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The
Best American Novels
by Richard
H. Cracroft
Thanks to all
of you Noble Souls who sent e-mails expressing appreciation, astonishment,
or anguish at missing titles in my list of "The
40 Best British Novelists, Novels" in the January "Classics
Corner." Note that for wont of a single letter in my e-mail address,
I did not receive any of your feed-back until late January. That
error has been corrected, and all is swell, and I have now received
all my mail. I thank all of you who responded; I enjoyed reading
your comments. I wish I could respond personally-especially to you
who are old friends (and former missionaries in the Swiss Mission)
but I don't have that much Life left!
Your Assignment
for March: Send Me Your Recommendations
Before continuing
in our listing of suggestions for good reading additions to your
home library, I propose, in the March "Classics Corner," to give
a list of books, gleaned entirely from you readers, which have changed
your life. Here is your opportunity to recommend to fellow Latter-day
Saints, the book or books of fiction or non-fiction, biography or
poetry, which have made a difference in your life. For this next
list, let's look at works other than scripture which have changed
your life. For example, I feel that way about some of C.S. Lewis's
books, and I confess that I read Henry David Thoreau's Walden
(my fifth Standard Work) every year for the refreshment it gives
me; and Herman Melville's Moby Dick grips me very deeply-as
does my regular re-reading and memorizing of poems by Gerard Manley
Hopkins and Robert Frost. Please send me a title or titles of books
which have changed your life-with a one-sentence (only) statement
about what the book does to you (implying that it might do something
similar for us). Please send them to me by February 22-George
Washington's Birthday.
Introduction:
The 112 Best of the American Novelists, Novels
Indulge me
now as I once again stick out my tender neck and present the definitive,
absolutely correct, only True and Living List of The Best American
Novelists and Novels of All Time and Eternity (Kind Of). Again,
admission to highest degree of the Telestial Kingdom is reserved
for those who have read (and can pass a multiple-choice examination
on) this list. After all, most of the writers will be on hand in
the Telestial to answer any questions; it will be a pleasant way
for some of us to while away Eternity-since we won't be doing much
else.
Again, this
list is one I've been shaping over my entire reading lifetime; I
have consulted The Heath Top 100," Clifton Fadiman's "New Lifetime
Reading Plan,""Fiction Books Cited as Significant by American English
Teachers," "The BYU English Department Minimum Reading List for
English Majors" [the list is now defunct-but the department is alive
and well, thank you]; "The Top 100 English-Language Novels of the
Twentieth Century," by the Editors of The Modern Library; "The 100
Greatest Novels in the English Language," by A. Edward Newton; and
several other lists, including some in A Passion for Books
(1999), by Harold Rabinowitz and Rob Kaplan. It is great fun to
make such audacious lists-and impossible to get everyone's favorite
onto the list. However, I believe I have incorporated all Reader
Recommendations sent me via e-mail. Let me know of any egregious
omissions.
My original
list included about 130 authors. I pared it100 authors, then added
a few popular novelists not included on most lists and included
three LDS writers who deserve inclusion (see if you can pick them
out), to bring the total to 112. In most instances I have listed
only one representative novel by authors who have written several
worth including; but in other instances I have included additional
novels because they were all included in several of the lists I
consulted, and I couldn't bear leaving them out. Although I have
dropped from the list some well-known works of literature that didn't
seem to me to be "of good report, or praiseworthy," or I simply
didn't like them, I have included other works which may make some
readers uncomfortable (so, don't read them) but nevertheless give
representation to some voices in the cacophony our modern world
which need to be listened to by Latter-day Saints--despite some
discomfiture. Books, after all, are not only to confirm that which
we already know but to open up to us other worlds and experience
hitherto unknown to us; of course, we must be personally judicious
in what we select to read and make part of our souls. As Lord Bacon
said, "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and
some few to be chewed and digested," and some, in my experience,
are to be spat out forthwith. But there is often, to the inquiring
mind, gold to be found amidst the dross. So, here's the list, which
does not necessarily reflect the personal views of the editors of
Meridian or myself-but is, I believe, a wonderful reflector
of the rich variety of the American people-children of God, every
one:
The
List: The 112 Best of the American Novelists, Novels
Agee, James.
A Death in the Family
Alcott, Louisa
May. Little Women
Alger, Horatio,
Ragged Dick, or, Street Life in New York
Anderson, Sherwood.
Winesburg, Ohio
Atwood,
Margaret. Cat's Eye, The Handmaid's Tale,
The Robber Bride
Baldwin, James.
Go Tell It On the Mountain
Barth, John.
The Floating Opera, Giles Goat Boy
Bellow, Saul.
Henderson the Rain King, The Adventures of Augie March,
Herzog, Humboldt's Gift, The Dean's December
Berger, Thomas.
Little Big Man
Bradbury, Ray.
Dandelion Wine
Buck, Pearl
S. The Good Earth
Capote, Truman.
In Cold Blood
Card, Orson
Scott. Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow, Seventh
Son
Cather, Willa.
Death Comes to the Archbishop, My Ántonia,
O, Pioneers!, One of Ours, The Professor's House,
Sapphira and the Slave Girl
Chandler, Raymond.
The Big Sleep
Chopin, Kate.
The Awakening
Cooper, James
Fenimore. The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder,
The Deerslayer
Crane, Stephen.
