The format of the tournament rules out Ralph Ellison or Harper Lee, and the time limit rules out Mark Twain or Herman Melville. This is fixed NBA-style!
Why isn't Martin Amis on that list? I hear he lives in Brooklyn now.
It's kind of a reminder of how craptastic 20th Century American literature is. Mailer? John Dos Passos? Is Michael Chabon seriously fucking on this list?
And those aren't even the worst! Richard Russo?!? I am surprised we haven't seen Rene Russo.
The format of the tournament rules out Ralph Ellison or Harper Lee
And Joseph Heller/Catch 22
Is Michael Chabon seriously fucking on this list?
[Tasteless joke about Ay/el/et W/ald/m/an's angry tweets at K/ati/e R/oip/he et al. gallantly not made.]
Seriously, this culture is godless and sucks.
Since Stephen King is still on the "up for debate" list but Richard Ford isn't -- not to mention the absurdity of framing a "Greatest American Novel" tournament in a way that rules out Herman Melville -- I think I shall feel free to write this whole thing off.
But come on, the answer is Lolita Gravity's Rainbow Their Eyes Were Watching God Detective Comics #27 The Stupids Step Out Left Behind The Andy Griffith Show Die Hard Wizard People Dear Reader Absalom, Absalom.
8: The Dark Knight Returns, and I'll take you all on to back it up. Frank the Tank 4 life! [Makes secret Batman sign (same as secret devil sign).]
Since Stephen King is still on the "up for debate" list but Richard Ford isn't
They are both still on the "up for debate" list aren't they? Anyway, I'm not sure what you're arguing. Which one of the two writers do you consider worthy? Unworthy?
not to mention the absurdity of framing a "Greatest American Novel" tournament in a way that rules out Herman Melville
Well, it should be called the "Greatest American Novelist of the Last 100 Years". As such, would it still seem absurd to you? I guess it does to me.
Snarkout's strikeout methodology strikes me as highly inconsistent.
9 - When you are ready to have a serious conversation about Batman, you have my email address.
13 ...and trips down the palate to tap on the teeth.
I'm sad Ayn Rand is not on the list, because that would keep libertarians busy trying to game the voting system, which would keep them from bothering the rest of the internet, at least for a little while.
9: Is just code to throw us off the scent of your preference for its sequel and the creepy Superman/Wonder Woman sex scene with even creepier "did the earth move?" cheesy dialogue. Don't think we're not onto you.
John D MacDonald, Gaddis, Raymond Chandler, Isaac Asimov, Faulkner, Thurber, Ursula LeGuin, Dawn Powell. It's kind of a fun idea, but the original list is messed up. Mysteries and SF, both US standouts, are completely absent.
17 is a way better list. Also Harry Matthews.
I am surprised but pleased to discover in Halford an appreciator of Harry Matthews.
16: I love Frank the Tank, but I hate the sequel. Weird Supes-Wonds sex aside, everyone's feet are enormous, the linework is almost brutalist in its monotony and the colors are garish, and not in a fun way.
Richard Russo is the kind of writer who always lets you know if a chair is threadbare.
20: You'll be so shocked to learn I do not like Frank Miller and consider that book a low point even for him, though thankfully I've blocked many of the details.
10.1: My bad, Richard Ford is on there, I had missed him. Outrage cancelled, or rather duly shifted to focus on the outrageous absence of David Foster Wallace and/or Barbara Kingsolver instead. Both of whom would also be better candidates than Stephen King. I might even go that far for Chuck Palahniuk or Bret Easton Ellis.
I mean, for the record, yes, I'd consider Stephen King unworthy of being there period. I don't hate him, but producing fair-quality commercial novels is not the same thing as producing the Great American Novel. I like Michael Chabon better but I don't think he belongs in the running either.
17: Faulkner (of course!) is on the "official" list.
So what's Willa Cather's fourth great novel that lets her meet his requirement? I'm not trying to BALB but I've enjoyed all her novels and honestly don't know.
I'd never heard of William Kowalski until I saw his name on this list. Is he famous?
I thought Straight Man was absolutely hilarious, but that's the only Richard Russo I've ever read.
I guess DFW isn't on the list because it only includes authors with at least four novels, with "short stories, essays, poetry, memoir, cookbooks and blatant* non-fiction [i.e. the 'shadowy genre termed creative non-fiction or novelistic non-fiction']" explicitly excluded.
I guess DFW isn't on the list because it only includes authors with at least four novels and obviously the greatest american novel could only have been written by someone who also wrote at least three more novels.
I'd opine, but I feel unqualified because I've read so few works by any of those authors. (A fair amount by Stephen King, and maybe I've read short stories by some of the others that I can't remember right now, but I can only think of five different authors on that list I've read anything by.) I suck.
The greatest comic book writers is a more interesting topic to me, but it's not like there's a dearth of people debating that online already. I'd put Mark Waid high on the list.
25: Well, you could start by naming her 3 great novels, and then we could guess what her fourth might be.
She at least has a few possibilities unlike some other writers on this list.
To be eligible for this contest, an author must be an American who has produced four great novels
Four! Because in America, it's all about Protestant consistency and hard work.
29: Mostly on the strength of The Poisonwood Bible. Questionable whether she meets the "four strong novels" requirement but then that's true of a ton of people already on the list.
32 wins.
33: I'd assume the canonical answers are O Pioneers!, My Antonia, and Death Comes for the Archbishop, but obviously I wonder if I'm wrong.
"The definition of Great American Novel- GAN from now on- is going to be fairly loose but essentially I wanted it to be a novel- not short story- written by an American during the last 100 years- 1912-2012- that portrays American life, attitudes, history- allegorically or otherwise. They also have to have 4 novels to put up to the competition, one for each round."
Faulkner has to clearly win:
Absalom, Absalom!
The Sound and the Fury
Light in August
As I Lay Dying
And yet . . . he was much more after the Great Southern Novel than the Great American Novel in the way that Fitzgerald, Roth, Bellow, and Dos Passos were / have been.
30: That's the headline writer's f-up. The article opens:
"I want to find The Greatest American Exponent of Great American Novels or GANs. [. . .] I am going to pit authors against each other, a book at a time, to see which novelist comes out as the ultimate purveyor of GAN[s]."
Not that I think this is a worthwhile tournament.
Unless you're Joyce Carol Oates. She's not on the list because writing 400 novels is just bad form.
I agree that his later books aren't great, but I really liked Nobody's Fool and Empire Falls from Russo. Not great books, but timely and IMO very good.
Elmore Leonard, Jim Thompson, Philip K Dick, Patricia Highsmith, Dashiell Hammett
She's not on the list because writing 400 novels with a vagina is just bad form
Or is Stephen King stuck in the 390s?
I would think writing any number of novels with a vagina would require good form.
