25 Books That Could Be The Great American Novel

Please go watch Greg's video (heck subscribe to his channel he's great @SupposedlyFun ) to see where I got the inspiration for my video:

My word of the day was "inherently."

Time Stamps:
00:00 Intro
00:55 Criteria
03:08 Toni Morrison
04:37 William Faulkner
05:41 Larry McMurtry
06:34 Don Dellilo
07:20 James Baldwin
08:57 Armisted Maupin
09:58 Ralph Ellison
10:54 Ernest Hemingway
12:09 Tim O'Brien
13:14 Edith Wharton
14:06 John Dos Passos
15:13 John Steinbeck
15:59 Cormac McCarthy
17:09 Denis Johnson
17:55 Tommy Orange
18:51 The Underground Railroad
19:55 Marilynn Robinson
20:39 Edward P. Jones
21:46 Jesmyn Ward
23:01 Mark Twain
24:34 Willa Cather
25:13 Louise Erdrich
26:39 Valeria Luiselli
27:56 Percival Everett
28:44 F. Scott Fitzgerald
29:20 Outro

[goimond]

Great contenders. I think you could also add Moby-Dick to the list.

[MarcNash]

Suddenly struck me that Pioneer stories are road trip novels made by wagon rather than car... "American Pastoral" is a great American novel but just of the 1960s.

[tyghe_bright]

There can't be a singular great American novel because there isn't a singular America.

I really like the thought you put into this list. And definitely agree that the books on this list should be set in the States, and in some way about America. A few of the books on the Atlantic's list didn't quite make sense to me for that reason.

[susanneill]

Great list Brian & discussion of your reasons for including them. I have to ask you about Moby Dick. Did you leave it off bc it doesn’t take place on American land/in America?? If so, I have to argue that the ship & ocean are Melville’s metaphor for America & his story is an allegory of manifest destiny, which IMO is THE story of American history along with those of slavery & the Civil War. Obviously MD really gets going after the CW & 1851 when MD was published but it had started with the early expansions west & the decimation of the indigenous people east of the Mississippi River. And Ahab’s obsession with conquering MD is Melville’s telling of America’s obsession with conquering Nature & acquiring more & more territory & wealth. Thanks again!! 😊

[BookChatWithPat]

This is a great list, Brian. I agree with so many of your choices, though I might include Grapes of Wrath for Steinbeck instead of Of Mice and Men. (I know you don't love GoW, but I do think it is a quintessentially American novel). I absolutely agree with the Louise Erdrich novel that you have chosen. I need to think about what I would include in my list. Just off the top of my head, though, I know that my list would include To Kill a Mockingbird. I would also include Barbara Kingsolver. While she does not always set her books in the US, Demon Copperhead is a very important book about America right now, in this moment. I think Joyce Carol Oates probably belongs on a list of Great American Novelists, but I'm not sure what book I would pick. Maybe We Were the Mulvaneys? I need to think on this some more. But thank you, Brian, once again, for such a thoughtful video.

[myreadinglife]

Excellent list! Lonesome Dove is probably the book I think of first when I hear “great American novel”.

[philip]

Great video, thanks Brian. I get a lot of guidance on my reading from your channel (as I do from Supposedly Fun) and I’ll be referring back to both of your lists. My favorite American novel is Absalom, Absalom! but guess it didn’t make the list because you chose my third favorite American novel (The Sound and the Fury) under the no-repeat rule. Thanks again!

[HannahsBooks]

I love that your list highlights the breadth of American culture(s)—from the South to elite NY, from the prairie to the West, enslaved and immigrant and native, etc. I think your list makes it very clear that there never can be a single Great American Novel.

[GuiltyFeat]

Great list. I would probably find room for one of the Roths that others have mentioned as well as “Rabbit, Run”. I would throw in a Franzen, perhaps even “Crossroads”. I couldn’t make the list without “American Tabloid” by James Ellroy or “The Big Sleep” by Raymond Chandler. I might struggle to leave out “Infinite Jest” despite its flaws and I might squeeze in “Demon Copperhead” because it’s so good.

