Of my twelve favorite novelists of all time, only two are Americans. I’ll be writing about one this weekend and the other next weekend. Neither is an obvious choice, so I wanted to briefly comment on the most obvious choices.
Warning: there’s no way you’re going to agree with all (or, likely, most) of what I’m about to write.
I’m not into horror and thus not into Edgar Allen Poe or Stephen King, nor into sci-fi and thus not into Ray Bradbury, and while I recognize the greatness of our three great Gothic novelists I’m not into Gothic and thus not into Nathaniel Hawthorne, Flannery O’Connor, or William Faulkner. I’m not into postmodern novels and thus not into Don DeLillo or Thomas Pynchon.
I recognize the greatness of John Steinbeck, but he’s too political for me. I recognize the greatness in the novelists who only wrote only one great novel — especially Herman Melville, J.D. Salinger, and, yes, F. Scott Fitzgerald. And I recognize the greatness in our three great novelists who wrote in a sparse, stark style — Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, and Cormac McCarthy.
With Hemingway, I would add this caveat: The reason I’ll probably never read any of his novels again — the reason they don’t really resonate with me — is not just the sparse writing style. It’s that this warm, passionate, loving man pretended on the pages of his book, in the characters he presented, to be the opposite — almost pathologically cold. And I don’t get that.
With McCarthy, they were all definitely worth reading once. So many characters living out good values — almost always in dark settings. McCarthy’s values resonate powerfully with me. I just don’t see myself reading any of them a second time.
None of the novels of Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Kurt Vonnegut, or John Updike has resonated with me enough to read a second time. James Baldwin and Toni Morrison are both great novelists, but they’re writing to someone other than me, although Baldwin’s passionate conviction does resonate with and inspire me.
Rudolfo Anaya was writing to me as a fellow New Mexican, but he only produced one great novel and only that one other novel that I intend to read again.
I’ve always had an affinity with Edna Ferber, but she wrote novels that have dated themselves over time, and I’m not sure any of them rose to the level of greatness.
Henry James wrote great novels — several of them — none of which I’ll be reading again. (I commented previously on my mixed view of James.)
Sinclair Lewis is certainly a personal favorite. His range of subjects is impressive, and all those subjects were important at the time he wrote them. But Main Street is the only one I regard as great and intend to read again.
Mark Twain? I certainly have nothing negative to say about him, other than that he became too cynical with age. But his two greatest novels were novels I enjoyed as a youth, not an adult, and his others strike me as period pieces not relevant to our times or my life.
So that leaves two American novelists who’ve written three or more novels that I regard as great, that resonate with me and that are personally meaningful to me, and that I intend to read again. I’ll write about the first one this weekend and the second one (my favorite living American author) next weekend.
Lastly, here are my ten other favorite novelists, in alphabetical order: Isabel Allende (Chilean), Jane Austen (British), Honore de Balzac (French), Charles Dickens (British), George Eliot / Mary Anne Evans (British), Vasily Grossman (Ukrainian), Thomas Keneally (Australian), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Russian), J.R.R. Tolkien (British), and Elie Wiesel (Romanian).
Who am I missing? What am I missing? Where have my judgments fallen short? Let me know your views from your reading experiences.
Because of my strong taste for world lit and the long reading list that comes with it, I haven't given much thought to whom I will read again. But however small that list is now, Dostoyevsky is most certainly on it. As is Hermann Hesse. Even so, I don't think some novelists are meant to be read a second time. I don't see Kerouac, for instance, as being the type one revisits. It's not the point, really. I would say the same about Cormac McCarthy, except it's less obvious than with Kerouac. Just as Heraclitus said that one doesn't step into the same river twice, there are some adventures that just can't be repeated.
Though a short story guy, an author I've felt like revisiting is Bret Harte,. Though that's partly because I read an excellent biography of him recently that revealed a lot of fascinating things about his most famous stories that weren't apparent in my first read. Other American authors who are famous that you didn't mention include Stephen Crane, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Upton Sinclair, Theodor Dreiser, Bernard Malamud, Isaac Bashevis Singer, (Polish-Jewish, but he's basically recognized as having nudged his way into the American tradition) E.L. Doctorow, James Fenimore Cooper, John Dos Passos and Paul Bowles.
I will push back a bit where Steinbeck is concerned. His early work is not political and even those books considered political are, I would argue, more social, though of course we use the term socio-political for a reason. His social novels are: In Dubious Battle, Of Mice & Men and Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck novels that aren't political but are excellent include: Pastures of Heaven, The Red Pony, To A God Unknown, Tortilla Flat, Cannery Row, The Wayward Bus, The Pearl and, to a lesser extent, The Winter of Our Discontent. Unfortunately, the critics gave Steinbeck a terrible time because they were jealous of his popularity among ordinary people. Their constant refrain, post-1939, was: "why isn't this novel like Grapes of Wrath?" Meaning: why isn't he being political the way we want him to be? The legacy of Grapes of Wrath has blinded many to how Steinbeck was, in fact, one of the starkest examples of a relevant yet apolitical author.
I will also say this about Melville: I enjoyed Typee a lot more than I thought I would. If not at the level of Moby Dick, it is not a novel that warrants dismissiveness either. And I will say that while you're right about Twain for the most part, Connecticut Yankee is an exception. It has a more ambiguous undercurrent than its unambiguous satirical aim suggests.
Tough criteria for novels! great, resonate with me, personally meaningful to me, and all rereadably so... It's been surprising for me to discover how tough this, in particle how I did not enjoy some (mistaken? Expiring?) favorites so much on a second read. Examples, Hemingway, Kerouac. Note this reread was across the span of decades so there is more than on thing going on here... Felix's Heraclitus reference seems right. I think the famous Russian novels work for me that way, all very different, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Bulgakov. By the way I appreciate your strong opinions and tastes, and your ability to articulate them, naturally different than me, but that's a good thing. I'm learning and I love it. Also love the enthusiasm for novels, craft, culture, and history. Keep up the good work.