12 Comments

Great post. Impressive the way you covered the whole expanse. It is blasphemous the way great books like Huckleberry Finn have been edited or cancelled outright. Not great American, but two favorites if mine are J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, contemporaries and good friends. Tolkien got Lewis back to Christianity and Lewis convinced Tolkien to finish "Lord of the Rings"

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Nov 5, 2022Liked by Jenna Stocker

Interesting post. It is tragic that ideology has overtaken truth in the minds of the publishing gatekeepers. It seems that with all the great novels over the past 200 years, it would be a real achievement to write something that could honestly stand up with them. The greatest American novel I’ve read is To Kill a Mockingbird (but admittedly there are many very great ones I’ve not read). Greatest overall novel I’ve read is Brothers Karamazov. The books that most deeply affected me were Gulag Archipelago and A Tale of Two Cities.

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Nov 5, 2022Liked by Jenna Stocker

Great post, Jenna. It reminded me of a conversation I had on the topic with a French business associate, beck in the early 2000s. His pick for the great American novel was THE POWER OF THE DOG, which I hadn’t read at the time. I read it shortly afterward and had a good chuckle at his little joke.

On the topic of the great American novel, I could nominate HUCKLEBERRY FINN or CATCHER IN THE RYE or any number of novels that capture the character of the era, but I’d prefer to nominate two short stories by Mark Helprin, “Perfection” and “Monday,” both from the collection THE PACIFIC AND OTHER STORIES.

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