40: I will also cotton to being a Russo fan (but he has definitely fallen off--I do not think Empire Falls holds up). Not sure if he should be on the list, but some good stuff. My ranking: The Risk Pool (really excellent), Straight Man and Nobody's Fool.
And to establish myself as an anti-Halford, Dos Passos is not even one bit of a stretch.
I don't hate Richard Russo. But if he's on the list of 32 greatest American writers, we have a problem.
The four great novels requirement really narrows it down terribly, doesn't it?
Writing novels with a penis is no easy feat, either.
I actually only ever read Empire Falls as far as Russo goes, and found it to be obvious in every way. I guess it's not fair to judge him based on one book, even if it did win him the Pulitzer. I did really like the movie version of Nobody's Fool, so maybe I'll read the copy I bought at a library sale for a quarter.
There's plenty of excellent 20th century American fiction, much of it mentioned in this thread. But Asimov? You've got to be kidding. Have you tried rereading his stuff as an adult? The writing is truly atrocious.
Anyways, off to the airport in half an hour, getting myself away from US weather for a few weeks. Enjoy yourselves
45: "[G]reat" probably cuts it down to Faulkner and [name your Harry Matthews favorite under-appreciated little-known/cult writer]. Under the rules it is basically who has the least-bad fourth-best novel.
45: Worse, as nosflow alluded to, it just makes no sense at all. Apparently it's just to make things easier for the "tournament" conceit.
46: Writing novels with a penis would probably involve writing on your feet quite frequently.
Apparently it's just to make things easier for the "tournament" conceit
I don't even get that part. How is this going to work? Is a single novel going to be the winner? Or a single novelist?
I think PG Wodehouse might qualify for this one, given that he was a US citizen and wrote several novels set in the US. I don't know that they're his greatest though.
6 will get you 12 whoever wins will be one of those New England adultery writers.
Also, does Hemingway have four great novels about American mores, experience, character, etc.?
People who fight in the Spanish civil war, hobnob in ex-pat Paris, and run contraband to Cuba don't really seem like they should count.
I like Russo a lot (especially Nobody's Fool, Empire Falls, and Straight Man, in that order), but I agree he is a stretch. (If Richard Russo, why not John Irving, whose books I affirmatively dislike, but don't seem principally less worthy of inclusion?)
I don't even get that part. How is this going to work? Is a single novel going to be the winner? Or a single novelist?
Each round, one novelist's novel (randomly selected out of the 4) is pitted against another's. Whoever has the better novel advances to the next round.
Each round, one novelist's novel (randomly selected out of the 4) is pitted against another's. Whoever has the better novel advances to the next round.
The one (significant) advantage do this format is that it adds drama by allowing for the possibility of upsets -- say Pynchon getting knocked out because his 4th worst book gets matched against Mailer's best book.
56 Wow! That is extra silly!
So, F. Scott Fitzgerald could either go all the way if The Great Gatsby keeps on being chosen, or he could be out in the first round if The Beautiful and the Damned is chosen. Exciting!
Sinclair Lewis is one who should probably be on, and although I think he has three strong entries (Main Street, Arrowsmith, Babbitt), his fourth and fifth (alternate in case a book gets injured) are pretty decent as well.
58 sort of pwned me, except I have no idea what Mailer's best novel is (or is supposed to be, anyway). The Naked and the Dead?
I think each of an author's "Magic Four" (yes, that's what they're calling them) can only "compete" in one round.
For Willa Cather's fourth should we play The Professor's Home or A Lost Lady? Tough call, coach!
62: Ok, I'm slowly getting the concept.
Does 16 refer to a real thing? Like a really real thing that appeared in an official DC comic?
Delurk saying that Nathaniel West and Gaddis should obviously be on that list. And it's really unfortunate that Katherine Anne Porter wouldn't qualify.
3 et I think seq.: Wait, is Michael Chabon deprecated hereabouts? I've only read Kavalier and Clay and thought it was perfectly ok but my friends were dizzy with excitement over it, saying it would be read as a great example of 20th c. literature in a hundred years.
Also yay lw for mentioning Dawn Powell.
58: Actually, now that I understand that, it does add some interest. For instance, in a 1st round match-up* between two authors whose four books line up against each other 1,3,5,7 vs. 2,4,6,8 (so the 2nd author's nth book loses to the 1st authors nth, but beats everything below that) the 1st author wins 5/8th of the time. If you force rank the 64 books you can figure the odds**.
*Probably close to that for any round, but not necessarily strictly since the probability of the author having used up his nth book in getting to a subsequent round will be dependent on the "interleaving" of other author's books into the sequence.
**Of course, strictly following the tournament format leaves large chunks of the ordering undetermined.
67.2: Dawn Powell is actually a strong contender for this tournament, because she has written a bunch of great or near-great novels. Except that this is going to be decided by popular vote by people that probably mostly haven't read the books. Did I understand that part right?
67: As long as we're talking about Dawn Powell -- about whom I didn't know until the NYT article 2 weeks ago about her diaries -- which novel do you recommend I start with?
John Crowley?
But who has finished Aegypt?
Mickey Spillane could beat all of the above to a pulp.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Spillane
68: Hmm, wait, if he is going to 32 authors (so 128 books), he will need five books if there are to be no repeats (sampling without replacement). Perhaps that is explained somewhere, or the last round is different.
Outrage cancelled, or rather duly shifted to focus on the outrageous absence of David Foster Wallace
WHERE THE FUCK IS WALLACE???
Dawn Powell's promoter (greatest admirer), if such a position existed, would be Gore Vidal, who doesn't appear on the initial list either
With a favorable draw, my upset choice would be Pynchon.
What would Steinbeck's top 4 be? He wrote too much.
65 - Define "official". It was in a comic book published by DC, but it's not canonical, and it's by the increasingly unhinged Frank Miller, who seems to be trying to go the whole Dave Sim.
I liked The Locusts Have No King. What other Powell is good?
(And add Marilynn Robinson to the GANist list knocked out by the tournament format.)
Dance Night of Powell's is great. Much more direct, small town setting rather than NYC.
77: A Time to Be Born and The Golden Spur are great.
Except that this is going to be decided by popular vote by people that probably mostly haven't read the books. Did I understand that part right?
Apparently, the rounds will be decided according to the tournament creator's personal taste, which is lame. He could have at least constructed some pseudo-objective evaluation rubric to generate endless blog spats.
70: I've only read a few of them but I suppose I love The Wicked Pavilion most.
75: Her greatest fan may be Tim P/owell, who I know a little in an online acquaintance way. He's selling her papers if anyone's interested, only half a mil!
80: Then my money is on William Kowalski. I think the fix is in.
81 I thought her papers were at Columbia.
74 had me actually laughing out loud. Well played, sir.
Thanks, everyone.
83: Dawn Powell's Diaries for Sale on the Internet
Thanks for that Sir Kraab. Her papers are at Columbia, just not these diaries.
