What's the greatest novel?

[Kalish]

I mean what is the novel that is the 'gold standard' for all other novels. I'm not talking just personal preferences here. But what novel exemplifies all that a novel can be? Is there one or two or a few that are generally held as paramount?

[I Know How To Do it]

1. The Peter Potter books!

[jobycom]

2. The Great Gatsby, obviously gets put there a lot

The control of plot and prose in the novel is astounding.

[Rabrrrrrr]

5. and also "This Side of Paradise"

[Nevernose]

11. "Gatsby" gets my vote

They made me read it in high school, and I just didn't get it. They made me read it again in college fifteen years later, and I realized waht a superb piece of literature it really is. Definately in my top five, along with "Grapes of Wrath" "Huck Finn" "Canterbuty Tales" and "Most Things By Shakespeare."

[democracyindanger]

3. 'Hunger' by Knut Hamsun

Hemingway before Hemingway.

[Wetzelbill]

4. I have heard "Anna Kerenina"

Also, "100 Years Of Solitude."

I haven't read either yet. Almost dumb luck that I haven't.

For me, I compare all novels to "Love In The Time Of Cholera."

[NMMNG]

25. Do read Anna Karenina

It is long but well worth it. I read it for an online book group I was in and absolutely loved it.

[Wetzelbill]

29. I mean to do so

I just have so many books I'm wading through etc, that it's going to take me time to get to some of the ones I want to get to, as well.

[NMMNG]

I know the feeling-my "to be read" list is a mile long n/t

[NMMNG]

30. I know the feeling-my "to be read" list is a mile long n/t

[aaronbees]

49. If I had to choose...

I'd probably choose "Anna Karenina." Really hard to pinpoint why but it's an epic that's always interesting and goes down smooth, if that makes any sense. Somehow it touches so many aspects of the human experience ... yet does not feel weighty or overdone. I have yet to read "100 Years of Solitude," but sure hope to someday. "Unbearable Lightness of Being" is another fave ... definitely up there high on the list.
:)

[enigmatic]

6. "One Hundred Years Of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

with "Look Homeward Angel" by Thomas Wolfe a close second.

[I Know How To Do it]

9. Dayum! I love Thomas Wolfe.

[enigmatic]

13. He needed an editor

But the words that flowed from him were incredible...

[Wetzelbill]

21. I have dreams that I can write like Marquez, I try sometimes

to emulate his style. If I ever met him I would faint. I write stories sometimes on similar topics to some of his stuff, just so I can be like him. Like you know how teenage girls used to act when the Backstreet Boys first came out, that's how I act about Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I am obsessed with "Love In The Time Of Cholera" and with a short story of his called:"Sleeping Beauty And The Airplane." If you ever want I'll send you a story I wrote based on a similar experience I had sitting next to a hot girl on a bus. Gabo is a living legend, that guy is the man.

[enigmatic]

27. I admire his words

But the guy that's always going to be my favorite is Bukowski. He made me become a writer, and kept me alive for a long time. He's not for everyone, but he really struck a chord w/ me when I was a teen, and it hasn't subsided in the least.

[Wetzelbill]

33. I loved Post Office

Bukowski is great. I need to read more of his stuff. My first roommate in college loaned me Post Office. He used to wear a t-shirt that said "Team Bukowski" on it. It was awesome! Here is some of Buk's poetry. I like these two.

My Father (from "Septuagenarian Stew" 1994) ( Top of Page )

was a truly amazing man
he pretended to be
rich
even though we lived on beans and mush and weenies
when we sat down to eat, he said,
"not everybody can eat like this."

and because he wanted to be rich or because he actually
thought he was rich
he always voted Republican
and he voted for Hoover against Roosevelt
and he lost
and then he voted for Alf Landon against Roosevelt
and he lost again
saying, "I don't know what this world is coming to,
now we've got that god damned Red in there again
and the Russians will be in our backyard next!"

I think it was my father who made me decide to
become a bum.
I decided that if a man like that wants to be rich
then I want to be poor.

and I became a bum.
I lived on nickles and dimes and in cheap rooms and
on park benches.
I thought maybe the bums knew something.

but I found out that most of the bums wanted to be
rich too.
they had just failed at that.

so caught between my father and the bums
I had no place to go
and I went there fast and slow.
never voted Republican
never voted.

buried him
like an oddity of the earth
like a hundred thousand oddities
like millions of other oddities,
wasted.


