Who is the Great American Novelist?

[savdec449]

To me what really hit home about Freedom was not so much its scale of ambition or anything like that; its value for me came, on the most direct level, in the truthfulness of its characters. Without going into specific personal context, there were many subtleties in characters' motivations and actions that were shockingly (in some cases, sort of distressingly) reminiscent of and accurate to--and, by extension, revealing with respect to--people within my own family. And although I know some people don't agree about this, I found Franzen's portrayal of his characters to be humane and generous (I haven't read The Corrections, but as I understand it, that is a big difference between the two novels?), which was very valuable to me in reflecting on those people in my life, especially during difficult interactions.

It's been a while, but I think that The Corrections is a um meaner work, though maybe more powerful in spots for that. But that could also have to do with how Franzen changed as a person in the time between writing those two novels: if you read his interview in The Paris Review (which everyone should because its wonderful), you get a sense that, in Freedom, he's not really working under or against the shadow of DFW or his family like he used to be. The relative simplicity of the prose is what a lot of reviewers picked up on (and denigrated), yet I felt a lesser need to go after things.

It might be that, because I'm at a different point in my life, Franzen's family-archeology just doesn't reach me as much as it. I really loved and felt pulled around by Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding; if pressed, I couldn't give any reason inherent in the novels for one to do so and the other not asides from my personal experience.

[Chris]

When you say "I found Franzen's portrayal of his characters to be humane and generous", do you mean that he presented them truthfully and as objectively as he could? Because he did do that in The Corrections.

Yes, that is basically what I mean. I don't feel Franzen was passing judgment or contriving his characters in such a way as to invite easy judgment. I'll take your word on The Corrections, which I haven't read; I think I'd just heard comments to the effect of describing it as more biting.

[Chris]

It's been a while, but I think that The Corrections is a um meaner work, though maybe more powerful in spots for that. But that could also have to do with how Franzen changed as a person in the time between writing those two novels: if you read his interview in The Paris Review (which everyone should because its wonderful), you get a sense that, in Freedom, he's not really working under or against the shadow of DFW or his family like he used to be. The relative simplicity of the prose is what a lot of reviewers picked up on (and denigrated), yet I felt a lesser need to go after things.

I definitely felt that simplicity was appropriate to the work.

It might be that, because I'm at a different point in my life, Franzen's family-archeology just doesn't reach me as much as it. I really loved and felt pulled around by Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding; if pressed, I couldn't give any reason inherent in the novels for one to do so and the other not asides from my personal experience.

I've heard consistently great things about the Harbach; I need to pick it up.

[much shorter]

I do kind of wish these more modern high-brow(ish) books talked about something besides a dysfunctional family, though. It seems that half the meatier stuff I run into is about that.

There's so much being written at all times that are high-brow and NOT about families I'm not sure where you get your lit from.

It seems like most "lit" discussed here are straight from the gilded pages of NYRB, New Yorker, the Review and such. Perhaps you should try and broaden your views Kroms?

[MrHoatzin]

There's so much being written at all times that are high-brow and NOT about families I'm not sure where you get your lit from.

It seems like most "lit" discussed here are straight from the gilded pages of NYRB, New Yorker, the Review and such. Perhaps you should try and broaden your views Kroms?

NYRB seldom reviews fiction—but if you also include ads in those "gilded pages" then sure.

[much shorter]

NYRB seldom reviews fiction—but if you also include ads in those "gilded pages" then sure.

They do though.

[gregbrown]

"Seldom" isn't quite the right descriptor—given the high volume of NYRB pieces overall—but NYRB does tend to favor more non-fiction books than you'd expect, and that's certainly where their more famous pieces start from.

On a side note, their NYRB imprint is simply amazing for great books that are outside of your usual stomping grounds. It's ridiculous: I can just about pick up any NYRB book at random and love it, no matter how weird or offbeat the synopsis. Part of it is picking out-of-print books that somehow missed the canon—John Williams' Stoner, for example—and part of it is being really good about commissioning new translations of incredible foreign literature. They have an incredible taste, and a distinctive color scheme that's easier to spot in bookstores. (Some of the more indie ones will even have a NYRB shelf/shrine. My favorite bookstore in Chicago had one that was NYRB + Dalkey Archive and I miss it every day.)

[MrHoatzin]

Yeah, "seldom" by volume. I stopped and briefly searched for a better word there, started writing a disclaimer, then gave up and posted what I had. Their coverage of fiction is usually in the form of comprehensive retrospectives of certain authors, which in my mind makes it somehow not about fiction itself.