Also, fuck the Harry Ransom center.
73: he will need five books if there are to be no repeats
He acknowledges that the last round will be different when someone pointed this out deep in the comments.
I love, love, love Straight Man. I should try Risk Pool.
Faulkner under these (odd) rules. In the last 50 years...much tougher.
Looking at individual novels, I love Sometimes a Great Notion. Is it as good a GAN as Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, or To Kill a Mockingbird? I doesn't think so.
HOW HAS NOBODY COMPLAINED ABOUT JONATHAN FUCKING FRANZEN?
I am glad to see John Irving and Tom Robbins not there.
Stegner should be on there, though.
HOW HAS NOBODY COMPLAINED ABOUT JONATHAN FUCKING FRANZEN?
I'm sure AWB will show up at some point.
Today is my moving day so I didn't get much of a chance to bitch on the internet, but yeah, that is a pretty fucking ignorant list of American novelists.
(When I saw the list this morning, I just assumed this is a random blowhard who doesn't know anything about literature, which is a fine thing to be, so I tried not to bite. There really aren't any choices here that demonstrate deep or interesting experience with AmLit.)
90: We all agree he's awesome. He wrote a book where birds were a central plot point. Bam. Also, The Corrections is great.
I've already hashed some of this out on Facebook but: if the time period was the twentieth century instead of 1912-2012, Henry James would be an obvious contender for me.
And also this made me realize what a tiny fraction of what I read is American novels.
18, 19: Harry Matthews, author of Toolth, Smokes, The Memoirist, and My Life in the CIA.
Also, The Corrections is great.
Yes, definitely no.
Looks like in the last two years I've only read two US novels, both by Paul Auster. I thought there were several more but on closer inspection the authors turned out to be Canadian, Irish, or British.
A professional needs to help me out again with:"Why not Joyce Carol Oates?"
I certainly appreciate her as an artist, and as an American novelist, more than at least ten of the 32 listed. Am I wrong?
If my OkCupid matches were judging this competition, Tom Robbins, Bukowski, Brett Easton Ellis, and Palahniuk would be the final four hands down.
I was dumbfounded by how bad this list was but then I realized it was written by a British person who approvingly mentioned Martin Amis.
A professional needs to help me out again with:"Why not Joyce Carol Oates?"
Yeah, I don't get it either. Is she considered too "popular"? too "middlebrow"? (New Jersey noir and upstate NY gothic: is that middlebrow?) Too close to the line that separates quality literature from 'true crime' schlock? She's obviously a major American novelist, and the recipient of numerous awards and prizes. I think she's a gifted writer, though as a reader, I don't always care to be beaten up by her relentlessly grim, violent and sometimes overwrought narratives.
Also:Robert Stone?
Love love love loved A Flag for Sunrise. Surely a GAN of the 1980s, US Meddling in Central America division.
As far as genre goes, god no, not Dick. Maybe Delany, Disch, Wolfe, Russ if she were more prolific. Maybe.
Wollheim told Dick he could be a great SF writer, but not a good mainstream novelist.
In that line, I have read thousands of mystery/detective novels (P.D.James and LeCarre, but British and maybe not LeCarre) and there is only one novel I would rank with the best American literature, and that only on prose style points. The story was perfect, but not deep or profound. Not McCarthy or Stegner level.
And damn if I can remember it. Been googling "mystery western" for an hour.
Looks like in the last two years I've only read two US novels, both by Paul Auster. I thought there were several more but on closer inspection the authors turned out to be Canadian, Irish, or British.
I think I've read two, both by Ross Macdonald.
109: Not Warlock or Red Harvest, I'm assuming?
Whatever the quality of the list, 1) the guy was certainly done in by the headline writer to begin with (novel vs. novelist), and 2) what he was looking for was relatively specific beyond that:
The definition of Great American Novel- GAN from now on- is going to be fairly loose but essentially I wanted it to be a novel- not short story- written by an American during the last 100 years- 1912-2012- that portrays American life, attitudes, history- allegorically or otherwise. They also have to have 4 novels to put up to the competition, one for each round. ...I want to find The Greatest American Exponent of Great American Novels or GANs.It may well be a suspect exercise--particularly with the Great American Novel concept being so associated in the relatively recent past with the white male post-war writer set (hell, Roth even titled one of he lesser known novels The Great American Novel, about baseball semi-of course; I read it and found it an interesting little fantasy)--but it is a specific thing different from trying to identify the Greatest American Novelist of the last 100 years. I will also note that he did ask for input (ok, on the second sixteen) and is engaging constructively with comments at the post.
Nah. 70s or 80s
Has a classic opening about walking into a bar. Scenes on Lake Tahoe and in Santa Fe.
June 29 Slate Article on the Search for GAN
99: I knew there was something wrong there.
116: ??
I was gratified in looking up Harry Matthews Wikipedia page to be confronted with the choice of: "Harry Grindell Matthews, death ray inventor". Eccentric British charlatan inventors for the win.
Incidentally, why is the Great American Novel a thing? I don't think Russians worry about whether someone has written the Great Russian Novel (probably because everyone knows that someone has, and that was Tolstoy). Is there a Great English Novel or a Great Scottish Novel? Should we be worried if there isn't?
The Great American Novel, incidentally, is clearly The Godfather. Apart from anything else, it is contrary to the very spirit of Americanness that the GAN should be anything other than a roaring commercial success.
Is there a Great English Novel or a Great Scottish Novel? Should we be worried if there isn't?
You could argue that there were (Tom Jones and Roderick Random respectively), but they were written so long ago that everybody has i. got over it and ii. forgotten about them.
Those aren't so much the Great English and Scottish Novels as the First English and Scottish Novels, though. Plus, a lot of Roderick Random takes place outside Scotland. (Which probably makes it even more authentically Scottish, come to think of it.)
Which probably makes it even more authentically Scottish, come to think of it
Which was why I picked it.
Those aren't so much the Great English and Scottish Novels as the First English and Scottish Novels, though
Daniel Defoe, among others, would like a word with you.
Is there a Great English Novel or a Great Scottish Novel?
Middlemarch and Lanark.
Roth even titled one of he lesser known novels The Great American Novel, about baseball semi-of course
I like it, though it's obviously not going to make Roth's Magic Four. I haven't been a fan of his most recent work, but people who criticize Roth for writing about only one subject seem to not be familiar with his ouevre.
Another writer with a baseball novel who should be on this list is Bernard Malamud.
119: it is contrary to the very spirit of Americanness that the GAN should be anything other than a roaring commercial success.
Catcher in the Rye, Valley of the Dolls and To Kill a Mockingbird have all out-sold The Godfather. (On the other hand, so have The Da Vinci Code and Who Moved My Cheese?)
The Great Scottish Novel is, of course, Trainspotting.
126: Valley of the Dolls ...