The Great Slob (from "Septuagenarian Stew" 1994) ( Top of Page )

I was always a natural slob
I liked to lay upon the bed
in undershirt (stained, of
course) (and with cigarette
holes)
shoes off
beerbottle in hand
trying to shake off a
difficult night, say with a
woman still around
walking the floor
complaining about this and
that,
and I'd work up a
belch and say, "HEY, YOU DON'T
LIKE IT? THEN GET YOUR ASS
OUT OF HERE!"

I really loved myself, I
really loved my slob-
self, and
they seemed to also:
always leaving
but almost
always
coming
back.

[enigmatic]

40. The guy's my hero

Flat-out.

If you can find "Burning In Water, Drowning In Flame", that's the best start to his poetry. "The Roominghouse Madrigals", too.

I love just about everything he's ever written, but the books of poetry Black Sparrow has released since his death are pretty much his rejected piles of stuff, and I wouldn't recommend them.

For his novels, "Factotum", "Ham On Rye", and "Women" are his best work along w/ "Post Office".

We're playing a 2 CD set of Bukowski reading his poetry and prose from his "Run With The Hunted" book on this Sunday's Spoken Word Show on Radio Enigma; you should give a listen..

[Wetzelbill]

43. This Sunday?

Man, I am there.

[enigmatic]

45. Yep

It starts at aprrox. 7pm Mountain time, give or take 5-10 minutes from song run-overs from the previous program..

[Kalish]

46. I may check that out

sounds interesting. I'm a fan of Buk but have never heard him read aloud.

[enigmatic]

47. He's great

We've played a few of his poetry readings from the 70's on the station, and they are hysterical. He goes back and forth w/ the auidence, and they give it back to him in spades. I've got a couple cuts from them on my overnight show that I play; it's great stuff.

This Sunday's show is pretty low-key readings of his stuff, but well-worth listening to..

[Kalish]

7. Here's a list I found, Joyce is first

I think the list is bullshit, it doesn't have Mark Twain anywhere on it that I can see. That's automatic bs in my opinion. It's a list picked by Americans and there seems to be mostly or all english writers on it. But Twain not on it proves it's nothing.

1. ULYSSES by James Joyce
2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
6. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
7. CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
8. DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler
9. SONS AND LOVERS by DH Lawrence
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
11. UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
12. THE WAY OF ALL FLESH by Samuel Butler
13. 1984 by George Orwell
14. I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
15. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
16. AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
17. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
19. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
20. NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
21. HENDERSON THE RAIN KING by Saul Bellow
22.APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by John O'Hara
23.USA (trilogy) by John Dos Passos
24. WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson
25.A PASSAGE TO INDIA by EM Forster
26. THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James
27. THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
28. TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F Scott Fitzgerald
29. THE STUDS LONIGAN TRILOGY by James T. Farrell
30. THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
32. THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James
33. SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser
34. A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh
35. AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
36. ALL THE KING'S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
37. THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder
38. HOWARD'S END by EM Forster
39. GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin
40. THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
42. DELIVERANCE by James Dickey
43. A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME (series) by Anthony Powell
44. POINT COUNTER POINT by Aldous Huxley
45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
46. THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad
47. NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad
48. THE RAINBOW by DH Lawrence
49. WOMEN IN LOVE by DH Lawrence
50. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
51. THE NAKED AND THE DEAD by Norman Mailer
52. PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth
53. PALE FIRE by Vladimir Nabokov
54. LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
55. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
56. THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett
57. PARADE'S END by Ford Madox Ford 58. THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton
59. ZULEIKA DOBSON by Max Beerbohm
60. THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
61. DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather
62. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY by James Jones
63. THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLES by John Cheever
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by JD Salinger
65. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
66. OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W Somerset Maugham
67. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
68. MAIN STREET by Sinclair Lewis
69. THE HOUSE OF MIRTH by Edith Wharton
70. THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET by Lawrence Durell
71. A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA by Richard Hughes
72. A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS by VS Naipaul
73. THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West
74. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
75. SCOOP by Evelyn Waugh
76. THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark
77. FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
78. KIM by Rudyard Kipling
79. A ROOM WITH A VIEW by EM Forster
80. BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
81. THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH by Saul Bellow
82. ANGLE OF REPOSE by Wallace Stegner
83. A BEND IN THE RIVER by VS Naipaul
84. THE DEATH OF THE HEART by Elizabeth Bowen
85. LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad 86. RAGTIME by EL Doctorow
87. THE OLD WIVES' TALE by Arnold Bennett
88. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
89. LOVING by Henry Green
90. MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie
91. TOBACCO ROAD by Erskine Caldwell
92. IRONWEED by William Kennedy
93. THE MAGUS by John Fowles
94. WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys
95. UNDER THE NET by Iris Murdoch
96. SOPHIE'S CHOICE by William Styron
97. THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
98. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain
99. THE GINGER MAN by JP Donleavy
100. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by Booth Tarkington

