Free Republic

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...

William Styron, the novelist from the American South whose explorations of difficult historical and moral questions earned him a place among the leading literary figures of the post-World War II generation, died today in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., where he had a home. He was 81. The cause was pneumonia, coming after many years of illness, his daughter Alexandra Styron said. Mr. Styron’s early work, including “Lie Down in Darkness,” won him wide recognition as a voice of the South and the heir to William Faulkner. In subsequent fiction, like the critical and commercial success “Sophie’s Choice,” he transcended his background...