Spock: Your use of language has changed since our arrival. It is currently laced with... shall I say... more "colorful metaphors": "Double dumb ass on you," and so forth.
James T. Kirk: You mean the profanity. That's simply the way they talk here. Nobody pays any attention to you if you don't swear every other word. You'll find it in all the literature of the period.
Spock: For example?
James T. Kirk: Oh, the complete works of Jacqueline Susann... the novels of Harold Robbins...
Spock: Ah... the giants.
-- Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (i.e., the one with the whales)
127: Heh.
(Oh, I'm not serious about 126.last, just in case there's any misunderstanding.)
I cannot tell a lie, or anyway right now I don't feel so inclined: I really enjoyed The Corrections. AWB, don't you dare accuse me of never having read a novel, because I have read, like, at least six or seven.
The exchange in 127 is hilarious and of course didn't register at all when I was, what...13.
Even if it was initially published in Scotland, does a book written by a Pole about Africa count as a Scottish novel?
130: And I believe written while he was living in England.
Catcher in the Rye, Valley of the Dolls and To Kill a Mockingbird have all out-sold The Godfather.
Well, they're candidates on those grounds as well. But I am actually semi-serious about The Godfather being the GAN. It's got the scope and scale that a GAN needs - I don't think a GAN can really all be set in a single small town or have only one character. It takes in the big issues: organised crime, corruption, immigration, politics, World War Two, overseas empire, race, westward expansion, the decline of idealism. And it's fun and they made two great films out of it, which is more than can be said for most of the others.
Incidentally, why is the Great American Novel a thing?
Because America is a created nation, a created identity still and always in progress, ever expanding toward that green light. Umm.
Space (several dimensions), not place. The GAN must be about movement and travel, although the immigrant (settler, exile) experience works. Something about identity (probably political identity, defined broadly) negotiated with the other, or with othering landscapes or environments. Class doesn't really work as a subject, again space not place, and class is a phenomenon of place. Hardy could write about class. Tolstoy could write about place. Joyce = place. Time and history not our subject, America is ahistorical as an ideal.
So I don't think Fitzgerald (his cast and milieu has always seemed parochial) really fits as well as Hemingway (only worth a damn in his stories = out), and the early novels and AoI work better than Ethan Frome. Suspicious of Faulkner, but Morrison, Ellison, Baldwin, Malamud obviously Twain and Melville work. Cold Blood better than the Capote 1st. Hawthorne no. Kerouac yes.
All great American novels are road novels. That is what the reviewer of Hawthorne meant by the limited scope. You don't have the show the entire nation, but you kinda have to imply it.
re: Scottish novels
I suppose you have Stevenson, sitting there filling the 19th century 'not as boring as fucking Melville' slot.
Right now I'm _in_ Scotland and somewhat discombobulated by it, not having been home for a few years.
132: I think only a bit of the second film--some of the back story--was from the novel. Personally I thought the movie was pretty second-rate. the classic example of movie(s) being better than the prior book. (Forrest Gump is another, which tells you something about the hideousness of the book it was based on.)
Just chib someone and you'll feel better.
re: 136
Just been attempting to tweet about it, but the striking thing is how nice everyone is. Coffee shop, train station ticket office, information office, etc. Nice in a totally unforced and un-kiss-arsey way. I do always sort of notice this when I go home, but then forget after a while back in the SE of England.
All great American novels are (really) travel books. All great European novels are histories.
Apparently all great Japanese novels are confessions.
Stevenson's pretty good. Treasure Island and Kidnapped hold up very well.
The "boring worthy literature" slot is ably filled by Lewis Grassic bloody Gibbon.
137: yeah, I notice that every time I go north as well. It's a smooth upward trend: by about York people are behaving with moderate courtesy, by Edinburgh everyone's surprisingly nice, and by the time you hit Ullapool it's as though they'd put MDMA in the water.
All tedious comments are over-generalizations.
and they made two great films out of it
Speaking of which, anyone share my heady mix of curiosity and dread about the new, er, 3-D Gatsby?
The problem with pondering this question of the Great American Novel in 2012 is that the novel feels like such a marginal thing now. The Great American Novel seems like an appropriate question for 1850-1950, maybe. Sometime around then, the only relevant conversation is about other media.
The above is perhaps light trolling.
'not as boring as fucking Melville'
Trying to pick a fight, are you?
I read Forrest Gump back in high school, in 1997 or 1998. I don't remember whether I liked it, but I do think the movie might've held up better if it included the scene in which a naked Forrest, a naked Raquel Welch, and a gorilla were running around in public (after a threesome, maybe?).
Smearcase is the Troller of Light.
I kind of hate The Great Gatsby. It's been long enough since I read it that I can't remember whether there was more to my hatred than wanting all the characters humiliated and dead.
I cannot tell a lie, or anyway right now I don't feel so inclined
From the variorum edition of the sayings of George Washington.
Lewis Grassic bloody Gibbon makes insufficient but partial amends by having a superb name. There ought to be an expression: "I was trying to calm him down but he was jumping up and down like a grassic gibbon..."
If Wikipedia had been around in his day, would Melville have replaced some of his chapters with links? There are all those bits where he's like "oh, I mentioned the Right Whale, let me tell you about it. Some sailors say they grow to such-and-such a size [citation needed]."
143: I was going to take exception myself, but then I remembered Melville's tendency towards "Enough adventure on the high seas; now it's time for twenty more pages of Whale Facts".
I read Moby Dick first when I was really too young for it -- the actual plot and characters and meaningful bits left me a bit cold, but I loved the Whale Facts. Every vertebra is like a skull! Whales come in sizes analogous to those of books! A sperm whale's head is a rectangular prism divided into two quoins, the upper of which is full of oil!
134:In the spirit of my continuing project to rehabilitate the Romantic, I think Sir Walter deserves reconsideration.
I am just taking the piss a bit re: Melbille, but I'd certainly, purely as a matter of personal taste, prefer to read someone else.
119: Incidentally, why is the Great American Novel a thing?
I'm glad someone asked this; I'd hammered out a similar comment last night, then deleted it for fear that I sounded peevish. Certainly I'd been tempted to carry on about USians being so obsessed not only with Americanness, but whatever they think Americanness is.
I'll take bob's 133 as a good reply. I'm particularly taken by this about Fitzgerald:
So I don't think Fitzgerald (his cast and milieu has always seemed parochial) really fits
Yeah. I admit, though, that I've never read an actual disquisition on why Gatsby is the GAN.
I was hoping this thread would provoke people to do their own lists.
I agree with 152. The bits where Melville leaves the plot hanging and spends ten pages telling you how to build a harpoon or whatever are great! Much better than another tedious cloth-eared conversation between Ahab and whichever of the Interchangeable Mates happens to be on deck at the time.
I was hoping nosflow would explain his 116.
