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March 28, 2024, 08:50:26 AM

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The Great American Novel

Started by Serge, October 15, 2017, 01:58:00 PM

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Neville Chamberlain

Quote from: studpuppet on November 02, 2017, 09:49:41 PM
I liked Don DeLillo's Underworld; I think it's probably the only novel I've read in this category.

Is this good? When I finished reading The Corrections, the only book in this category I've read (and a bloody great read it was, too!), I was tempted to go for Underworld...

poodlefaker

I think Underworld is trying too hard to be the GAN, maybe. I'd go for Updike's Rabbit series, and dos Passos' USA, which is amazing but dauntingly thick: read Manhattan Transfer first, and if you like that, try USA.

Great British Novel = Bleak House, Little Dorritt, Middlemarch, etc etc

Serge

Quote from: Neville Chamberlain on November 03, 2017, 09:00:48 AM
Or, more specifically, our very own Willie Thorne-obsessed biggy has control of your mind ;-)

Well, you know there is some compelling evidence about JFK's assassination that......what am I saying? MY WIFE'S GONNA KILL ME!



Quote from: Neville Chamberlain on November 03, 2017, 09:01:57 AM
Is this good? When I finished reading The Corrections, the only book in this category I've read (and a bloody great read it was, too!), I was tempted to go for Underworld...

If you liked The Corrections, I can recommend Nathan Hill's The Nix, as I'm pretty sure you'd like that as well.

Quote from: poodlefaker on November 03, 2017, 11:34:55 AMI think Underworld is trying too hard to be the GAN, maybe. I'd go for Updike's Rabbit series, and dos Passos' USA, which is amazing but dauntingly thick: read Manhattan Transfer first, and if you like that, try USA.

Underworld is another one I struggled with. And I somehow made it through the first two Rabbit books before deciding that Updike wasn't for me. 

On the upside, I started Look At Me in my lunchbreak, and am zipping through it.



Gamma Ray

#33
For me the chronology of the Great American Novel is The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, East of Eden and then Sometimes a Great Notion, though admittedly the last two are pretty close together in terms of publication. As far as I'm concerned Hunter Thompson was next in line (yes, he wasn't primarily a novelist but I agree with him that it's an artificial distinction). I'm not sure who followed him so I guess that I need to pay closer attention to this thread. I do see mention of Donna Tartt upthread and as great a read as The Goldfinch is, personally I don't think that she has the wider resonance of Twain or Kesey. Maybe someone like Cormac McCarthy these days, though there's not a lot of hope in his writing.

mr. logic

The Bascombe trilogy is probably a good contender for this, but Ford writes so well that it would be a shame to limit the scope of his books like that.

Loved Underworld. Read it while coasting shisha bars in Kuwait last year. Tempted to start a 'Most inappropriate setting you read a book in and did it matter?' thread