone else.

I think we need to cease with the artificial labels. A novel is a novel, period.

61 posted on 06/25/2002 8:39:47 PM PDT by Illbay
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To: Illbay
Once you get down to it, there are more sub-genres of SF than there are genres in literature, I think. Hard, soft, cyberpunk, comic, time travel, satire, science fantasy, utopian/dystopian, space opera... throw in high, low, medieval, pan-celtic, arthurian, other historical, epic, light, dark, and milk chocolate fantasy and you've got a serious range. What other genre boasts that? Where else are your boundaries so free that you can talk about anything and most people won't even realize you're doing it?
62 posted on 06/25/2002 8:46:42 PM PDT by JenB
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To: JenB
Ever notice how the SF section is prominent, but the so-called great works are buried with the cookbooks?

Because way too many folks are reading SF (or Fantasy) almost exclusively because they think it is more FUN to read. To me, a lot of SF is like eating highly calorated air. Look, I've read and enjoyed a lot of SF but at some point I decided to check out literary novels.

Nothing wrong with reading Asimov or Vonnegut but how about reading them AND James Jones AND Robert Penn Warren AND Ralph Ellison AND Tolstoy? As to the SF ghetto, way too many people volutarily put themselves in that ghetto by reading SF and Fantasy almost exclusively.

63 posted on 06/25/2002 8:50:52 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
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To: Illbay
The best SF writers I know of do NOT restrict themselves to reading SF. In fact, they tend to be more well-read--certainly wider-read--than just about anyone else.

Too bad too many of their fans don't have the same attitude. However, I do know that Asimov read widely and wrote the best guide to Shakespeare that I've ever seen.

64 posted on 06/25/2002 8:53:48 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
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To: Sword_of_Gideon
3. Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson

We were about a hundred miles out of Barstow when the last of the ether began to take hold. My attorney was pouring beer on his chest to facilitate the tanning process. Nevermind telling him about the bats, I thought, he'll see them soon enough...

65 posted on 06/25/2002 8:53:56 PM PDT by HairOfTheDog
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To: HairOfTheDog
Now, this is just my personal predilection, but I tend NOT to put "consensus-favorite" books on lists like this. Bear in mind that I have read LOTR too many times to count--and I absolutely ADORE SF/Fantasy. It's my preference, in fact, all things being equal.

But it's just too easy to say "LOTR is my favorite," I guess. I think in that case "favorite" has to be qualified.

To tell the truth, I don't enjoy Tolkien's work because he was an outstanding writer--he was good, but he was too steeped in the cadence and strange turn-of-phrase of the Middle English of which he was a scholar. Rather, I enjoy it so much because of the STORY. But there isn't much beyond the story, Tolkien himself repeatedly said he was NOT writing an allegory, or an autobiography, or anything of the sort. He simply wanted to try his hand at crafting something along the line of a Nordic saga. He wanted to create a mythology.

As LITERATURE in the fullest sense of the word, LOTR is just "above average." The STORY is wonderful, but the prose is of a singular, even crude style. I don't mind that--I even enjoy it--but it is idiosyncratic in the same way as, say, Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes" series. In that case, too, the STORIES were fabulous and keep you riveted, but the style of writing is quite singular. It doesn't attempt to rise far above the story, to express much more than the simple telling of the tale.

That said, I put "A Study in Scarlet" on my list, but because this was Conan Doyle's first book, and so more "fresh" than his other works. In fact, for the very same reason, I would actually rate The Hobbit above LOTR.

Most scholars will tell you the best novel in the English language in the Twentieth Century was James Joyce's "Ulysses." That kind of lets you know where we're headed, here.

66 posted on 06/25/2002 8:54:36 PM PDT by Illbay
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To: PJ-Comix
Right, we read it because we like it, because for some of us it's a way to satisfy cravings most people don't seem to have. I read "literature". I like Jane Austen and Charles Dickens; I've read Beowulf and Gone with the Wind and Moby Dick. But I like SF. It speaks to me of so many things - a hopeful future, new worlds to conquer, ideas to learn... even dystopian SF is hopeful, in a way, because mostly it promotes the idea that whatever we humans do, we do consciously; and what some people can destroy, others can build back up.

I have learned more of life, of science and wonder and the way people are from SF than from "literature".

Pick out, in any given year, a non-SF novel that recieves awards and accolades, and an SF novel that recieves the same sort of praise. I would bet you that in 85% of the cases, the SF novel will be read in 50 years, and no one will remember the 'real' novel.

67 posted on 06/25/2002 8:56:12 PM PDT by JenB
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To: PJ-Comix
I remember reading Doesteski's (sp?) Crime & Punishment back in college prep English in H.S. 25 years ago. I remember being one of the few who really enjoyed it at the time. Lately I've really been into reading the classics.
68 posted on 06/25/2002 8:56:21 PM PDT by Sword_of_Gideon
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To: HairOfTheDog
Gonna hit the sack now. Perhaps tomorrow I'll start a thread on other FICTION genres. Perhaps Best Detective Stories. I like Mickey Spillane and Raymond Chandler but too tired to go into the details now. However, what is wrong with reading BOTH Detective (or SF or Fantasy) AND literary novels? Methinks that too many folks avoid the latter like the plague but they really don't know what they are missing.
69 posted on 06/25/2002 8:58:13 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
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To: HairOfTheDog
Nothing worse than a man in the fit of an ether binge. Classic book. I'm going to have to re-read it again... just afraid of the deep inner feelings that it will bring back to the surface.
70 posted on 06/25/2002 9:00:52 PM PDT by Sword_of_Gideon
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To: Sword_of_Gideon
Lately I've really been into reading the classics.

