Why Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, and Truman Capote All Failed to Write the Great American Novel
Many commentators have suggested that the passing of Gore Vidal at age eighty-six on July 31 marks the end of a remarkable generation of postwar American novelists the likes of whom we shall never see again.
When people speak of that generation of novelists, they are usually referring to exactly three people: Norman Mailer (born in 1923), Truman Capote (1924), and Vidal (1925). All three made splashy literary debuts in the years shortly after the war. All three were not just writers but celebrities. Their arrival on the national scene was followed shortly by the advent of television and the TV talk show, on which all three excelled in their different ways at making an indelible impression.
Vidal was the pompous, formidable intellect and wit, serving up well-turned putdowns of those he considered his inferiors – which included pretty much everyone – in an authoritative upper-crust dialect. Capote was the flamboyant quipster and gossip with the pronounced Southern accent, more explicit on national TV about his sexual orientation than any other gay man in America would dare for another generation. And Mailer, in contradistinction to these two gay men, was the embodiment of post-Hemingway machismo – a Brooklyn Jewish kid by way of Harvard with a chip on his shoulder and a determination to prove that he, and no other, was the natural heir to Papa Hemingway.
Back then, big authors were big TV. These three loved doing the talk shows – and the talk-show hosts loved having them on. Both Vidal and Capote were regulars on Carson (Carson actually invited Vidal to be a guest host, and Capote died at the home of one of Carson’s ex-wives, who’d become a close chum); Vidal and Mailer appeared together on a legendary episode of The Dick Cavett Show (whose wife and Vidal became good friends) on which they all but got into a fistfight on the air.
Nowadays they’d all be lucky to get on C-SPAN.
They attacked one another, mocked one another, sued one another. Each was always aware of – and felt threatened by – the other two. (How absurd all the jealousy, the competition, seems now!) All three proclaimed their brilliance unashamedly – and repeatedly. All three were motivated by the now quaint-sounding goal of writing the Great American Novel. All three, indeed, were desperate to be proclaimed immortal masters of the novel. But though Capote’s novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s was unquestionably brilliant, arguably perfect of its own kind (even Mailer admitted as much), neither Vidal nor Mailer ever produced a fictional work anywhere near approaching the first rank, and even Breakfast at Tiffany’s, when you got right down to it, was a short work – hardly War and Peace.
All three were far better at non-fiction – Vidal in his innumerable, and inimitable, literary essays (neither of the other two, curiously, seems to have been particularly interested in, or perhaps even capable of, writing serious book reviews); Capote in what he called the “non-fiction novel,” as exemplified by In Cold Blood, as well as in a series of juicy (if highly unreliable) accounts of such things as his friendship with Marilyn Monroe; and Mailer in his engaging early miscellany Advertisements for Myself and in The Armies of the Night, his award-winning account of an anti-Vietnam march in Washington, D.C., in which he co-starred with the poet Robert Lowell. (Some would also include among Mailer’s most impressive works The Executioner’s Song, his attempt – unreadable, in my view – to outdo In Cold Blood.)
Why were they better at non-fiction than fiction? A big part of the reason is that a great novelist needs to have the gift of profound empathy – the ability to create, care profoundly about, and comprehend to the depths of their souls characters radically different from himself. To be a great novelist requires that one be able to stand alone, as it were, at the edge of the party and observe other people patiently and unobtrusively – to look into their eyes and, in doing so, try to see into their souls.
None of these three were up to that; all were too wrapped up in themselves. Yes, they were all formidably gifted. Of the three, Vidal was the most intelligent, widely read, and critically discerning; Capote was the most sensitive to lived experience and the finest prose stylist; Mailer had, well, a certain feisty energy and ardor, an urgent sense of the Zeitgeist, and a terrific knack for figuring out how to place himself in the center of things so that he would have something spectacular to write about.
But none of them was a born novelist – far from it.
