Greetings, reader!
I'm once again doing a theme month focusing on something different than movies and TV, and for the second time, the theme of such a month is literature. I'm kicking it off with a ranking of Great American Novels - a term that is thrown around a lot, with its exact definition and determining what does/doesn't qualify as a Great American Novel being a convoluted and long-standing point of debate. The term often refers to a book that truly embodies the spirit, essence and character of the United States and its culture, and many scholars have come up with their own specific definitions that often clash with one another. With this being 4th of July week and all, I figured that it's the perfect time to dive into this topic.
The term was first introduced in a 1868 essay by John William De Forest, where he noted that "The Great American Novel most likely hasn't been written yet". I like that idea, as it alludes to 'The promise of America', the idea of what the country could and should be as an idealistic contrast to what it often is, a thought echoed by Americans from Rosa Parks and JFK all the way to Aaron Sorkin and the Hamilton musical. Anyways, in the perspective of this half-American bookworm, these are the top 10 books that I personally feel to deserve this mythical moniker!
Here are my honorable mentions: The Wayward Bus (John Steinbeck, 1937), For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway, 1940), Hearts in Atlantis (Stephen King, 1999), The Brooklyn Follies (Paul Auster, 2005), The Hellfire Club (Jake Tapper, 2018).
10. To Have and Have Not (Ernest Hemingway, 1937)
"Listen, I told him. Don't be so tough so early in the morning. I'm sure you've cut plenty of people's throats. I haven't even had my coffee yet"
This Hemingway classic combines romance, crime and adventure in a thrilling fashion as we follow a working-man-turned-smuggler called Harry Morgan to the backdrop of the Great Depression. The novel is set partially in Key West, Florida (Yay, I've been there!), and partly in Cuba. Hemingway's depiction of the busy harbors and bustling boardwalks of these milieus is culturally engaging and beautifully worded in its own, raw and gritty way. When I think of classic American literature, Hemingway is the first guy who comes to mind, and books like this are why.
9. Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck, 1937)
"Trouble with mice is you always kill 'em"
A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas river drops in, close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green - and this is where we meet George and Lennie, two iconic characters who roam the land searching for work. Of Mice and Men is a gripping tale, as cynical about humanity's deep-lying nature and American society as it is unavoidably true to many American ideals and truths, from its lively descriptions of Californian nature to its ever-relevant look at the conditions of migrant workers.
As is the case with many Steinbeck books, there are parts that certainly haven't aged well. But that doesn't keep the book from being a Great American Novel in my view - instead of cancelling an individual author for relaying racist thoughts, we should take an introspective look at what it says about our history that racism seems to embedded into most books from that time regardless of the author. Of Mice and Men is a perfect example of a book that should be taught in school, but with the full context on how such language was a part of an overall racist society, thus integrating the studying of literature into learning history (something that Florida Governor and Presidential candidate Ron DeSantis certainly doesn't want any of us to do, instead opting that we all pretend like it's still 1937).
8. The Call of the Wild (Jack London, 1903)
"But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as a man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called"
Funnily enough, quite a few books that don't take place in the United States ended up making this top 10 - believe me or not, this wasn't a purposeful point on multiculturalism or globalism, the list just happend to go that way. I guess it goes to show that an American writer can tell a story that embodies something deep and true about the country, no matter where it's set.
And to be fair, with this one, Canada isn't far from home (and the state of Alaska certainly has a big part to play as well in this Yukon River adventure). Having explored the Yukon myself on our 2013 float trip with my dad, uncle and brother (hands-down one of the coolest experiences of my life), it was a joy to re-experience the beauty of that part of the world by reading the pages of this Jack London classic. The Call of the Wild is a short book, but depending on the reader, it can be seen as many things - a tale of the bond between man and animal, a tribute to the majestic nature of the Yukon, or just a true and gritty adventure tale of the highest order.
7. Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut, 1969)
"But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes"
With wildly dark humor and bizarre sci-fi elements as its stylistic means of making serious points about the world, Slaughterhouse-Five certainly isn't one of the more conventional candidates for Great American Novel. But I never was one for blindly sticking to tradition, and the ways in which Vonnegut challenges the conventions of American literature are as inspiring as they are bold.
