The Most American Books
by Will
What are the most American books? I was catching up on Mad Men episodes, and got to the point where one of the British managers of Don Draper’s ad firm says “I have been reading some of your American literature” and I knew that it’d be Mark Twain because whenever someone says they are reading American literature it’s Mark Twain. I remember an Atlantic Monthly profile on Saddam Hussein years and years ago which said “He even reads American literature — the complete Mark Twain sits on his bookshelf” (the profile was not complimentary, despite what that sentence implies).
Separate from that, on the documentary shoot we were watching an episode of Jeopardy while waiting for some lights to be set up and Moby Dick was one of the categories. I was surprised that most people in the room knew the answers to most of the questions even though few had read the book. But maybe that’s because Moby Dick is one of the Great American novels so we all hold onto whatever knowledge we glean because we know it’s “important?”
I certainly don’t mind Mark Twain being the first guy people think of when trying to think of an American author. But what others do people think of? What are the most American books? Or authors?
Comments
In terms of authors, Hemmingway, Faulkner, Bellow-Malamud-Roth, and Morrison would probably be in there for me. And on a more contemporary bent you’ve got Pynchon and Delillo, maybe? And then there are people who are maybe less famous/prolific but who had distinctly American subject matter, like Wharton and Ellison and Flannery O’Connor.
Then again, I don’t see any other country being capable of producing the Hardy Boys series, so that’s got my vote for most American book(s).
To me, The Great Gatsby best captures the ideas of America: capitalism, reinvention, automobiles, New York, old money, big billboards, boats, violence.
For the list inclined, here’s a subjective top ten including five fiction, five non-fiction:
American Tabloid
The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner City Neighborhood
The Executioner’s Song
The Grapes of Wrath
The Great Gatsby
In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
The Informant
Lush Life
To Kill a Mockingbird
Young Men and Fire
I tried to get Absalom! Absalom! in there, but couldn’t make it fit.
And, The Least American Books:
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
The Communist Manifesto
Dead Souls
The Diary of Anne Frank
Failed States
The Hobbit
I, Rigoberta Menchu
Mein Kampf
Mother Courage and Her Children
Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong (The Little Red Book)
Catcher in the Rye
Gotta be some Vonnegut in there, right? Slaughterhouse-Five or Cat’s Cradle?
I’d argue for Faulkner (because I am obsessed), particularly As I Lay Dying or The Sound and the Fury. When it comes to The Canon in the most classic sense, I’d say works by Hawthorne and Melville.
“Gatsby” and “Catcher In The Rye.” And Tanouye reminded me of “To Kill A Mockingbird.”
They’re also three of my favorite books, strictly because I love them so much, but from the outside I guess it could look like I like them for the same reason my grandpa likes the Yankees: they’re winners, historically.
John Cheever.
Salinger and Capote are New Yorky, which to some may disqualify them from being truly American.
Oh, you got your Of Mice & Men, your Old Man & the Sea.
I also think we shouldn’t exclude “genre” fiction… you got your Dashiell Hammett, your Ray Bradbury, your Isaac Asimov, your Stephen King, your HP Lovecraft. Pretty American, all of ‘em.
Other than what has been mentioned…
Ragtime
Little House on the Prairie
My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist or any work by Mark Leyner
A Confederacy of Dunces
Anything by Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler
The short stories of Raymond Carver
The poetry of Walt Whitman
The Fountainhead.
I am a douche.
Archie Comics
how are we defining “American?”