The idea of the Great American Novel is controversial, passé, hubristic, and . . . always fascinating to talk about. This week, inspired by a recent list of potential candidates for the Great American Novel published in The Atlantic, we dive in and talk about the concept, the history, the list, and our votes for other contenders. What book(s) would get your vote?
Shownotes
Books
The MANIAC, by Benjamin Labatut
Lesser Ruins, by Mark Haber
Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe, by Kapka Kassabova
Elixir: In the Valley at the End of Time, by Kapka Kassabova
To the River: A Balkan Journey of War and Peace, by Kapka Kassabova
Anima: A Wild Pastoral, by Kapka Kassabova
Dante: The Inferno, translated by Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander
Phineas Finn, by Anthony Trollope
The Eustace Diamonds, by Anthony Trollope
Phineas Reduce, by Anthony Trollope
Mortal Leap, by MacDonald Harris
Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
James, by Percival Everett
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
Augustus, by John Williams
Butcher’s Crossing, by John Williams
Absalom, Absalom!, by William Faulkner
Passing, by Nella Larsen
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures, by Maureen Corrigan
The Making of Americans, by Gertrude Stein
An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser
Light in August, by William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner
Nightwood, by Djuna Barnes
I Am Alien to Life: Selected Stories, by Djuna Barnes
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler
Ask the Dust, by John Fante
Wait Until Spring, Bandini, by John Fante
U.S.A., by John Dos Passos
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
In a Lonely Place, by Dorothy B. Hughes
All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers
The Street, by Ann Petry
The Mountain Lion, by Jean Stafford
A Time to Be Born, by Dawn Powell
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
Fahrenheit 451, by Raymond Bradbury
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
Charlotte’s Web, by E.B. White
The Adventures of Augie March, by Saul Bellow
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
The Bookshop, by Penelope Fitzgerald
Giovanni’s Room, by James Baldwin
The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson
No-No Boy, by John Okada
Peyton Place, by Grace Metalious
Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov
Another Country, by James Baldwin
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle
The Zebra-Striped Hearse, by Ross MacDonald
The Group, by Mary McCarthy
The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath
The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon
A Sport and a Pastime, by James Salter
Couples, by John Updike
Portnoy’s Complaint, by Philip Roth
Sabbath’s Theater, by Philip Roth
American Pastoral, by Philip Roth
The Human Stain, by Philip Roth
The Great American Novel, by Philip Roth
Divorcing, by Susan Taubes
Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
Play It As It Lays, by Joan Didion
Sula, by Toni Morrison
Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret, by Judy Blume
Desperate Characters, by Paula Fox
Log of the S.S. Mrs Unguentine, by Stanley Crawford
The Revolt of the Cockroach People, by Oscar Zeta Acosta
Oreo, by Fran Ross
The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin
Winter in the Blood, by James Welch
Corregidora, by Gayl Jones
Speedboat, by Renata Adler
Dancer from the Dance, by Andrew Hollerman
The Stand, by Stephen King
Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko
Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson
Machine Dreams, by Jayne Anne Phillips
Lark & Termite, by Jayne Anne Phillips
Shelter, by Jayne Anne Phillips
Little, Big: Or, the Fairies’ Parliament, by John Crowley
Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy
Dawn, by Octavia Butler
Geek Love, by Kathryn Dunn
Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
American Psycho, by Brett Easton Ellis
House of Leaves, by Mark C. Danielewski
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon
The Last Samurai, by Helen DeWitt
The Quick and the Dead, by Joy Williams
Erasure, by Percival Everett
The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen
The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, by Gary Shteyngart
The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz
Nevada, by Imogen Binnie
Open City, by Teju Cole
The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin
Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders
Sabrina, by Nick Drnaso
Lost Children Archive, by Valeria Luiselli
Nothing to See Here, by Kevin Wilson
The Old Drift, by Namwali Serpell
No One Is Talking About This, by Patricia Lockwood
The Love Song of W.E.B. Du Bois, by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Biography of X, by Catherine Lacey
Miss MacIntosh, My Darling, by Marguerite Young
The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton
The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozie Adiche
Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry
The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolaño, translated by Natasha Wimmer
Links
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Episode 78: The Great American Novel