[TheLastBaron]

The only way to decide who the Great American Novelist is, is to have America vote via texting numbers in. To have it any other way is a disgrace.

[Thyroid]

On a side note, their NYRB imprint is simply amazing for great books that are outside of your usual stomping grounds. It's ridiculous: I can just about pick up any NYRB book at random and love it, no matter how weird or offbeat the synopsis.

I've been interested in them though, in all honesty, I will read their pre-1923 works off of Project Gutenberg, but you're right in saying they put out uniquely-looking books. Are there any you specifically recommend, apart from Stoner?

Here's a list of the books, if anyone wants a peak.

[much shorter]

Didn't want to call you out Kroms, just figured you said something a bit stupid (I understand you though).

Stoner is amazing, Félix Fénéon's Novels in Three Lines is a blend of journalism and poesy and really cool, Dead Souls is insane and Gogol's best (for an English that is), I've heard good things about Butcher's Crossing, the Siege of Krishnapur is a classic, Robert Walser is the current hype-beast on aforementioned pages, Chekov is one of the best short story writers if you haven't read him, Edith Wharton was an interesting gal but I haven't read her, Osip Mandelstam is a classic if you are into poetry, Life & Fate ranks with War & Peace, Patrick Leigh Fermor is cool if you fancy old British manner and mentality (read some of the obits from last year), I've bought Boleslaw Prus' The Doll and it seems pretty cool, Bohumil Hrabal is funny but a bit mundane.

I just eyed through the list but those are some good lits! However the list isn't complete and you can find more here.

E: However, these aren't "modern" in the sense that they are contemporary. A few of them can be called Modernists though. I'm not sure what you meant by "modern" so there you go.

[Thyroid]

I don't mind. Anyway, I didn't see your last post, but, again, it was just one of those days where every other "literary" book I picked-up at the bookshop seemed about families. It was just frustration. I live in Jordan, too, so while we have a number of fairly good bookstores, they're all small compared to, say, Waterstone's, and so the probability of things being one way and not the other is slightly higher.

Thanks for your informative post on the NYRB books.

[Argobot]

I've been interested in them though, in all honesty, I will read their pre-1923 works off of Project Gutenberg, but you're right in saying they put out uniquely-looking books. Are there any you specifically recommend, apart from Stoner?

Here's a list of the books, if anyone wants a peak.

Just adding my two cents here, everyone keeps telling me I need to read The Dud Avocado.

[gregbrown]

Are there any you specifically recommend, apart from Stoner?

Butcher's Crossing is Williams' first book, and one of the darker westerns that laid the groundwork for McCarthy's stuff. You can see him click into amazing introspective mode at the end, whereas with Stoner it's incorporated much more throughout. It's so much fun to see an author slowly build up their style. (His third book Augustus is good too, but not NYRB.)

The Three Christs of Ypsilanti by Milton Rokeach is actually non-fiction—his account of an experiment trying to cure three patients claiming to be Jesus Christ by bringing them all together. But before long, the experiment is abandoned and it's a fascinating look at trying to cure mental illness through intensive human contact, along with certain measures that would be unthinkable in the modern day.

There's a particular writing style that I can't quite put my finger on—maybe a sort of playful intellectualism, but without the post-war maximalist style—and Edmund Wilson has it in spades in To the Finland Station. It's very epigrammatic.

Inverted World is a sci-fi novel written by Christopher Priest, one with a very curious premise that's slowly revealed throughout the book.

I really need to start digging into their Russians, like much shorter mentioned.

[much shorter]

I really need to start digging into their Russians, like much shorter mentioned.

Rus, but primarily Slavic

[binhoker]

I would say faulkner and bellow are the two greatest, and was surprised to see my choices reflected in the article. Seeing Franzens name pop up in this thread so often is depressing though, his books seemed to me at best liberal, handwringing, airport novels.

[savdec449]

I would say faulkner and bellow are the two greatest, and was surprised to see my choices reflected in the article. Seeing Franzens name pop up in this thread so often is depressing though, his books seemed to me at best liberal, handwringing, airport novels.

That seems to me an uncharitable reading of Franzen's work. Chip from The Corrections and the entirety of the family in Freedom are nothing if not a critical examination of the left-wing (I won't use the word liberal) mindset when it is juxtaposed with the brute facts of a person's life. Franzen, at least in his latest two novels, is anything but handwringing, if I understand how you are using that word correctly.

