I read and digested your comments. I agonised and I performed sweeping U-turns across the American canon. I have re-jigged the novelists to produce a final list that still does not include David Foster Wallace, Marilynne Robinson, Harper Lee or anyone short of the four novel minimum. For shame, but this single elimination tournament demands a novelist must have four possible "greats" to bring to the party. It is a wide sieve through which many notable writers have fallen, but there it is: I'm looking for an American, writing within the last 100 years who went back to the well again and again and continued to find it wet with novelistic inspiration.
The "four book rule" had a lot of you incensed and AggieH caught the whiff of corruption; a conspiracy to hold back Robinson and "fix it for Capote"...
The case for the greatness for each of [Robinson's] three novels, and for their collective greatness as a body of work, was dismissed unheard solely because of an arbitrary rule that you broke yourself solely to fix it for Capote. (The GANs. Sponsored by Barclays?)
The "Capote non-fiction" scandal was too much to bear, so Truman has been eliminated, dragging with him Norman Mailer, kicking and screaming. In Cold Blood and Executioner's Song are fabulous reads but, good as they are, they cannot be called novels. They are, instead, beautifully written accounts of real events. Of course, many writers use real events from their lives to produce a novel but, as Richard Yates said of his writing, "the emotions of fiction are autobiographical but the facts never are."
And talking of Yates, I'm afraid he's gone too. I ejected him with a heavy heart - Revolutionary Road is a breathtaking book - but I felt that he was better regarded for his short stories than his novels. The same goes for John Cheever. Thanks to Mewto55555 and JoeCarlson, I have installed Sinclair Lewis and Vladimir Nabokov in their place;
Mr. Spencer, to borrow a popular aphorism, you are clearly smoking something very potent by neglecting to include Sinclair Lewis. Certainly, the body of his work is considered very notable by foreign judges; he was the first American to win a Nobel Prize in Literature, picking up his in 1930. He has multiple masterpiece novels: Babbit, Main Street, Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, It Cant' Happen Here. He won a Pulitzer for Arrowsmith, and was the rightful winner of the 1921 Pulitzer as well. His work touched on a wide variety of controversial and contemporary issues: the rise of fascism in It Can't Happen Here, race relations in Kingsblood Royal, the plight of the working woman in The Job, religious hypocrisy in Elmer Gantry, and more. To wit, every other American author with sufficiently many major novels to win the Nobel is on here (O'Neill, Buck, Singer don't have enough, if any, novels; Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Bellow, Morrison all made the cut) -- while I don't think a Nobel alone should be enough to get in the tournament, it's pretty indicative of having a well-renowned body of work -- and certainly Sinclair Lewis has more "Great American Novels" than Yoda could count on one hand.
I've consulted the rulebook - Bellow in, Nabokov out.- (quoting tenuousfives)
What rulebook? The one you're making up as you go along? You screwed the pooch, pal - that's an American saying and it's not a compliment. You've made a fine mess of things. Saul Bellow was born in Montreal in 1915. He didn't become a naturalized US citizen until 1941 - when he was 26 years old! Put Nabokov in!
Vladimir Nabokov fled Russia and later Germany, arriving in America in 1939 and staying there for 20 years. Ultimately, he categorised himself as an American writer, telling a Reporter in 1969: "An American writer means, in the present case, a writer who has been an American citizen for a quarter of a century. It means, moreover, that all my works first appear in America. It also means that America is the only country where I feel mentally and emotionally at home."
Many of you bemoaned the lack of women on the list and pointed out glaring omissions...
For me, the truth is that:
Annie E.Proulx is the greatest American author. She has written the Great American Novel and it is called: Accordian Crimes. All of her work is great: Postcards, Bad Dirt, Heart Songs, The Shipping News, Brokeback Mountain...
I created a Guardian account especially to say this: that is how much I believe it!
Joyce Carol Oates was another suggested by many of you and I have added Ursula K Le Guin as a fine representative of the SF genre. But still the number of women on the list is distressingly low. Hopefully, this is America's prejudice, not mine.
PaulBowes01 explained:
People objecting to the absence of female writers should reflect on the fact that female and minority writers, by virtue of the difficulties they faced in making writing a full-time career, would be even less likely to have written 'four strong novels' - though they might have written one masterpiece.
Oh, so I have added my own layer of oppression. Toni Morrison, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Annie Proulx, Carson McCullers, Joyce Carol Oates and Ursula K Le Guin are all there on merit and they all have very strong novels in their fours. Although, some of you championed Anne Tyler, ultimately the nays have it and she has been omitted.
There was a plethora of suggestions and here are some of my favourites:
WHY ISN'T ANYONE TALKING ABOUT RICHARD FORD!?
Raymond Chandler (how could this writer be omitted?):
The Big Sleep
The Long Goodbye
Farewell My Lovely
The Lady in the Lake
Burroughs was the most consistently radical and innovative of the Beat writers (to the point where considering him to be simply a Beat writer is incredibly unfair), and 'Naked Lunch' is a masterpiece of incalculable influence even beyond literary circles. Beyond that, he has a number of novels worthy of consideration, including all six novels of his two trilogies (the cut-ups and the red night trilogy) and the 'queer utopia' of 'The Wild Boys"
William Gaddis is the greatest American novelist of the 20th Century. The Recognitions is his masterpiece, but J.R., A Frolic of His Own and Agape, Agape are classics in their own right. His work has had a huge influence on later writers, including Jonathan Franzen and David Foster Wallace. His novels are perceived as 'difficult' and are not widely read, which means he is often neglected when it comes to discussions of the Great American Novel. But Gaddis is a virtuoso and a once-in-an-era talent - his prose is at once precise and poetic, and his dialogue is pitch-perfect. Including in him this list would serve to bring his work to a wider readership. I would also contend that, if you read (or have already read) his works in full, he ought to be a strong contender to win this contest outright.
