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begin_within Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-26-06 10:14 PM
Original message
Poll question: What is the Great American Novel?
If your choice isn't listed here, please reply with your choice.
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Arkham House Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-26-06 10:22 PM
Response to Original message
1. Has to be Gatsby...
...short, but has perfect pitch. Every word matters...and so much is in there, so much of *America*. So much of us, even now... Runner-up: Ellison's "Invisible Man". Another near-perfect book...
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begin_within Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-26-06 11:54 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. In "Gatsby," is the narrator lying?
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Arkham House Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 08:39 AM
Response to Reply #2
8. I've never heard that theory before...
...good old Nick? What would he have to lie about? I know that there are various levels of irony in the book, but I always assumed that Nick was the sort of bedrock of the book, that the irony of the other characters can be measured against, if you will...
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begin_within Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 10:14 AM
Response to Reply #8
14. One American Lit. professor told our class once to keep in mind that the
narrator, Nick Carroway, may not be telling the truth at all times, but I was never able to figure that out. Ever since then I have been asking people who love the book and/or are fans of Fitzgerald about that.
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alcibiades_mystery Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 12:52 PM
Response to Reply #14
28. Your professor was probably teaching narrative theory
The best question to get people thinking about it is, of course, "Is the narrator lying?" This sort of thing is pretty easy to work through in, say, Heart of Darkness or Chaucer's The Shipman's Tale, and I think you could find the textual evidence to work it out in Gatsby as well. But it's not really a question with a yes or no answer. The question is meant to draw narration itself to the forefront, and narration is always, to some extent, a "lie," since the structure of the narrative has to be added, and can never faithfully represent events.
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treestar Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-26-06 11:58 PM
Response to Original message
3. Gone With the Wind
Hard to put down.
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begin_within Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 12:05 AM
Response to Reply #3
4. I should have listed that instead of one of the others.
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terrya Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 07:20 AM
Response to Original message
5. "Main Street" by Sinclair Lewis
For me, that is, "Main Street" is as close to being The Great American Novel as one could get.
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begin_within Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 10:20 AM
Response to Reply #5
17. I'll have to read it. The only one of his books I've read is "The Jungle"
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idgiehkt Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 10:58 AM
Response to Reply #17
21. Upton Sinclair wrote "The Jungle"
"Main Street" really is a good choice. Anything Sinclair Lewis wrote could qualify.
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begin_within Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 11:55 AM
Response to Reply #21
25. Sorry my bad!
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Callalily Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 07:26 AM
Response to Original message
6. Definitely
To Kill a Mockingbird My all-time favorite read.
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xchrom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 07:31 AM
Response to Original message
7. i had to go with moby dick.
it really is one of the greatest books ever written period.
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WCGreen Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 08:50 AM
Response to Original message
9. GOW....
Because it so captured a desperate time in our countries history from the perspective of the common man....
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begin_within Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 10:15 AM
Response to Reply #9
15. Also a great movie, though much in the book was left out from the movie.
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Spider Jerusalem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 09:58 AM
Response to Original message
10. Gatsby...
because at its core it's a novel about the void at the heart of the American dream (which is still with us 80 years later, and still just as hollow), and the ultimate emptiness, waste, and corruption of a life lived for materialism (symbolised by the fading billboard of the huge blue eyes staring out across a landscape of ash-heaps). And Fitzgerald's writing is a masterpiece of jewel-like, economical prose; he does brilliantly in 218 pages what other novelists take 400 to do poorly.
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wildhorses Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 10:02 AM
Response to Original message
11. just for the sake of argument I would like to suggest:
In Cold Blood~Truman Capote
or
Gone With The Wind~Margaret Mitchell





























:evilgrin:
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WCGreen Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 10:18 AM
Response to Reply #11
16. In cold blood wasn't a novel....
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wildhorses Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 10:30 AM
Response to Reply #16
19. and why not? where am I supposed to go on that link?
it was the first novel of its kind but, a novel nevertheless...















































i said nevertheless heehee
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WritingIsMyReligion Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 10:06 AM
Response to Original message
12. Gatsby, by far.
I read it for the first time this past year, and I was struck by its brilliant, jewel-like economy. No other novel can strike at the exact heart of the corrupting American Dream quite like Gatsby does, all in a little over 200 pages.

:thumbsup::thumbsup:
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Spider Jerusalem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 10:10 AM
Response to Reply #12
13. Creepy...
You used very nearly the same words to describe it that I did.
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Arkham House Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 07:25 PM
Response to Reply #12
32. Hear, hear...
...cripes--I was I had been half as bright when I was 15(almost) as you are...no kidding, WIMR--you have the whole universe ahead of you, and I hope I live long enough to see what you and Ava come up with the next few decades..."brilliant, jewel-like economy" is just right, and incidentally, very compatible with my own "pitch-perfect" comment... Oh my. Not quite 15, and loves Gatsby, Miles, and Bill Evans...just don't get a swelled head...:-)
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peekaloo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 10:23 AM
Response to Original message
18. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
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tinfoil tiaras Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 10:54 AM
Response to Original message
20. To Kill A Mockingbird...hell yes!
I freaking love that book. Thought it was hard to choose b/w that and Catcher in the Rye... :D
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JitterbugPerfume Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 11:30 AM
Response to Original message
22. I have to go with
Edited on Sun Aug-27-06 11:31 AM by JitterbugPerfume
The Grapes of Wrath

Gatsby left me cold.


second choice,On The Road
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caty Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 11:45 AM
Response to Original message
23. "East of Eden"
Edited on Sun Aug-27-06 11:46 AM by caty
I read it every five years and it never gets old.
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begin_within Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 11:54 AM
Response to Reply #23
24. Great book! And pretty good movie too.
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qnr Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 11:59 AM
Response to Original message
26. There is no "Great American Novel" Why the hell do people always have to
have "lists" and rank things? What's the Great Universal Star? What's the Great Atlantic Beach Sand Grain?
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alcibiades_mystery Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 12:43 PM
Response to Original message
27. Has anyone here read a novel since 1970?
:rofl:
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JVS Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 01:09 PM
Response to Original message
29. Babbit!
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idgiehkt Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 07:27 PM
Response to Reply #29
33. big ups
for Sinclair Lewis
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Mendocino Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 01:16 PM
Response to Original message
30. To Kill A Mockingbird
among those listed, but my favorite is Call of the Wild.
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Left Is Write Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 06:43 PM
Response to Original message
31. The unwritten book in my head.
Of course!

;)
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Rabrrrrrr Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-27-06 07:35 PM
Response to Original message
34. I think we have to split it into eras - Huck Finn for pre-1900s America,
Maybe even Call of the Wild, but I still vote for Huck Finn; The Great Gatsby (maybe This Side of Paradise) for the early 1900s; and To Kill a Mockingbird for post-WWII America.

I'd love to include Hemingway in the list, but since he never wrote about America, I don't think we can consider anything he did to be the great American novel, which, IMO, needs also to be about America, not just about Americans or be written by an American.
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