The Red Badge of Courage
Cronin, A.J.
The Citadel, The Keys of the Kingdom
Dos Passos,
John. U.S.A. (Trilogy)
Douglas, Lloyd
A. The Robe, The Big Fisherman
Dreiser, Theodore.
Sister Carrie, An American Tragedy
Drury, Allen.
Advise and Consent
Ellison, Ralph.
The Invisible Man
Erdrich, Louise.
Love Medicine
Faulkner, William.
The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, As
I Lay Dying, Absolom, Absolom!, The Bear,
Go Down Moses
Fitzgerald,
F. Scott. The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night
Flagg Fannie.
Fried Green Tomatoes
Frazier, Charles.
Cold Mountain
Gaines, Ernest
J. A Gathering of Old Men
Guterson, David.
Snow Falling on Cedars
Guthrie, A.B.,
Jr. The Big Sky
Haley, Alex.
Roots
Hammett, Dashiell.
The Maltese Falcon
Hamilton, Jane.
A Map of the World
Hawthorne,
Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven
Gables, The Marble Faun, Twice-Told Tales
Hemingway, Ernest.
A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, The
Old Man and the Sea
Howells, William
Dean. The Rise of Silas Lapham, A Modern Instance
Hurston, Zora
Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God
Irving, John.
Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany
Irving, Washington.
The Sketch-Book
James, Henry.
The Portrait of a Lady, The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors,
The Golden Bowl
Johnson, James
Weldon. Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
Jones, James.
From Here to Eternity
Kennedy, William.
Ironweed
Kesey, Ken.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Kingston, Maxine
Hong. The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper.
To Kill a Mockingbird
L'Engle, Madeleine.
A Swiftly Tilting Planet, A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door
Lewis, Sinclair.
Main Street, Babbitt
Lockridge, Ross,
Jr. Raintree County
London, Jack.
The Call of the Wild
Lund, Gerald
N. The Work and the Glory
Maclean, Norman.
A River Runs Through It
Mailer, Norman.
The Naked and the Dead
Malamud, Bernard.
The Assistant, The Fixer
McCarthy, Cormac.
All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain
McCullers, Carson.
Ballad of the Sad Café, The Heart Is a Lonely
Hunter
McMurtry, Larry.
Lonesome Dove
Melville, Herman
Moby-Dick, Billy Budd, "Bartleby the Scrivener"
Michener, James.The
Novel, Hawaii
Momaday, N.
Scott. House Made of Dawn
Morrison, Tony.
Beloved
Mitchell, Margaret.
Gone With the Wind
Nichols, John.
The Milagro Beanfield War
Norris, Frank.
McTeague
Oates, Joyce
Carol. Foxfire
O'Brien, Tim.
Going After Cacciato
O'Connor, Flannery.
Wise Blood, The Violent Bear It Away
O'Hara, John.
Appointment in Samarra
O. Henry [William
S. Porter]. The Four Million
Olsen, Tillie.
Yonnondio
Percy, Walker.
The Moviegoer
Pirsig, Robert.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Poe, Edgar
Allan. "The Fall of the House of Usher,""The Pit and the Pendulum,"
"The Black Cat"
Porter, Katherine
Anne. Pale Horse, Pale Rider
Potok, Chaim.
The Chosen, The Promise, My Name Is Asher
Lev
Price, Reynolds
Kate Vaiden
Pynchon, Thomas.
Gravity's Rainbow
Rand, Ayn. Atlas
Shrugged, The Fountainhead
Robinson, Marilynne.
Housekeeping
Salinger, J.D.
The Catcher in the Rye
Shaara, Michael.
The Killer Angels
Shaw, Irwin.
The Young Lions
Silko, Leslie
Marmon. Ceremony
Smiley, Jane.
The Greenlanders
Smith, Betty.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Stegner, Wallace.
Angle of Repose, Crossing to Safety
Steinbeck,
John. The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, Cannery
Row, The Pearl, The Winter of Our Discontent
Stowe, Harriet
Beecher. Uncle Tom's Cabin
Tan, Amy. The
Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife
Tarkington,
Booth. The Magnificent Ambersons
Taylor, Samuel
W. Heaven Knows Why
Theroux, Paul.
The Mosquito Coast
Thoreau, Henry
David. Walden (unclassifiable masterpiece)
Twain, Mark
[Samuel L. Clemens]. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The
Adventure of Tom Sawyer, The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, A Connecticut
Yankee in King Arthur's Court, The Mysterious Stranger, The Man
That Corrupted Hadleyburg
Tyler, Anne.
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Breathing Lessons, The Accidental
Tourist
Updike, John.
Rabbit Run (series)
Uris, Leonard.
Exodus
Vonnegut, Kurt.
Slaughterhouse Five
Walker, Alice.
The Color Purple
Wallace, Lew.
Ben-Hur
Warren, Robert
Penn. All the King's Men
Waters, Frank.
The Man Who Killed the Deer
Welty, Eudora.
Losing Battles
Wharton, Edith.
Ethan Frome, The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth
West, Nathanael.
The Day of the Locust
Wilder, Thornton.
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Wister, Owen.
The Virginian
Wolfe, Thomas.
Look Homeward, Angel, You Can't Go Home Again, The
Web and the Rock
Wouk, Herman.
The Winds of War
Wright, Richard.
Native Son
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