And another vote for Paul Auster - New York Trilogy was just so incredible. As was The Music Of Chance.
God damn you to hell - I'm supposed to be working! No Joseph Heller?
I would like to put a case for John Fante, the great laureate of pre-war LA, Catholic guilt, and the Italian-American experience. I put to you the Bandini Quartet:
The Road to Los Angeles
Wait Until Spring, Bandini
Ask the Dust
Dreams from Bunker Hill
And his best, most affecting work: The Brotherhood of the Grape.
Fante was a truly great writer who Bukowski revered but failed to emulate.
Thank you for all your comments. Be they enthusiastic, disparaging or enthusiastically disparaging, you have inspired and informed this excited reader.
And so the final list beckons: 32 writers and their "Magic Four" novels. If your favourite doesn't appear, I leave you with these words from James Baldwin: "...-a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named-..."
And so, I humbly present the competitors for The Great American Novelist Tournament:
The Seeds
1. William Faulkner
• Light In August
• As I lay Dying
• The Sound and The Fury
• Absalom, Absalom!
2. Saul Bellow
• The Adventure of Augie March
• Henderson The Rain King
• Herzog
• Humboldt's Gift
3. Philip Roth
• Operation Shylock
• Sabbath's Theatre
• American Pastoral
• The Human Stain
4. John Updike
• Rabbit, Run
• Rabbit Redux
• Rabbit Is Rich
• Rabbit At Rest
5. John Steinbeck
• The Grapes of Wrath
• East of Eden
• Cannery Row
• Of Mice and Men
6. Sinclair Lewis
• Babbit
• Main Street
• Arrowsmith
• Elmer Gantry
7. Toni Morrison
• The Bluest Eye
• Sula
• Song of Solomon
• Beloved
8. Ernest Hemingway
• The Sun Also Rises
• To Have and To Have Not
• A Farewell to Arms
• The Garden of Eden
9. Edith Wharton
• The Custom of the Country
• Summer
• The Age of Innocence
• The Glimpses of the Moon
10. Cormac McCarthy
• Suttree
• Blood Meridian
• All the Pretty Horses
• The Road
11. Willa Cather
• The Professor's House
• Death Comes for the Archbishop
• A Lost Lady
• One of Ours
12. Don DeLillo
• White Noise
• Libra
• Mao II
• Underworld
13. EL Doctorow
• The Book of Daniel
• Rag Time
• Billy Bathgate
• The March
14. Thomas Pynchon
• The Crying of Lot 49
• V
• Gravity's Rainbow
• Mason and Dixon
15. Vladimir Nabokov
• Pnin
• Pale Fire
• Lolita
• Ada
16. Annie Proulx
• Postcards
• The Shipping News
• Accordion Crimes
• That Old Ace In The Hole
And, in no particular order:
17. James Baldwin
• Go Tell It On The Mountain
• Just Above My Head
• Giovanni's Room
• Another County
18. William S Burroughs
• Naked Lunch
• Exterminator!
• Cities of the Red Knight
• The Wildboys
19. Raymond Chandler
• The Big Sleep
• The Long Goodbye
• Farewell My Lovely
• The Lady in the Lake
20. John Dos Passos
• The Manhattan Transfer
• 42nd Parallel
• 1919
• The Big Money
21. John Fante
• Wait Until Spring, Bandini
• Ask the Dust
• Dreams from Bunker Hill
• The Brotherhood of the Grape
22. F Scott Fitzgerald
• This Side of Paradise
• The Beautiful and the Damned
• The Great Gatsby
• Tender is the Night
23. Richard Ford
• Canada
• Independence Day
• The Sports Writer
• The Lay of The Land
24. Wallace Stegner
• Angle of Repose
• Crossing To Safety
• The Big Rock Candy Mountain
• The Spectator Bird
25. William Gaddis
• The Recognitions
• JR
• A Frolic Of His Own
• Agape, Agape
26. Joseph Heller
• Catch 22
• Something Happened
• Good as Gold
• Portrait of an Artist as an Old Man
27. Ursula K Le Guin
• The Left Hand of Darkness
• A Wizard Of Earthsea
• The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
• The Lathe of Heaven
28. Carson Mccullers
• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
• Reflections in a Golden Eye
• Member of the Wedding
• Clock Without Hands
29. Joyce Carol Oates
• Them
• Blonde
• We Were The Mulvaneys
• The Grave Digger's Daughter
30. William Styron
• Sophie's Choice
• Confessions of Nat Turner
• Lie Down in Darkness
• The Long March
31. Paul Auster
• The New York Trilogy
• In the Country of Last Things
• The Music of Chance
• The Book of Illusions
32. Kurt Vonnegut
• Slaughterhouse-Five
• Sirens of Titan
• Breakfast of Champions
• Cat's Cradle
And finally, the reading. Here is the top half of the draw. Please read along and post your reviews on the site. They will inform my decisions.
• William Faulkner (1) - Absalom, Absalom! vs William Gaddis - JR
• Annie Proulx (16) - That Old Ace In The Hole vs William S Burroughs - Naked Lunch
• Edith Wharton (9) - The Custom of the Country vs Joseph Heller - Something Happened
• Ernest Hemingway (8) - A Farewell To Arms vs James Baldwin - Giovanni's Room
• John Updike (4) - Rabbit, Run vs Ursula K. Le Guin - The Lathe of Heaven
• E. L Doctorow (13) - Billy Bathgate vs Joyce Carol Oates - We Were The Mulvaneys
• Don DeLilo (12) - Libra vs John Dos Passos - 42nd Parallel
• John Steinbeck (5) - Grapes of Wrath vs Paul Auster- The Book of Illusions