I forgot all about our horrible oath; in that inexpressible sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it; I almost began to credit the old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in allaying the heat of anger; while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any sort whatsoever.
Additional to 132, America is the Land of Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, so the Great American Novel should be one that people read, generally, because they want to and not because they get ordered to by their teachers. So that's Catcher in the Rye and To Kill A Mockingbird ruled out.
155 - Because it's the classic American novel of shucking one's identity and reinventing oneself, as well as the complicated relationship in America between wealth and class, both of which are recurrent American themes if not quite as on-target as "the frontier" or "the relationships between whites and blacks" or "regeneration through violence".
It's funny you mention this "USians being so obsessed not only with Americanness, but whatever they think Americanness is", parsimon. Because Canada is even more obsessed with Canadianness and what it is or isn't but I don't think we have an obsession with The Great Canadian Novel.
TGCN would take place in small town Ontario and involve several generations of a family to whom nothing really nice happens and several bad things happen and there is some secret which is never really made clear even to the reader and no one ever laughs.
Or "fucking a piece of liver", which never turns up as a theme in the German novels I've read. Maybe it's a problem of translation.
162 - Lesser Robertson Davies, then? Only I'd think the GCN would take place in the Maritimes.
160 So I take it you think Judy Blume should be on the list.
154 is funny
Because it's the classic American novel of shucking one's identity and reinventing oneself, as well as the complicated relationship in America between wealth and class, both of which are recurrent American themes if not quite as on-target as "the frontier" or "the relationships between whites and blacks" or "regeneration through violence".
Maybe we should make a case for The Monkeywrench Gang, then.
I just want to dropkick Fitzgerald, which probably means I should reread the book.
160: That's libertarian America, which feels like a newish thing, though I can't argue strongly for that.
142.2 is kicking in: The problem with pondering this question of the Great American Novel in 2012 is that the novel feels like such a marginal thing now. The Great American Novel seems like an appropriate question for 1850-1950, maybe
I'm not sure that's because the novel feels like such a marginal thing, as that the US now tends to think of itself as freed from most of its historically formative issues. So the GAN seems retro.
Let me be the first to say that The Wire is the Great American Novel. Now I'm going to go and drink an artisanally-brewed ale.
164: Oh, I guess you could switch out 'small town Ontario' for 'small town Newfoundland/Nova Scotia' but there's something very Canadian about Ontario thinking it's the foundation/most Canadian of Canada. I will add to my description that the story has to take place next to a lake or the ocean and someone needs to drown.
Also, please pretend I punctuated 162 in some sort of sensible way.
Jackmormon, definitely reread Fitzgerald. It's short. It's also one of my favourite books so I think you're wrong, but it's short so it wouldn't take long to figure out you might have misjudged a bit. Having said that, it is a book that people either love or hate so you may not change your mind.
161 - Then (by the Guardian article's parameters)it's gotta be Cormac McCarthy, no? He's obsessed with all that stuff.
162, 64: Yeah, I think that's the Salterton Trilogy.
168 and 169 are a weird coincidence for me, as one night about four years ago I finished re-reading The Great Gatsby and then watched, for the first time, the Wire episode wherein D'Angelo discussed the same book with his fellow inmates.
161: Because it's the classic American novel of shucking one's identity and reinventing oneself, as well as the complicated relationship in America between wealth and class
Right -- I'm not going to quibble [peevishness danger] -- but there are many other very good novels that fit that bill. To be clear, Gatsby is a fine novel; I just don't feel the need to have a copy on my shelf, or to recommend it to friends other than as a classic they can read if they want to know what the references to its world are about.
Surely both Gone With The Wind (I know, but I really love that book) and Lonesome Dove (which is IMO a genuinely great novel, clearly McMurtry should be in anyone's top 32) fit ajay's GAN criteria better than The Godfather.
I'm also thinking of Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood (older stuff), Carol Shields.
The one true great american novel is Jaws.
169.3: I'd actually recommend that JM go read This Side of Paradise or Tender is the Night first and then back to Jay Gatsby and all his bullshit. But maybe just as likely to reinforce desire to dropkick.
I second 178. I kind of love This Side of Paradise, which is wonderfully what it is. I like Gatsby fine, but I cannot brook it's massive overrating.
176: Nah, the movie didn't hold up its end.
Wikipedia in its collective whateverness hazards a list (actually of those novels which have been "referred to" as that). Also a link to DeForest's original essay.
174: very possibly; I haven't read Lonesome Dove.
This Side of Paradise left me a mental image of Princeton that was not altered by actually living there.
Oh I'm glad McMurtry came up. He surely has four great novels. I think of The Last Picture Show as a Great American Novel though probably not the. Maybe we should have this whole conversation again in Russian, without definite articles.
Gatsby comes up so much on these lists because they're often written and published by New Yorkers, maybe?
Love love love loved A Flag for Sunrise.
Robert Stone's first novel "A Hall of Mirrors" is also superb and astoundingly prescient -- it is set at a proto-Fox News run by a right wing ideologue. Published in like 1967.
Love Bob's 133. This is why Huckleberry Finn is sort of automatically the heavyweight champion of GANs.
Yes McMurtry certainly belongs in there. I mean, he's for sure a greater novelist than Norman Mailer. Norman was an excellent essayist and one of the greatest cultural trolls of the 20th century though.
It wouldn't beat Huck Finn, but surely Sinclair Lewis's Elmer Gantry ought to be at least bruited in a discussion like this.
||
I love that Josh Marshall has the history background to drop shit like this as an aside:
(There are some claims that Washington was wealthier but it's based on a total misreading of the value of land during the period.)
|>
I think I'll read Tender is the Night, then; I'm pretty sure I have a copy, but I haven't read it.
I want to say, but am afraid of being yelled at, that I gravitate for great American novel-ness toward those treating of race. Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison. And frankly, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. (Technically not admissible per the rules of the game.)
175: I'm also thinking of Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood (older stuff), Carol Shields.
Hydrobatidae, I don't think I realized you were Canadian. Will the other Canadians not weigh in on the TGCN?
Yes, Sinclair Lewis is sorely missing. Babbit, Main Street, Elmer Gantry, and Arrowsmith (that last maybe doesn't belong but if there have to be four). Now he reads a little shallow/surface but still extremely readable and a superb sociologist of his time -- sort of a better version of Tom Wolfe for his day.
Also, what about Theodore Dreiser? I know all the hits he takes as a stylist (turgid, etc.) but his stuff is still compelling and rich. He took on class in a very deep way.
Incidentally, why is the Great American Novel a thing? I don't think Russians worry about whether someone has written the Great Russian Novel (probably because everyone knows that someone has, and that was Tolstoy). Is there a Great English Novel or a Great Scottish Novel? Should we be worried if there isn't?