Important question: what does it mean that all three of them befriended murderers? Capote became smitten with Perry Smith, one of the two twisted young creeps who committed the crime – the slaughter of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, in 1959 – that became the subject of In Cold Blood. Norman Mailer entered into a correspondence, and eventually became chummy, with the killer Jack Henry Abbott, whose book he helped get published in 1981 and whose release from prison he was instrumental in arranging – and who, after being out of the slammer for six weeks (during which he was, thanks to Mailer, the toast of the New York literary scene), stabbed to death Richard Adan (also, coincidentally, an aspiring writer), who was working as a waiter in a Manhattan café into which Abbott had happened to wander in search of a men’s room. Vidal, for his part, answered fan letters from Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and ended up being pals with him, praising him as a “noble boy” before McVeigh, like Perry Smith before him, was executed. (Abbott, after being sent back to prison for the murder of Adan, ended up hanging himself in his cell.)
This fondness for murderers suggests that, for all their differences and their mutual hostility, Mailer, Capote, and Vidal had something in common that separated them from most of the rest of us. Even as all of them adored the limelight, they were drawn to the dark side. If they weren’t, in the final analysis, great, or even particularly good, American novelists, perhaps it was, in large part, not because of a lack of raw talent but because they all felt, to some degree and for various reasons, alienated from ordinary Americans to a degree that made it impossible for any of them to write with sufficient empathy and understanding about their countrymen – except, perhaps, those who had killed in cold blood. To be capable of a perverse sympathy for psychopaths but incapable of contemplating ordinary American life without feeling contempt and condescension (and this last applies less to Capote than to the other two) is not the formula for producing enduring literature.
With Vidal’s death, it is interesting to look back on all the fine writers who first published books at around the same time as these three did but who, although very successful, failed somehow to make the long-term “A” list. In 1948, for instance, the big book was Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, which pretty much everybody who mattered decided was the great novel of World War II – but which, try though I might, I’ve always found it impossible to get into. The same year saw the publication of Irwin Shaw’s war novel The Young Lions, which is compulsively readable, not to mention considerably more interesting and intelligent than anything Mailer ever wrote. But an even finer novel that came out in 1948 was Ross Lockridge’s now forgotten Raintree Country, a story set in an imaginary Indiana town before, during, and after the Civil War. I consider it a credible candidate for the title of Great American Novel. No novel written by Vidal, Mailer, or Capote can touch it.
Now that Vidal is dead, many commentators have proclaimed that the postwar literary generation is now gone. But what – just to name one more author who comes to mind – about Herman Wouk, who was born in 1915? Author of The Caine Mutiny (1951), Marjorie Morningstar (1955), The Winds of War (1971), and War and Remembrance (1975), he’s still with us. And the more one looks at his supposedly middlebrow novels alongside the allegedly highbrow efforts of Mailer, Vidal, and Capote, the more one recognizes that such terms are not always as useful as one thinks.
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More on books and literature at PJ Lifestyle:
A: Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Truman Capote
Q: Name three 20th Century authors who will never ever be read again.
Story re: Gore Vidal from alleged eye witness:
How well I could remember,
It was early in November,
He was walking down my street
In wanton pride,
When his heart went all a’flutter,
And he lay down in a gutter,
And a PIG came up and lay down at his side.
As he lay there in the gutter,
With his heart still all a’flutter
Two ladies walking by were heard to say,
You can tell a man who loses by the company he chooses,
And the pig got up and quickly walked away.
Gore Vidal had his 15 minutes of fame, but died, and will be remembered as, a LOSER. [And a deviant, a pervert, a fraud, and more worse.]
Small point but that’s “Raintree County,” not “Country” if my memory serves.
Not a small point at all — sorry for the typo.
They were educated and urbane, but in many ways they were hothouse flowers. They were smart, but they weren’t wise or good. But then, neither was Tolstoy – though he tried to be. I don’t think they even tried. Vidal and Mailer were unhappy cranks. Capote was, apparently, a happy Capote. I think Capote had some compassion. The other two had none whatsoever. You can’t write a great novel without compassion.