The book's gripping anti-war themes really speak to me, especially when looking at where they come from - the first chapter reads like a pseudo-foreword by Vonnegut, shedding light on his own experience as a POW who survived the bombing of Dresden in World War II, and how he had always felt an urge to write about it, but found the experience so haunting that a conventional book wouldn't do, so instead he used all these wild narrative choices to demonstrate the sheer absurdity and inhumanity of war. And so it goes.
6. The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Heminway, 1952)
"But man is not made for defeat, he said. A man can be destroyed but not defeated"
Hemingway's Pulitzer Prize -winning work may take place on the coast of Cuba and have Cuban main characters, but when broadening one's horizons on what the essence of 'American literature' is, well, it's this. In my personal view, Hemingway's writing style alone is in the very core of the literary culture of the United States, no matter where his stories might take place. So the book that is most often considered his masterpiece is by all means an American classic, and a major milestone in U.S. literary history.
The Old Man and the Sea is a classic example of writing about large things through the lens of small things - on the surface, it's just a detailed account of an old man's fishing trip, but between the lines it's about so much more than that. Man's relationship to nature, the human struggle with one's own mortality, questions of legacy, you name it. What a tale.
5. The Nix (Nathan Hill, 2016)
"Sometime we're so wrapped up in our own story that we don't see how we're supporting characters in someone else's"
It might be a bit weird to suggest such a new book as a GAN, as there is no knowing for sure how Nathan Hill's debut work will stand the test of time and whether or not it will be seen as a classic in the future. But there are many reasons for me to see this subjective favorite as such: with a major part of the story taking place in present day and dealing with themes from fad diets and online gaming addiction to the aftermath of the Iraq War and the rise of far-right populist politics in the U.S., The Nix resonates with the America I recognize from my own lifetime and experiences. Because of this, I'm guessing that it'll be one of the books I look back on at an old age, in a similar way that older generations now reminisce about the America of their youths through Hemingway and Steinbeck classics.
And while a part of the story takes place in modern times, a major narrative is a flashback storyline from the late 1960's, taking a gripping look at the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement and the infamous 1968 protests in Chicago. So The Nix has a lot to say about America, and feels truly American at heart admist its criticisms and the questions it poses on what kind of nation we should be (perhaps this, more than anything else, is what a Great American Novel should do).
My literary enthusiasm has been inspired by many people, but none more so than my high school homeroom teacher Maarit, who taught Finnish and literature, and had a major role in my bookworm ways. She gave me this book as a graduation present, and I swear to God, only a literature teacher can come up with such a perfect specific book to give to a specific person at a specific time in their life. As a half-American living overseas and starting to get a grasp on the country's chaotic politics through the acid-in-your-eyes lens of the Trump era, this book was just what I needed in order to deepen my relationship to American literature and the culture of my second home country.
4. A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway, 1929)
"But life isn't hard to manage when you've nothing to lose"
Again, a book that doesn't take place in the U.S., where an American soldier falls in love with an English nurse in Italy - but the end product still makes me scream "That's my America!". It's nice and easy to criticize war in today's society - while humanity still hasn't become nearly anti-war enough, we've certainly moved to a better direction. But when it's 1929, and you're a popular writer like Ernest Hemingway, it takes some serious balls to call out the inhumanity and senselessness of war.
A Farewell to Arms is a moving tale, finding places of beauty from Hemingway's gritty and bleak writing style, finding love and even authentic-feeling rays of hope from realistically brutal and inhumane milieus. Out of Hemingway's many great works, this one has stood the test of time the best, and is bound to resonate with a pacifist soul like myself while also working in the broader sense of ideals belonging to American literature.
3. The Stand (Stephen King, 1978)
"Show me a man or woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare"
As anyone who has heard me speak a sentence during the past half a year will surely be aware, 2023 is the year of Stephen King for me - I haven't completed a single book by any other author this year, as his works are keeping me delightfully busy (addicted, some would say - I won't say that I'm not addicted but I will say that I am). While King's primary genre is horror and Great American Novels don't traditionally fall into that genre, this is a case where the writer and the category have significant overlap - King's books are never just horror (many aren't horror at all), and as a vast majority takes place in the U.S. and King's relationship to his country is one of the many themes he has dealt with through his writing, I'd argue that many of his books deserve shouts as potential Great American Novels.
Right off the bat, I'm excluding the ones that take place entirely or primarily in King's home state of Maine - they're all eligible as Great Mainean Novels and a part of the state's cultural heritage at this point, but King's way of writing stories in that particular state feel too specific to Maine, therefore not feeling as universally representative of the U.S. as a whole.