My subject is a particular kind of book and the aspects that book has assumed in English. Can we ignore its collateral aspects on the continent? Not entirely. An unpleasant and unpatriotic truth has here to be faced. No English novelist is as great as Tolstoy -- that is to say has given so complete a picture of man's life, both on its domestic and heroic side. No English novelist has explored man's soul as deeply as Dostoevsky. And no novelist anywhere has analyzed the modern consciousness as successfully as Marcel Proust. Before these triumphs we must pause. English poetry fears no one -- excels in in quality as well as quantity. But English fiction is less triumphant: it does not contain the best stuff yet written, and if we deny this we become guilty of provincialism.
Hydrobatidae, I don't think I realized you were Canadian. Will the other Canadians not weigh in on the TGCN?
I think there was only one Canadian Great Male Narcissist (Mordecai Richler), so that's gotta be it.
On the other hand Robertson Davies had a beard of veritable Tolstoian proportions.
I thought Joan Didion's Play It as It Lays and A Book of Common Prayer were brilliant but haven't read her other novels.
156:What the hell. From what I've read and what I liked, and not in order, and skipping italics
1. Huckleberry Finn
2. Moby Dick (an hour ago I was writing an argument for Typee instead)
...
V (sue me; there is a minimalist purity, an innocence)
Wise Blood
Ambassadors
Them
Invisible Man
JR
As I Lay Dying
House of Mirth;Summer
On the Road
Executioner's Song (over Cold Blood, by a hair)
Hell's Angel's (drugs ruined this guy, so sad)
Winter of Discontent or Dubious Battle
Dinner at Homesick Restaurant fuck yeah
D'Arconville's Cat (a book about misogyny like MD is about whaling)
What are Fitzgerald's four novels anyway? "Tender Is The Night" takes place almost entirely in Europe.
132: I don't think a GAN can really all be set in a single small town or have only one character.
Sure it can. Some of the best literature uses restricted setting or perspective to allegorically illuminate wider issues.
Moreover, however grand it scope or kickass the movies made of it, a candidate for GAN should probably take into account the quality of the actual prose. Ever read a Puzo book? They're just not that good as books. He's not even in Stephen King's class as a writer. That a book is known mainly by reason of its having been ready-made for transfer to film (which is The Godfather's main claim to fame -- what Puzo really invented was the novelization-in-advance of a film) doesn't make it a great book. An interesting cultural indicator, maybe, but that's a different thing.
134: the 19th century 'not as boring as fucking Melville' slot
You know, I avoided Moby Dick for ages because I assumed it must be some boring tome. And then I actually read it, and lo and behold, it turned out to be not only perfectly readable, but in fact engrossing. From the Whale Facts, to the steady build-up of an atmosphere of doom and menace, to a pretty stunning final duel with the Moby Dick himself... I genuinely don't think better adventure fiction has been written since. The gradual reveal of the character of Ahab might seem anti-climactic or dull to an age in which the character has become a byword, but actually there were surprises even there: like how psychologically convincing and vividly-evoked Melville's rationale for Ahab's madness really is.
Maybe Melville's other novels are boring, though. I haven't gotten round to reading Typee or Omoo.
60 -> 190. Although My ordering was bit different.
130: A fair question. Maybe not.
Harry Crews and Charles Portis haven't been mentioned yet, have they?
Alright, okay, I'll read Moby Dick! Geez.
Will the other Canadians not weigh in on the TGCN?
The TGCN? It's just not a thing.
This is why Huckleberry Finn is sort of automatically the heavyweight champion of GANs.
And isn't the question, "Is Huck Finn really the GAN? [or can we replace it with something better/more literary?]" an important part of the GAN tradition?
The Great Lichetenstein Novel seems like a pretty easy project. Just move to Lichtenstein and start writing.
203: Other than the technicality* of apparently not being set precisely there, you'd have to top this.
*And one presumes that your spelling of Lichtenstein signals some laxity of standards.
The Great American Novel is a thing, I always thought, because American mythology and zeitgeist is globally significant in a way that, say, Canada's is not. (The prominence of nations often also accounts for the cultural cachet of their cultural product: hence likewise the prominence of British, French and Russian novelists.)
202: Apologies for my repetition of the "the".
Still, I'm a little surprised that the participating Canadians so far aren't interested in making nominations for the GCN. I want to learn about your culture, Canadians!
Seriously. Tell me how stupid I am. Why the GCN can't be a thing for you. Or however you might say something about this. My ears are open (though I'm having lunch shortly).
The prominence of nations often also accounts for the cultural cachet of their cultural product
Well, up to a point, Lord Castock, as Evelyn Waugh almost remarked. But how do you account for Ireland, then? Tiny country; politically independent for less than 100 years; unbroken line of world class writers from Congreve to the present.
Kathy Acker, bitches. Especially if the novels are transformed into cyborg battlebot animals, she could take the wile thing.
Typee kinda drags a bit, I think.
I had always taken it as a given that Omoo had no actual existence outside of the Wednesday Times puzzle.
The prominence of nations often also accounts for the cultural cachet of their cultural product:
Yes. But I've always thought the GAN was (at least implicitly) based on a somewhat defensive comparison with the British literary field ('we do have our own literary canon and it's every bit as good as the British one')?
Maybe we don't have enough literature to necessitate a discussion of the best? There aren't many, just read them all.
I have read a lot of the authors I mentioned above but I didn't really enjoy them. I find them almost entirely humourless. I do love Robinson Davies though, and I can't put down Margaret Atwood even if I don't exactly love her novels. LM Montgomery probably won't get mentioned as a GCNovelist but she is beloved. I keep meaning to read Richeler but haven't had time to deal with proper literature in a while. Michael Ondaatje is part of the widening of what it means to be Canadian and I've enjoyed his books. Farely Mowat is another kind of YA author who wrote an amazing NF book about a tugboat (pre-Theodore).
Would I say that any of these are the GCN? No way. They all describe pieces of Canada and taken together will give you a pictures of a lot of the places that make up Canada. Maybe histories by Pierre Burton are a better representation?
We do discuss who is the Greatest Canadian though.
207: Ireland and Scotland are either part of Britain or form its near periphery; their prominence is largely connected to Britain's. (The first wave of great Irish novelists follows an initial crop of Anglo-Irish novelists in the 18th century, for instance.)
208: I actually kind of love the idea of Kathy Acker as the Great American Novelist.
Still, I'm a little surprised that the participating Canadians so far aren't interested in making nominations for the GCN.
Honestly, I can't think of a novel to nominate. I could name any number of Canadian novels/novelists that are well worth reading, but the GCN just doesn't make sense to me.
(True confession: most of my favourite novels/novelists are English or Irish).
We do discuss who is the Greatest Canadian though.
I thought that was Phil Esposito, but perhaps I just listen to the wrong sorts of Canadian songs.
214: Probably part of it, yes. But the defensive comparison only came to really matter in a larger sense on account of America's place in the world.