That happens a lot. The reason is often that our school system kills all interest in literary novels. I remember how boring Shakespeare seemed in high school until I rediscovered it on the outside. Same thing goes with literature. One reason is that students are reading these novels with the idea that they will be quizzed on it so they can't just sit back, relax, and enjoy the novels. High School is the biggest reason for the dearth of interest in great literature.

71 posted on 06/25/2002 9:03:15 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
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To: JenB
Well, I agree, and that's why I enjoy reading it.

However, I have found in the past few years that the genre has hit a "plateau."

It's as if most of the rich veins have been mined out, and you only turn over a nugget now and again.

Again, that may well be simply my subjective experience. But I still belong to the SF Book Club after all these years--about twenty-five--and every time I read over the new list of stuff coming out, NONE of it seems appealing to me in the slightest. In fact, they've sort of turned to the "punkish" strain, which is full of characters I can't relate to, and don't like, to churn out more stuff.

IMO, there is no new Larry Niven, no Clifford Simak, no Scott Card, no Vernor Vinge coming over the horizon. It's all people who grew up reading comic-books (and NO real literature) and just emulating what they know.

Again, maybe it's just middle age--I'm 44--but that's the way it seems to me.

The best thing I've read of late in that genre are the Discworld novels of Terry Pratchett (which is really a send-up of the whole genre, anyway; a parody) and the "Song of Fire and Ice" series by George R. R. Martin (another old-timer; and this is Fantasy anyway).

Gene Wolfe is another who keeps churning out high-concept material, but again, he's an old guy.

I would be more sanguine about defending SF as literature if it didn't seem like it was in such need of vibrant new voices, of the same caliber and vision as the group of young turks who Harlan Ellison featured in his "Dangerous Visions" series in the late 60s-early 70s.

Scott Card is, in my own experience, the last "new" writer of any real worth.

72 posted on 06/25/2002 9:04:33 PM PDT by Illbay
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To: PJ-Comix
Well, see my post No. 62 about my opinion of the latest generation of SF writers.
73 posted on 06/25/2002 9:05:31 PM PDT by Illbay
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To: PJ-Comix
I often wonder why Invisible Man wasn't made into a film; it would have been a magnificent film in the right hands. Come to think of it, I also thought (and think) the world of Go Tell It On The Mountain. It is a pity that James Baldwin (whose collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son, remains remarkable; like Go Tell It On The Mountain in fiction, Notes of a Native Son evoked and bespoke the soul of the black experience of the time without its author descending into what today's critic might call a posture of, how best to phrase it, "professional blackness") dissipated his remarkable talent in the acid bath of what we would call today political correctness. (Paul Johnson has written enlighteningly of Baldwin's striking transformation into that sort of writer and polemicist in his 1989 book Intellectuals.)
74 posted on 06/25/2002 9:07:36 PM PDT by BluesDuke
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To: PJ-Comix
hehehe - People don't fit into the right boxes you think they will.

I am not a SF fan in particular... I enjoy LoTR, it is the one book that I will re-read over and over again my entire life. But I have read few others in the genre. I don't seek them out over others. My interest vary widely... For a hoot, I love Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy... It is kindof a sober version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

I like John Grisham, but he probably doesn't fit your definition of detective stories. He is on the other shelf called legal thrillers... I would hate to think we can't talk about books because they aren't on the right shelf... I don't even know what shelf to put Tom Clancy on...

75 posted on 06/25/2002 9:08:31 PM PDT by HairOfTheDog
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To: Illbay
Do you mean Post #72? Anyway I agree. SF sort of peaked out years ago. I really loved Vonnegut's works the best but he peaked out as well. It's like a vein of gold that's been pretty well panned out. Fortunately there are plenty of classic novels yet to mine.
76 posted on 06/25/2002 9:10:28 PM PDT by PJ-Comix
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To: PJ-Comix
From Here to Eternity is a great novel. Studs Lonigan Trilogy, James T. Farrell, although dated, is a powerful naturalistic novel that had a great impact on me. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is also high on my list, as well as on many others' lists.
77 posted on 06/25/2002 9:10:59 PM PDT by luvbach1
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To: PJ-Comix
Forgot to mention The Naked and The Dead. Very good. Norman Mailer shot his wad on that one. He had something to say in Naked, and said it. It's been so much blather ever since.
78 posted on 06/25/2002 9:13:00 PM PDT by luvbach1
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To: Illbay
Try Connie Willis! Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, and Passage are three of the most original books I've ever read - all wonderful, and all completely different. Think Heinlein, only female and writing for adults rather than juveniles.

Also good - John Ringo, his military series starting with A Hymn Before Battle rocks. Really rocks. I've read RR Martin - love his Song of Ice and Fire, a little too much incest and other perversions, but a good story. Tad Williams, Otherland series. Read it. Read it and then read it again, it's worth it.

Anyway, try Willis, Ringo, or Williams, depending on your taste, and then tell me that all the good ones are dead.

79 posted on 06/25/2002 9:14:16 PM PDT by JenB
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To: Sword_of_Gideon
Think you may be tempted to get ahold of a great red shark and heading to Las Vegas? Nostalgia purposes only... Do not try this at home!
80 posted on 06/25/2002 9:15:00 PM PDT by HairOfTheDog
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