And if one of his works does encompass Ameria as a whole, it's The Stand. Through the lens of a deadly virus changing life as we know it (haha, can you imagine?), King envisions an America whose society collapses into post-apocalyptic chaos, only for our group of heroes to slowly and surely start to try and rebuild a new and better America. Taking place across the landscape from the pitfalls of Las Vegas and the cornfields of Nebraska all the way to the plains of Texas and the suddenly abandoned streets of New York (and yes, Maine has a part to play as well), The Stand reflects King's knowledge and understanding of the lay of the land and its customs. The author, often very critical of his home country, taps into his national pride in this one, with unforgettable moments like Larry Underwood singing the Star-Spangled Banner outside his tent upon realising that its July 4th, or the Free Zone committee being moved to tears as they meet for the first time and officially start to rebuild.
Of course, the social criticism rears its head as well, with the story grappling with the perhaps most interesting question that a post-apocalyptic story can ask - how do we recreate the old way of life, without bringing back all the problems that came with it? As society starts to return to normal, instances of crime start to occur which calls for the establishing a police system, but how do we stop police brutality from happening? There is no easy answer for these questions, but reading The Stand will make you think about your own relationship to America - the good, the bad, all of it.
2. Uncle Tom's Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852)
"The longest way must have its close - the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning"
A female author, writing a book that speaks strongly against slavery in antebellum America, is about as punk rock as you can get. This massively influential book showcased the evils of slavery to many Americans at the time, who either hadn't witnessed the system's brutality from their place of privilege or who had turned a blind eye due to the classic reason of being used to it (it makes my blood boil when people use the "things have always been this way" argument to oppose positive change and progressive values, because that shortsighted and lazy-ass way of thinking is exactly why America was very okay with slavery for a long time before making any changes).
Uncle Tom's Cabin is a gripping tale, drawing a heartbreaking amount of inspiration from real people and real events despite being a fictional story at heart. This is about as "show your love for America by criticizing its flaws and calling for what kind of country it should strive to become" as you can get, and that sort of national pride has always resonated with me more than the blind and over-patriotic kind (this applies to both of my home countries, by the way), so this classic is definitely among the most deserving candidates for the title of GAN.
1. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck, 1939)
"A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east"
Steinbeck's masterpiece deserves the #1 spot in a universal sense - if there's another book that says as much about America, encapsulates the spirit of the United States and relays conventions of American literature as much or more than this one, then I haven't found that book yet. Following a family making their way from Oklahoma to California in desparate search of work during the Great Depression, The Grapes of Wrath is a book where every aspect, from Steinbeck's nuanced depictions of nature and the atmosphere-creating interlude chapters all the way to the characteristics and personalities of the Joad family and the social criticism weaved into the story, feels as "Great American Novel" as one can get.
But I also had to put it at #1 for personal reasons. Reading this book in the summer of 2021 pretty much single-handedly begun my so-called "Bob Dylan phase", where I discovered a newfound resonance and deeper sense of belonging to my second home country. While I've always loved America, it has always inescapably been the slightly more distant-feeling of my two home countries because I've always lived in Finland, and especially living through the Trump years was something that made my relationship to the U.S. a lot more difficult and complicated. But the American spirit found in this book was something that really spoke to me, prompting me to read more such classics while listening to tons of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, et cetera.
In his book A Promised Land, Barack Obama talks about the dilemma of how he could love and believe in a nation that had enslaved people who looked like him, then segregated them, and still continued to treat them differently in the eyes of the police and the justice system. He comes to the conclusion that what he loves and believes in and decided to fight for was the promise of America, what the country can strive to be at its best, and lists some examples: it's the America Walt Whitman describes in his poems, the America of Jackie Robinson stealing home, the America of misfits like Chuck Berry making it and the America of Dr. King speaking on the national mall. I wholeheartedly agree, and among the names I'd add to that fabled list would be John Steinbeck writing The Grapes of Wrath, and a certain Mr. Obama overcoming the odds to become President. "Yes we can" has been a challenging sentiment to believe in ever since 2016, but it'll always be the idea to strive towards.
Thank you for reading! Tune in next week as I turn the lens to my other home country - "Great Finnish Novel" may not be a canonical term like its American counterpart, so I'll settle for "Top 10 Finnish books".
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