LM Montgomery probably won't get mentioned as a GCNovelist but she is beloved.
Anne of Green Gables is surely the best-loved Canadian novel ever (and also the most productive of tourist dollars to Prince Edward Island!).
214: The "original" 1868 DeForest essay linked above mentions both England and France (in saying that Cooper doesn't cut it):
As for a tableau of American society, as for anything resembling the tableaux of English society by Thackeray and Trollope, or the tableaux of French society by Balzac and George Sand, we had better not trouble ourselves with looking for it in Cooper.
215: Would I say that any of these are the GCN? No way. They all describe pieces of Canada and taken together will give you a pictures of a lot of the places that make up Canada.
I wish that the US would take up this model.
The obvious choice for Great Canadian Novel is the Deptford Trilogy, because I've both heard of and read it.
Phil Esposito
No, wait, I misremembered. The song I was thinking of celebrates Paul Henderson scoring off Esposito's rebound as the greatest event in Canadian history.
I still can't find the lyrics online but, from memory, it has a chorus which begins. "what is the single most greatest event in our countries history?" and then rattles off a bunch of possibilities, "the Winnipeg general strike?" before settling on, "Henderson gets Esposit's rebound. He Shoots he scores it's goal")
Or maybe the Cornish Trilogy, of which I've only read the much liked by me What's Bred in the Bone.
Would I say that any of these are the GCN? No way. They all describe pieces of Canada and taken together will give you a pictures of a lot of the places that make up Canada.
Let's go east to west.
Great Newfoundland Novel: Wayne Johnston's "Colony of Unrequited Dreams".
206.2: A great deal of Canada's cultural production in the last century was a) concerned with producing a distinct "Canadian literature," but b) funded and published by a combination of federal and provincial money which encouraged regionalism in the writing itself. The identity project resulted in a disproportionate obsession with rural and/or pioneering literature which I suppose was deemed more "authentic" -- and also in an aversion to anything too controversial or outre -- so that what resulted was a great mass of rather dull books about Prairie homesteads, Ontario cottage country, Maritime outports and so on.
In retrospect, however skilfully written, most of this is uninspiring grist for milling the notion of "great novels" of any kind, and CanLit is generally regarded as uninspiring for good reason. It has produced a CanLit whose greater portion is a matter of relative disinterest to Canadians. (Oh, and Quebec has its own literature which is arguably of better quality, but then Quebec really is culturally distinct from the rest of Canada.) There are spectacular exceptions -- Mistry, Ondaatje, Atwood -- but the old paradigm of subsidized, relatively mediocre regionalism is still strong. Until that's displaced and a real mass of literature more free of those constraints has built up, the Great Canadian Novel is not a question that will interest many people.
Robertson Davies is very funny on the subject of AmCan Lit. One of the protagonists of Leaven of Malice is a junior faculty member in a lit department who keeps on complaining bitterly about the godawful stuff he has to specialize in.
Looking up some of the early history of the concept of the GAN discovered (maybe everyone else knew) that it was Henry James who first turned it into the acronym 'GAN'.
227: the old paradigm of subsidized, relatively mediocre regionalism is still strong. Until that's displaced and a real mass of literature more free of those constraints has built up, the Great Canadian Novel is not a question that will interest many people.
Thanks, DS. That had been my fleeting and uninformed sense, though I didn't necessarily think that the regional lit was mediocre. Just a different genre, or something.
I mean, maybe I'm being over-harsh on the regional stuff. Not all of it is bad (the Johnston book noted above), some of it is even great (I'd nominate Fred Stenson as the Great Alberta Novelist for The Trade and Lightning, the former of which especially is an amazing book). It's just that a large proportion of it really is awful.
the Johnston book noted above is good...
I picked up Ondaatje's newest novel the other day; I might read it on a flight soon. He was one of my favorite writers when I was 18 or so but I don't know how I'll feel about him now.
I've read a lot of Louise Erdrich in the last few years and think her family epics show that Canadianesque novels are written about the other side of the border too. I'm not sure I'd put her at GAN status, but I'm not good at that game anyway.
Also on Canadian novels, I wish I'd had ready internet access when I was a teen trying to be sure which of the authors inMy Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors were really Canadian.
Speaking of Candians, any opinion on Stephen Leacock? I have a friend who's been trying to get me to read Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town
There's a good line in the Wikipedia entry that suggests he may not be the Great Canadian Novelist, "It was said in 1911 that more people had heard of Stephen Leacock than had heard of Canada."
Stephen Leacock! That's who I was trying to think of. I think our humour award is named after him. I read Sunshine Sketches but it hasn't stuck with me. It's a Canadian classic and as I said, read it, there aren't many.
More people should read Haliburton's Sam Slick novels.
Farely Mowat is another kind of YA author who wrote an amazing NF book about a tugboat (pre-Theodore).
This is just crazy. Obviously Farley Mowat should be known for Owls in the Family.
Stephen Leacock is immense! (Anybody notice that I quoted him in the death thread?) Try Arcadian Adventures of the Idle Rich.
Writing a book about cute owls doing cute stuff is easy. Writing an interesting book about a tugboat is hard.
Also The Dog Who Wouldn't Be .
Thanks chris, I will give Leacock another chance.
234 - I kind of burnt out on him after reading In the Skin of a Lion, which certainly is Canadian.
and also in an aversion to anything too controversial or outre
C'mon, DS/LS, you have to admit that that novel about a woman and a bear was a little bit out there (and it won the Governor General's Award for Fiction!).
But 227 is great. I especially like "the old paradigm of subsidized, relatively mediocre regionalism." Yep.
CA was gifted a series by a Canadian author that certainly does not contain the GCN. It's about apes somehow gaining sentience, I think, and set in Waterloo.
You know, I'm not satisfied with just ragging on CanLit, because the most interesting parts are quite interesting. Especially when you get outside just the novel.
- For memorable First Nations literature, Tomson Highway and Thomas King are both deservedly well-known (Highway is best known as a playwright and is also an incredible cabaret entertainer);
- Eunoia by Christian Bok is one of the most impressive things ever done not just in Canadian poetry, but in poetry generally of the last two decades (Anne Carson is also doing the High Modernism proud);
- The novels of Douglas Glover, Guy Vanderhaeghe (especially The Englishman's Boy and the aforementioned Fred Stenson are high-quality historical fiction;
- Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance has (and deserves) a strong spot in the South Asian-in-English literary canon (see also M.G. Vassanji, Anita Rau Badami);
- Chester Brown and Seth are high-regarded graphic novelists (the former's Louis Riel is fun and interesting);
- In the past decade or so, Yann Martel's The Life of Pi probably created (and earned) the biggest stir outside of anything produced by the big literary names;
- Robert Sawyer is building quite a rep as a prolific and intellectually interesting SF author;
- Tony Burgess' Pontypool Changes Everything certainly qualifies as the Great Canadian Zombie Novel.