It was the Great AMERICAN Novel they didn’t write. In the infinite-number-of-monkeys-typing-will-write-another-Shakespeare-play sort of way, maybe a deviant 1-2% freak of nature could figure out what normal life is all about, but we may not have an infinite time remaining, so scratch that. Mailer was a Jew. If anyone writes the Great American Novel, it will be a more-or-less normal (but genius) American, not some pervert or alien who sees America only from the outside looking in. But in the current state of literary degeneracy, nobody would recognize the GAN if it hit them in the head. If recognized in some manner, it would be banned and replaced by an Alice Walker novel.
I disagree that a great novelist is in need of great empathy or particulars. In fact, I think those actually work against a great novel.
Christopher Hitchens admitted he couldn’t write a novel and his take on those who could was an interest in music which I also reject.
The secret of a great novel is in the way a story is told, not what the story is. Bright and eccentric creativity. Over attention to detail will never produce a great work. However much one is moved by films like Casablanca or novels like Jane Eyre, without an underlying artistry, layering and nuance those “stories” could’ve been mere potboilers.
Look at House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence. The former has more drama and compassion but also writing for the sake of writing – padded. The latter is somewhat cold but every paragraph matters.
Look at Edgar Rice Burroughs who could barely write technically. He never wrote a great novel but his wild creativity closed the gap a great deal. Had he been the opposite you never would’ve heard of him.
Many people know how to construct a novel and how to build characters. But creativity cannot be packaged. The closest we usually come to a shared artistry are shared schools of art which briefly flourish and then die.
Interestingly, the generation of novelists that came after were vastly better. I speak specifically of John Updike (b. 1932) and Phillip Roth (b. 1933). Updike’s Rabbit books are classics of American fiction. And Roth, whatever you may think of him personally, is a terrific story teller. Saul Bellow, though a Nobelist, is less good to me. Best of all, of course, is Isaac Bashevis Singer (b. 1902) , who dwarfs all novelists of his time and compares to the great Russians, although Singer is only marginally American, more Eastern European.
For me, Mailer’s fiction is virtually unreadable and Gore could never create fictional characters that lived. Ironically, the one person of that generation who created great characters was J. D. Salinger (amazingly b. 1919). Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey are works that almost, but not quite, approach Fitzgerald.
The times I’ve tried to read each of these, I’ve failed miserably. Absolute tripe. I think there are a coupla sci-fi authors that could show these poseurs a thing or two.
Updike was a simply amazing writer – versatile, sensitive, intelligent and honest. Bellow was fascinating. I think his short stories were best. His award-winning novels were very interesting but tried the reader’s patience. First, you had to figure out his language.
To me, Rabbit Angstrom is nothing less than the American Leopold Bloom. An addictive character. And he was a Republican!
Roger Simon’s views on literature are always fascinating to me. I wonder what he would think of this discussion of Saul Bellow: http://clarespark.com/2011/11/12/the-woman-question-in-saul-bellows-herzog/. But more, I would like to know what Mr. Simon thinks of Budd Schulberg’s novel The Disenchanted, which was about his failed collaboration with Fitzgerald, and very close to real life. This novel to me was the best evocation of the Jazz Age and its foolishness that I have ever read.
I have read Vidal’s “Messiah” almost 30 years ago and found it prophetic and a masterpiece and I still like it for its prescience.
OK, I venture here feeling like the proverbial loose lady in the nave. I don’t pretend to any literary insights other than mine own eccentricities.
I have read them all. Well, at least the first page. If I were moved to pick up one as my last fleeting pleasure I would reach for Steinbeck.
I rarely fail to enjoy Fail Burton’s comments. But I disagree here — empathy, as Bruce Bawer beautifully puts it, is what elevates great and imaginative writing past talent to significance.
The two I’d nominate as the greatest postwar authors are John Updike and Saul Bellow. Updike ambitiously looked into the heart of American society and told what he saw there — for sixty years. As he aged, he seemed capable of animating ever earlier portions of the 20th century in the context of the century’s ending — In the Beauty of the Lilies is an extraordinary journey through the entire American age. I find it strange that he is not accorded a higher status: his respect for people is matched by his curiosity in them, and his power of description is unmatched by anyone.