[binhoker]

Uncharitable perhaps, but we are discussing the great american novelist. Franzens latest work, tackling the anxieties of the elite middle class in America, dealt with its well trodden subject matter ( hellers "something happened " comes to mind ) with the deftness of a sitcom pilot writer. The whole book ( to me) sagged under its own false gravitas and absurd plot contrivances. A famous rockstar, a Neocon and an environmentalist walk into a bar...

Not to say the author doesn't have some talent, but after what felt like 500 pages of inert prose I expect considerably more that he was able to offer.

I also think Cormac Mccarthy is a hack.....COME AT ME!

[savdec449]

No, I agree! I think late Cormac McCarthy is a much less interesting writer, largely because he kind of abandoned, in The Road and NCFOM, the baroque-quality that I so love in Blood Meridian.

[Stephen]

I don't know how much I like the idea of such a list to begin with, but if there is to be one at all it most definitely would be remiss to leave out Melville. He was the man that shaped American literature, although I'm not sure if he created it. He did however find it wanting, and renovated the damn building with his own ink-and-tear-stained hands.

If his exclusion is associated with his inability to produce four great novels then I incredulously disagree. Typee and Omoo beg to be read together, Moby Dick is the inverse of playwrighting (It is Shakespeare's innards clutched and torn dripping as easy as molting a new exoskeleton.) that tears apart the ship rather than meticulously sealing it board by board, and Billy Budd is a wonderful mess whose importance exceeds the masterpiece of the work itself. (The importance of its story and its incomplete nature is an integral part of its legacy; see Woyzeck) You should all read The Confidence Man, by the way. And make sure to pick up the Dalkey Archive edition. It has an awesome preface written by Daniel Handler and some great annotations. (It's also a placeholder to me for the dawn of American postmodernism. So far.)

Hyperbole aside, it kind've sucks that Melville was shunted here.

I guess that just leaves him for people like me to have an unhealthy obsession with the man alone in my own tight, wrinkled, stained, and acutely asphyxiating corner of lip-smacking apophenia.

My goodness have I got to go to bed.

[MrHoatzin]

It is a wide sieve through which many notable writers have fallen, but there it is: I'm looking for an American, writing within the last 100 years who went back to the well again and again and continued to find it wet with novelistic inspiration.

There is a bunch of selection rules dude lists in the article.

[Stephen]

Oh, sorry. I realized that though and just forgot to clarify in the midst of my post.

What I meant to write initially is that I'm disappointed in how the list can at all be about finding the Great American Novelist while excluding the country's foundations, which do not go so far back as to be entirely worth disbarring. America is still so young, you might as well play with the breadth of its history.

Although I know it can be argued that making a list at all seriously requires some method of narrowing choices so as to actually complete the damn thing.

Anyway, don't mind me! I just love Melville.

[Chris]

I guess that just leaves him for people like me to have an unhealthy obsession with the man alone in my own tight, wrinkled, stained, and acutely asphyxiating corner of lip-smacking apophenia.

I would you say you aren't alone.

[osmosisch]

Having just read Moby Dick due to the Idle Book Club, I am definitely in the Melville fanclub. There are eminently skippable parts but when he's good oh man is he good.

Just read this chapter.

By midnight the works were in full operation. We were clear from the carcase; sail had been made; the wind was freshening; the wild ocean darkness was intense. But that darkness was licked up by the fierce flames, which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and illuminated every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek fire. The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to some vengeful deed. So the pitch and sulphur-freighted brigs of the bold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from their midnight harbors, with broad sheets of flame for sails, bore down upon the Turkish frigates, and folded them in conflagrations.

The hatch, removed from the top of the works, now afforded a wide hearth in front of them. Standing on this were the Tartarean shapes of the pagan harpooneers, always the whale-ship's stokers. With huge pronged poles they pitched hissing masses of blubber into the scalding pots, or stirred up the fires beneath, till the snaky flames darted, curling, out of the doors to catch them by the feet. The smoke rolled away in sullen heaps. To every pitch of the ship there was a pitch of the boiling oil, which seemed all eagerness to leap into their faces. Opposite the mouth of the works, on the further side of the wide wooden hearth, was the windlass. This served for a sea-sofa. Here lounged the watch, when not otherwise employed, looking into the red heat of the fire, till their eyes felt scorched in their heads. Their tawny features, now all begrimed with smoke and sweat, their matted beards, and the contrasting barbaric brilliancy of their teeth, all these were strangely revealed in the capricious emblazonings of the works. As they narrated to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them, like the flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round her on all sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul.

I mean, seriously.

[Gormongous]

Yeah, it's so incredibly trite to say, but the opening paragraph remains my favorite beginning for a novel, ever:

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

You know, sooner or later we're going to have to stop calling them "novels".