From what we have available, it does occur to me that there are some candidates for Great Canadian Novel: Hugh Maclennan's Two Solitudes (the great classic about Canada's dual Anglo-Franco identity); any of several books by Timothy Findley (The Wars, Not Wanted on the Voyage, Famous Last Words); either of Barney's Version or The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler; In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje (who also penned the poetry classics The Collected Works of Billy the Kid and Coming Through Slaughter); The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (which a large number of people here have probably read).
So people should read all of that, for sure.
244: Yes, there are certainly exceptions.
BV is certainly a good one to turn to if anyone doubts that Richler can be a Great Male Narcissist.
248: One of the more skilful uses of the unreliable narrator device.
tbh, I read it so long ago, and a time when I was so crappy a reader, that my recollection of it should be taken with a salt mine.
My high school best friend (also friends with Thorn, because the internet is like that) is a Canadian who wrote a novel that was published yesterday! It is YA fantasy. I have not read it yet, so I cannot say if it is the Great Canadian Novel.
Oh, you know who else? Esi Eduygan, who comes from my hometown (recent author of Half-Blood Blues). And Shane Koyczan, originally a slam poetry performer whose taken his practice beyond those roots (he was part of the ceremonies during the recent Vancouver Winter Games).
(And Minister Faust from Edmonton, who writes Africentric SF -- The Alchemists of Kush, From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain.)
Does Nalo Hopkinson count as Canadian, or is she Jamaican living in Canada?
If someone is successful and can be remotely claimed as Canadian, they're Canadian.
I'm currently reading Moby Dick. I've tried twice before, but I always get stuck in the chapter where he lists the different types of whales.
Isn't the "Great American Novel" an explicit time-bound obsession of the 50s writers, like Mailer?
The correct choice for Great American Novel is of course Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It says so right there in the book: "But our trip was different. It was a classic affirmation of everything right and true and decent in the national character. It was a gross, physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country-but only for those with true grit. And we were chock full of that."
252: I stopped on the way home from work and bought a copy. I fully expect it to be great, if not necessarily Great. I am about to read it while supervising bathtime and then during the girls' gymnastics, because I am too boring to do coke or have affairs.
I think I am going to get it on Kindle because I see the author every ten years so it's not like I need a signed copy. I'm curious how I'll like it since YA fantasy novel is very far from anything I'd ever read if it weren't written by someone I was in youth orchestra with in 1990.
(Me, I'm going to a play in a couple of hours, because I forgot to have kids in order to justify doing cocaine etc.)
Because I am so goddamm fascinating I am leaving work to do coke, have an affair, read the Great American Novel, and also take my wife and stepdaughter to Dairy Queen for blizzards. Wish me luck!
because I am too boring to do coke or have affairs
Overdetermined, since you don't live in Park Slope.
260: That's what I would have done, but I may end up passing my copy around the knitting group when I'm done with it.
262: Indeed I do not. I don't think it would be good for me.
I don't actually know much about Park Slope; I believe it is east of the Sierras. I guess if either of us had to live there, we could find the parts of it that suited us.
I'm currently reading Moby Dick. I've tried twice before, but I always get stuck in the chapter where he lists the different types of whales.
If you get stalled out again, read Chapter 93, "The Castaway" (where Pip falls in) and Chapter 94, "A Squeeze of the Hand" (the sperm-soaked mess of a chapter). Preferably aloud. Those may rev you up to finish.
259: I am too boring to do coke or have affairs.
Coke ultimately makes people boring, they just think they're fascinating while they're on it. But one is never too boring to have affairs*.
(* Laydeez...)
245 It's about apes somehow gaining sentience, I think, and set in Waterloo.
Waterloo has apes? No one ever told me that.
Has anyone read (or tried to read) Beautiful Losers? Not the GCN...
268: Yes, I was going to mention it although not as a serious candidate. I have had a friend's old dog-eared copy, for the past 25 years, keep meaning to send it back to him. I enjoyed it in small doses.
PGD, there you are. Many congratulations to you on incipient parenthood. Congratulations, trepidation, fears, tears, joy.
PGD, that's great. When will the blessed event occur?
Blessed? Let's not be all controversial here, MC. Anyway this should go in the other thread. Sorry about that.
You know, if you have doubts about the propriety of a comment, parsimon, you can just not post it.
BELIEVE IT OR NOT, I'M WALKING ON AIR
i NEVER THOUGHT I COULD FEEL SO FREEEEE
FLYING AWAY ON A WING AND A PRAYER
WHO COULD IT BE?
IT'S JUST ME.
270 link is pretty damn good. Including, The Great American Novel is inside you, I just know it. Especially if you're Canadian.
266: Indeed, and yet it seems prudent to encourage myself away from affairs. There are no obvious options on the horizon anyway, but it seems better to blame it on my dullness than to consider alternate plans.
The Great American Novel is inside you, I just know it. Especially if you're Canadian.
Aha! The real reason for the lack of a GCN: would-be Canadian novelists keep moving to Brooklyn to try and write the GAN.
Guy Vanderhaeghe (especially The Englishman's Boy
I've been meaning to read this.
Which reminds me: about a year ago, at the urging of a friend, I picked up Lonesome Dove, never dreaming that it would hold my attention for more than about ten minutes or so. Wow! How wrong I was. It is a, if not the, great American novel.
270, click.
I have this idea for a Showtime show. It is kind of like "Dexter" except the main character is a child molester. But wait, it's OK because he only molests really bad kids who deserve it.
I read Beautiful Losers and The Favourite Game when I was about 18. That's a good age to read them, I should think. At that time I wasn't clear about the expression "self-indulgent", but I knew the concept I was looking for.
My high school best friend (also friends with Thorn, because the internet is like that) is a Canadian who wrote a novel that was published yesterday!
I also know someone whose YA novel was published that same day! Pretty sure it's not the same person. (Your friend isn't the daughter of Van Halen's producer, right?)
Believe it or not, George isn't at home.
Just leave a message at the beep.
I must be out or I'd pick up the phone.
Where could I beeeeeeee?
I'm not home!
Oh, the shame of it: I didn't mention Lawrence Hill in the discussion of CanLit above. One really should read Lawrence Hill.
Are we going to get any more info about these various Unfogged-connected YA books? Seems a good opportunity to put in a plug for your friends, yes?
I just finished reading Seraphina, the story of teen musician's engagement in the potential breakdown of the peace treaty between humans and dragons in her medieval kingdom. It was indeed wonderful and I think Smearcase might like it too.
Sorry I never close html right on the iPad. I even knew I was doing it wrong and went back and forth until both slashes looked wrong. I hate this about myself.
The Great American Novel is inside you, I just know it. Especially if you're Canadian.
Outside of a Canadian, it's too cold to read.
Except when outside of a Canadian is inside of a bear.