There is some difference between Capote’s interest in telling a murder story (actually Harper Lee engaged Hickcock and Smith) and Mailer and Vidal’s sickening fetishization of murderers. The latter were both rotten and over-rated: anyone needing so frequently to use anal sex as a literary flourish is distracting the reader from very tedious shortcomings. Capote ruined himself with drink and pills, but Mailer and Vidal were simply so unpleasant that it is unpleasant to spend time in the company of their imaginations. James Baldwin wrestled with ugliness and unpleasantness without ever being reduced to it as they were. Their only significant work was nonfiction — the brute exposure of their own ids offers insights into our own capacity for ugly self-delusion. “The White Negro” comes to mind as an ideal example.
Truman Capote’s best work? Playing “Lionel Twain” in the movie version of “Murder by Death”.
Bingo!
I would say that the difference between sympathy and empathy is key when creating characters. You must be able to recognize and understand the emotions of the character, but not necessarily to sympathize with them: Florence King once identified the source of “Madame Bovary”‘s genius as the fact that Flaubert refused to sympathize with his protagonist or wallow in the depths of her emotion.
Vidal, Mailer, and Capote failed because their works were always, in one way or another, about them. Vidal’s, at least, reeked of ego. A man who’s too busy appreciating himself can’t be truly successful in creating characters others will appreciate.
For my money, the great American novel has already been written: John Kennedy O’Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces. Like America itself, it’s broad, sprawling, sometimes vulgar, a raucous tragicomic culture clash of a book. Even better, it’s going to be relevant for a long time to come. Who can look at the MSM and not see at least one Ignatius Reilly?
Another over rated book. Sorry. The legend of the book’s posthumous publication is the most interesting thing about. A book sold as comic, or satirical, should be funny, not empty. Other books promoted as great comic, satirical, works that do not deliver, are “Tropic Of Cancer”, and “Naked Lunch”.
I concur completely that Herman Wouk has been terribly underrated. The reason is certainly that he offers an explicitly traditional point of view. The scene in “War and Remembrance” depicting the lecture/sermon by Aaron Jastrow, formerly a secular Jewish professor at Yale and now a prisoner at a Nazi concentration camp, comparing the Iliad and Job is a masterpiece. The conservative political scholar Arnold Bleichman published a great short study of Wouk (http://www.amazon.com/Herman-Wouk-Novelist-Social-Historian/dp/087855498X).
Also of interest, Wouk is publishing a new novel about the life of Moses (http://www.amazon.com/The-Lawgiver-Novel-Herman-Wouk/dp/1451699387 ).
Wouk was hated partly because he attacked the literary establishment. In the Caine Mutiny it is partly blamed for May’s deflowering; the hero is happy, but May is later crying alone in her room.
Morningstar is a thorough attack on them, although sometimes it is hard to tell why they were so angry. At the end the heroine, an aspiring actress, is happy, sophiticated and accomplished – living as a housewife and married to a Jewish doctor.
I suppose this refutes Chaim Potok’s claim that a religious Jew cannot be a great writer.
Herman Wouk also wrote what is probably the best explanation of Judaism for the layman of my parent’s generation, and some science fiction, including a little-known novel ona search for the Higgs boson.
P.S. As a religious Jew, I’ve always detested Singer and Malumud.
OTOH, if Capote did write “To Kill A Mockingbird” — as some claim — maybe he did write The Great American Novel.
I’m glad you mentioned Herman Wouk, btw.
One very underrated candidate for TGAN is John D. MacDonald. The Last One Left and One More Sunday are absolutely brilliant works that get the zeitgeist perfectly.
I have to disagree re Capote: his ‘In Cold Blood’ is a very good book. He had every reason to be proud of it.
For the record, I liked The Naked and the Dead.
And another, probably final, point. The most influential American writer of the 20th century might very well turn out to be Richard Matheson — same generation as the others, WWII vet and a graduate of the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism — who is never going to be accused of writing the TGAN.