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/136508.stm

[I Know How To Do it]

24. HAHA: 77. FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce

Start reading it and I want a report in a week!

[BlueIris]

56. There are few writers better than Joyce in the history of the world.

GOT to love the Joyce. Truly.

[TahitiNut]

8. "Don Quixote" by Miguel de Cervantes

"The Grapes of Wrath" would probably qualify as the greatest American novel.

[Fiona]

10. Lolita...

Nabokov is just mesmerizing.

[xmas74]

52. Someone on here agrees w/ me!

Nasty subject matter sure but the way that it is written is spellbinding!

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

12. Hand down War and Peace

It's not an easy read, but it is thorough...puts you right there and the depth of the characters and historical content is probably more complete than anything ever written

[Kalish]

14. is it better than crime and punishment?

as far as russian fiction goes those two are at the top, would you say?

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

16. Well Crime and Punishment was my second

[enigmatic]

15. it's a very hard one to read

because it really demands your undivided attention. It took me 4 tries to get through it in one reading (well, mostly one reading..), but it was worth it.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

17. It does...I've read it twice

and it was still cumbersome..

[jpgray]

18. I'd say the Brothers Karamazov

Maybe because the first time I read it I was Koly Krasotkin and I didn't realize it. I'm still an "incorrigible socialist," though I like to think when I say it now the absurdity has lessened somewhat. :D The characters are so perfectly realized that though the events are a bit fantastic you'll recognize dozens of people you know the first time through.

[Kalish]

20. I want to check that that book out

I remember when I read crime and punishment I was amazed at how throughouly 'modern' it was, I mean it had a tone and insight and characters that struck me as contemporary. And it was written in mid 19th century.

[jpgray]

23. It contains one of the greatest modern arguments against org. religion

And the beauty of it is that Dostoevsky was a devout conservative Christian at this point. It's a slog at times, but the book is bursting with ideas (and humor), and the skill with which they are presented is worth the trip.

[Kalish]

26. so how does he pull that?

I know that he was an orthodox Christian, but I also know that I've read his doubts crept into his books. I know that crime and punishment appeared to have some trenchant criticisms of capitalism in it, althouth it wasn't explicit. Rasklonikov does start getting into Christianity in the end, as a redemptive force, not so much as a repressive force though.

[jpgray]

32. Well, he was part of the socialist Belinsky's circle as a young man

His conversion to Christianty took place after he was arrested for attempted insurrection against the Czar as a result of his participation in these radical literary circles. He was pardoned from execution at the last minute and was sentenced to hard labor in Siberia, and somewhere in this process he found his faith. A lot of his characters mirror his spiritual journey from atheistic socialist to Christian, or are clever satires of brainless "liberals" who have a very dim grasp of socialism. What I like about Brothers Karamazov is that the chief intellectual voice in the book, Ivan, is treated with a great deal of respect even while Dostoevsky tries to make a point about the spiritual degeneration an exculsively Euclidean view of the world engenders. I don't necessarily agree with him on that point, but it's wonderful that he doesn't set up some strawman for the humanistic side of things, and he pretty fairly casts ugly, contemptible characters on both sides of the debate alongside the admirable and intelligent ones.

