Posted by MaggieH (admin)
Oct 20, 2008 12:34 pm

Replies (13)

Posted by

• The Great Gatsby!

  Oct 20, 2008 12:57 pm
  by emilyyoung

• I thought of Great Gatsby too but I think, for me, it's Catcher in the Rye since I identify with it more.

  Oct 20, 2008 1:44 pm
  by femmebot

• The Great Gatsby is an excellent choice, but I also nominate The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick (which I read on DailyLit).

  Oct 20, 2008 8:56 pm
  by danahuff

• I like that the definition includes "at the time of its writing," so that you can have more than one. Great Gatsby is definitely on my list, but so are Don DeLillo's Underworld and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.

  Oct 20, 2008 9:58 pm
  by albert (admin)

• My instant thought was the Grapes of Wrath as there has never been a better novel about strength in adversary but that was written 10 years after it was set so I am not sure if that counts.
  
  Otherwise I would offer up On The Road by Jack Kerouac. The only problems are that it was largely autobiographical (which seems like a bit of a cheat) and it did not represent the spirit of the whole United States but only a small partof it.
  
  Huckleberry Finn really is a great suggestion by danahuff but as I picked that as my answer to the last question I did not want to look like I was repeating myself :)

  Oct 21, 2008 10:25 am
  by cresswga

• How about To Kill a Mockingbird? It's the rare book that is still a bestseller 40 years after it was first published.

  Oct 21, 2008 11:56 am
  by reshumate

• I'm going to go with The Scarlet Letter. It certainly represents the view of the times, and is absolutely a classic.

  Oct 21, 2008 11:55 pm
  by zimmermj

• I don't believe in "The" Great American Novel. It's too exclusionary and, even by the Wikipedia definition, implies that everyone living at one period of time has the same experience of life, which just isn't true.

  Oct 22, 2008 4:49 pm
  by EHartshorn

• I agree with To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus Finch is one of the greatest father figures ever to be written. If not To Kill a Mockingbird, how about Catch 22? Its humor as well as its themes, particularly that of patriotism and heroism, are still highly debated now.

  Oct 22, 2008 6:25 pm
  by tristiseye

• These are all great picks! I was expecting Huck Finn and The Great Gatsby for sure, but some of the others--especially Catch 22--are more surprising (in the pleasant sense).
  
  Interesting point EHartshorn makes. Can "the" great American novel exist? Is there even such a thing as an American zeitgeist, a collective spirit of an age? And if so, can it be captured in a novel? Or is the American experience simply too varied for the concept of the great American novel to work? Is it a uniquely American question--that is, can there be a "great" English novel, but not American?
  
  Interesting things to ponder. More ideas?

  Oct 23, 2008 12:51 am
  by MaggieH (admin)

• As a Brit I would certainly be interested in everyone's thoughts on a classic British novel using a similar criteria. As an outsider living in the states I feel I have a more defined idea of the spirit of America than I do of the spirit of Britain.
  
  Indeed I believe that by EHartshorn's definition it would be even harder for there to even be a classic British novel. We have always had such a culture and class divide that I do not believe one story could be all encompassing.

  Oct 24, 2008 4:18 pm
  by cresswga

• I just stumbled upon this MeFi thread that also asks the same question on the Great American Novel: http://ask.metafilter.com/125356/Great-American-Novels Many voted for A Confederacy of Dunces.

  Jun 22, 2009 2:52 am
  by femmebot

• The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe, in that the character ends up (spoiler alert) in America. Plus the constant reinvention of herself, and the endless possibilities of life...but a novel that begins in jail and ends in freedom can't go wrong!

  Jul 2, 2009 1:41 pm
  by dreamdust