Honorable mentions to “Passing” by Nella Larsen, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” by Truman Capote and “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” by Michael Chabon.

[stretmediq]

The United States is so diverse no one book can be "The Great American Novel"

[dqan]

To Kill a Mockingbird? I was surprised by your Erdrich pick, but happy to hear it get some love. I'd include some different authors (Sinclair Lewis, Roth, Updike, Doctorow), but I can't knock your list.

[TKTalksBooks]

There was only one book on your list with which I am unfamiliar. (Lost Children Archive)
I would have incorporated The Grapes of Wrath on my list (I know your feelings on that one, however)
I also would have included Moby Dick.
I saw Greg’s video and was confused by the criteria The Atlantic used in choosing the books on their list. I appreciated your criteria being clear at the beginning.
Great video. Well done, Brian. And thank you.

[ramblingraconteur]

Nice to see this, Brian! I was surprised to see which Erdrich novel you chose, though that is one I enjoyed. I might have to try and put together a list of 25 alternative contenders.

The more I think about Dos Passos’ USA, the more I wish that the ratio of camera eye/newsreel/biography pages to POV characters’ pages was reversed. I enjoyed the experimental ones so much more than the straightforward ones when we reread it.

[PageTurnersWithKatja]

As I was listening to the criteria, I had exactly that thought about much of Hemingway's work not qualifying.
This is a great collection, spanning various facets of the American experience, from the personal to the societal, and it's fascinating to consider the pervasive theme of violence. I've heard of many of them, but others are new to me, including: "Tales of the City" and "Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson and "Remember, Remember".
I'm intrigued to revisit "Huckleberry Finn", especially as its inspiring contemporary works (I have both "James" by Percival Everett and "Adventures of Mary Jane" by Hope Jahren on my TBR). Thrilled to see The Trees on your list! I read it a couple of years ago, and it blew me away. And, of course, the book closing off your list always springs to mind. Thank you for such a thoughtful discussion, I've added a few of these to my TBR.

[joniheisenberg]

“American Pastoral” & “The Plot Against America” would be on my list. The former a commentary on the effects of the Vietnam War on an “apple pie and Chevrolet” American family and the latter a prescient, foreboding of a potential America that is frighteningly close to becoming a reality.

[CasperLCat]

I discovered Hemingway at 14 in the mid 1970s, been reading and re-reading him since. Big Two Hearted River, especially. There’s a pristine innocence in it (with a subtext of tragedy) that entranced me from the first.

But I also reflect on how I’m different as I experience it in different stages of my life. And Hemingway’s stature in our culture has changed dramatically, despite being dead the whole time, as well.

I can imagine someone just saying this is a story about fishing, and I don’t know how it has the almost mystical effect that it does, for me. Clearly the “two-hearted” nature of life - the promise of the crystalline river, as well as the “tragic” fishing of the swamp — is a lifelong theme with Hemingway. But that indefinable power within the simplest of writing, is the modernist genius of Hemingway, IMO.

[miketrotman]

How is "Gone With the Wind" not on the list? It took on the country's greatest tragedy embedded and embodied in the story of a spoiled, irresponsible woman who epitomized her society's catastrophic failings and drove her to be wiser and more adult in the ruins of her own making. It got there first to the story that generations of black writers can't stop telling.

[TheoEstes]

So glad to find another “Another Country” fan. It feels like Giovanni’s Room gets all the love

[AnnNovella]

No John Williams? Stoner - Butcher’s Crossing - Augustus.

[SupposedlyFun]

Great list! I haven't read James Baldwin's Another Country yet, but it's the next of his books on my list. There are a couple of others that I really need to get to someday. I get excited every time Age of Innocence gets recognized as well. I would still include To Kill a Mockingbird on my own list, but oh well.