[Kalish]

34. I'm hope to read that one day

it sounds fascinating.

He also wrote a first person account of his four years in that hard labor camp. That also sounds interesting to me, I love it when great writers write about their personal experiences. It would be something to get a taste of what a hard labor camp in 19th century Russia was like...and to see how it changed him and affected him. The thing is it didn't seem to embitter him, not from what I can gather from my limited knowledge of him. Maybe it did though somewhat.

[jpgray]

36. Well, dramatic as the shift was it wasn't a cure-all

His gambling problems certainly dogged him until his death. But I find his late work more interesting than the earlier stuff he wrote, such as Poor Folk or Notes from Underground. Though it's all pretty good. :D It's hard to go wrong with Nabokov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy or Gogol when it comes to classic Russian novelists.

[Kalish]

38. Those russians really pumped out some novelists

must have been something in the water over there.

Real heady stuff.

[I Know How To Do it]

19. Everybody seems to forget Kafka in these greatest novel lists

Whud up wid dat?

[Wetzelbill]

22. Kafka is The Game, because he is that damn good!

[enigmatic]

28. You're right

Kafka has his own cult, though; he's one of the 10 greatest novelists of the 20th Century for sure.

[WCGreen]

31. The one I am working on right now....

the one that DU is distracting me from...

the one that will make me a literary giant and the talk of the talk show circuit,,,,

the one that will let me travel from city to city to meet all the little people who have bought my book....

But until then, I would have to say the book that inspired me to read on further into my life....

A Wrinkle in Time

[Wetzelbill]

37. Funny I'm writing a similar book myself

It's called, this is no lie: "Why Do Indians Say Saaaaaaa!" And the first story is called, "Nachos Are Green And Ducks Appear To Be Blue At Town Pump In Cut Bank, MT." It was released prior in another book, but I kept all rights to it. It's gotten really good reviews too.

[WCGreen]

41. Good for you.....

Now get out and campaign.....

You know I am going to ride your ass from here to next november....

cause that is what I do best....

[Wetzelbill]

44. Yeah I know you will

I need to find a damn treasurer so I can announce here pretty soon and be ready to roll on all cylinders when I get back home. :)

[enigmatic]

54. I want to read this

Is it online anywhere?

[Robeson]

35. Creation by Gore Vidal....

...because it explains who we are, how we came this way, and why we should look at the world rationally. Voltaire would have loved this book.

[punpirate]

39. While I think...

... Don Quixote should rank very highly, I have to say that it should be the one which set the form for the modern novel: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy. Or, at least, the first two volumes (which were released together in 1760). Sterne was perhaps the first novelist to break from the linear narrative and open the form to experimentation.

Cheers.

[Kalish]

42. Thomas Jefferson was a fan of Tristam Shandy

Although you hear little about it these days, at least I don't. It almost seems like a forgotten book, although at the time from what I've read it was somewhat scandalous due some sexual stuff in it. But TJ was a fan of it, a pretty big fan of it.

[BlueIris]

55. I LOVE Tristram Shandy. It is NOT a forgotten book.

Not to us English majors anyway. We adore it. One of the most inventive, most masterfully constructed novels ever. It's great. READ IT, y'all!

[EFerrari]

51. Have you ever surfed Sidney's Arcadia?

It's not linear. :eyes:

[punpirate]

57. That's true...

... but, it's essentially two reasonably coherent themes interwoven. I've looked at it (reading some Sydney in graduate school was a requirement), but when I think back on the language, it's closely related to Sydney's poetry (very balanced phrasing, lots of precision of speech, etc.), along with interposed theatrical set-pieces, etc.

My emphasis is on the modern novel, and the stream-of-consciousness digressions of Sterne, along with both the playfulness of his language and the attempts at psychological verisimilitude define the book as "modern." That's what I meant when describing it as a non-linear narrative.

Cheers.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

48. Any that have been banned.

If the powers-that-be think it's bad, then it's got to be good.

[izzie]

50. Maybe it is the age one is in?

War and Peace

[Xtreme]

53. The grapes of wrath

My FAVE!