The Atlantic just dropped their list of The Great American Novels...
Goodness, I have only read 25 of these. Must really go back to serious reading. But happy for Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters making it. I read that book when I was studying in Japan at 21, and I loved it. [I lent it to a Finnish friend, and when she finished, she told me: “Now I understand you much better,” hahaha.] But I’m perplexed with its inclusion in this list, given its “American-ness” conceit: that novel is very much about post-war Philippines. Carlos Bulosan’s America is in the Heart feels like the better fit.
The list, and my reads thus far:
[✓] The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
[ ] An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (1925)
[ ] The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein (1925)
[ ] Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather (1927)
[ ] A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (1929)
[ ] Passing by Nella Larsen (1929)
[ ] The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929)
[ ] Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner (1936)
[ ] Nightwood by Djuna Barnes (1936)
[ ] East Goes West by Younghill Kang (1937)
[ ] Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
[ ] U.S.A. by John Dos Passos (1937)
[ ] Ask the Dust by John Fante (1939)
[ ] The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (1939)
[ ] The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West (1939)
[ ] The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939)
[ ] Native Son by Richard Wright (1940)
[ ] The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (1940)
[ ] A Time to Be Born by Dawn Powell (1942)
[ ] All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946)
[ ] The Street by Ann Petry (1946)
[ ] In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes (1947)
[ ] The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford (1947)
[✓] The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (1951)
[✓] Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White (1952)
[ ] Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952)
[ ] Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)
[ ] Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks (1953)
[ ] The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (1953)
[✓] Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
[✓] Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (1956)
[ ] Peyton Place by Grace Metalious (1956)
[ ] Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith (1957)
[ ] No-No Boy by John Okada (1957)
[✓] On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)
[✓] The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)
[ ] Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)
[✓] A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (1962)
[✓] Another Country by James Baldwin (1962)
[ ] One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (1962)
[✓] Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (1962)
[ ] The Zebra-Striped Hearse by Ross Macdonald (1962)
[✓] The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963)
[ ] The Group by Mary McCarthy (1963)
[✓] The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (1966)
[ ] A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter (1967)
[ ] Couples by John Updike (1968)
[ ] Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (1968)
[ ] Divorcing by Susan Taubes (1969)
[✓] Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth (1969)
[ ] Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
[✓] Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume (1970)
[ ] Desperate Characters by Paula Fox (1970)
[ ] Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion (1970)
[ ] Log of the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine by Stanley Crawford (1972)
[ ] Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed (1972)
[ ] Sula by Toni Morrison (1973)
[ ] The Revolt of the Cockroach People by Oscar Zeta Acosta (1973)
[ ] Oreo by Fran Ross (1974)
[ ] The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin (1974)
[ ] Winter in the Blood by James Welch (1974)
[ ] Corregidora by Gayl Jones (1975)
[ ] Speedboat by Renata Adler (1976)
[ ] Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko (1977)
[ ] Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (1977)
[✓] A Contract With God by Will Eisner (1978)
[✓] Dancer From the Dance by Andrew Holleran (1978)
[ ] The Stand by Stephen King (1978)
[ ] Kindred by Octavia E. Butler (1979)
[ ] The Dog of the South by Charles Portis (1979)
[✓] Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (1980)
[ ] The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara (1980)
[ ] Little, Big: Or, the Fairies’ Parliament by John Crowley (1981)
[ ] Oxherding Tale by Charles Johnson (1982)
[ ] Machine Dreams by Jayne Anne Phillips (1984)
[ ] Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (1985)
[ ] A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor (1986)
[✓] Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986)
[ ] Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)
[ ] Dawn by Octavia E. Butler (1987)
[ ] Geek Love by Katherine Dunn (1989)
[ ] Tripmaster Monkey by Maxine Hong Kingston (1989)
[✓] Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn (1990)
[✓] American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (1991)
[ ] How the García Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez (1991)
[ ] Mating by Norman Rush (1991)
[ ] Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison (1992)
[✓] The Secret History by Donna Tartt (1992)
[ ] So Far From God by Ana Castillo (1993)
[ ] Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg (1993)
[ ] The Shipping News by Annie Proulx (1993)
[ ] Native Speaker by Chang-rae Lee (1995)
[ ] Sabbath’s Theater by Philip Roth (1995)
[ ] Under the Feet of Jesus by Helena María Viramontes (1995)
[ ] Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1996)
[ ] I Love Dick by Chris Kraus (1997)
[ ] Underworld by Don DeLillo (1997)
[ ] The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead (1999)
[ ] Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates (2000)
[ ] House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (2000)
[ ] The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon (2000)
[✓] The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt (2000)
[ ] The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams (2000)
[ ] Erasure by Percival Everett (2001)
[ ] I, the Divine by Rabih Alameddine (2001)
[✓] The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (2001)
[ ] Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros (2002)
[ ] Perma Red by Debra Magpie Earling (2002)
[ ] The Russian Debutante’s Handbook by Gary Shteyngart (2002)
[✓] The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (2003)
[ ] Veronica by Mary Gaitskill (2005)
[✓] The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (2007)
[ ] A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2010)
[ ] I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita (2010)
[ ] Open City by Teju Cole (2011)
[ ] Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward (2011)
[ ] The Round House by Louise Erdrich (2012)
[ ] Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013)
[ ] Nevada by Imogen Binnie (2013)
[ ] A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James (2014)
[ ] Family Life by Akhil Sharma (2014)
[ ] Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (2015)
[ ] The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin (2015)
[ ] The Sellout by Paul Beatty (2015)
[ ] The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2015)
[ ] Amiable With Big Teeth by Claude McKay (2017)
[ ] Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (2017)
[ ] Sabrina by Nick Drnaso (2018)
[ ] Severance by Ling Ma (2018)
[ ] There There by Tommy Orange (2018)
[ ] Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli (2019)
[ ] Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson (2019)
[ ] The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell (2019)
[ ] No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood (2021)
[ ] The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (2021)
[ ] Biography of X by Catherine Lacey (2023)
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