No. Great American Novel.
I think in the long run, ether Bradbury or Heinlein will be accorded that privilege.
“I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it’s better than college. People should educate themselves – you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I’d written a thousand stories.” Bradbury
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.” Heinlein
“There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who “love Nature” while deploring the “artificialities” with which “Man has spoiled ‘Nature.’” The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of “Nature” — but beavers and their dams are. But the contradictions go deeper than this prima-facie absurdity. In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers’ purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by men (for the purposes of men) the Naturist reveals his hatred for his own race — i.e., his own self-hatred.
In the case of “Naturists” such self-hatred is understandable; they are such a sorry lot. But hatred is too strong an emotion to feel toward them; pity and contempt are the most they rate.
As for me, willy-nilly I am a man, not a beaver, and H. sapiens is the only race I have or can have. Fortunately for me, I like being part of a race made up of men and women — it strikes me as a fine arrangement — and perfectly “natural” Believe it or not, there were “Naturists” who opposed the first flight to old Earth’s Moon as being “unnatural” and a “despoiling of Nature.”" Heinlein
“Whenever women have insisted on absolute equality with men, they have invariably wound up with the dirty end of the stick. What they are and what they can do makes them superior to men, and their proper tactic is to demand special privileges, all the traffic will bear. They should never settle merely or equality. For women, “equality” is a disaster.” Heinlein
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” Heinlein
And on and on.
Advantage Heinlein, in my accounting.
I’m not impartial. So?
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
Wow.
I recall reading Heinlein about 30+ years ago.
But failed to recall a word he had written.
Time to check out a book of his again.
Thanks for the memory reset!
I never could stomach reading anything by the three authors mentioned in the article, but I read four or five books a week growing up. Heinlein and Bradbury were two of my favorites, and I enjoyed many other science fiction writers whose names I can’t remember. Joseph Heller was one of my favorite writers- Catch 22 was great, and while I completely disagree with the politics of the whole thing it sure was funny.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
Yes!
Whenever I meet a poor soul who has not read Heinlein I always recommend “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” first, never “Stranger in a Strange Land”. My second recommendation is “Starship Troopers”, just because it would get under Harlan Ellison’s skin.
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” Heinlein
Well stated; I agree, I wish more folks did.
Thanks Tom and Bill!
Let’s have a big hand for Walker Percy. “The Thanatos Syndrome” is a masterly blend of philosophical novel and good old-fashioned thriller. “Lost in the Cosmos” takes a approach to apocalyptic science fiction that had never been tried before.
I’d nominate Percy’s The Moviegoer – a novel full of empathy for its characters, and one I try to read every decade since I first came upon it as a teenager. Every time I read it it’s a different book.
Here, here! Walker Percy was vastly underrated and always a terriffic read. “Love in the ruins” and “The Last Gentleman” are favorites of mine.
My vote goes to Walker Percy as well. And if I need cheering up his “Lost In The Cosmos” is a never-fail remedy for the blues.
Here here I too nominate Walker Percy. His novels are very unique and insightful and his writing stle is commendable. He has never been too popular because of his religious beliefs but I did like very much “The Last Gentleman” and I find him a prophet of modern times.
Someone’s got A Confederacy of Dunces as one of the 10 funniest novels. But J.R. by William Gaddis is much, much funnier. That and The Recognitions are works of true literary genius. Of course, I skipped over all the Latin so take it with a grain of salt.
John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee novels are great as far as they go but there’s way too much “using a map to drive somewhere”; who cares what route they take, and whether it’s actually that way? MacDonald cared, that’s who. The audience not so much.
Vidal, underrated for style; Capote, overrated for style; but Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead is overall the best WWII novel hands down. And the novels The Deer Park and especially An American Dream are underrated in Mailer’s ouvre.
well, if confederacy were a novel. It’s more like a documentary set in New Orleans. really. even ignatz.
Ummm, because they were all narcissistic bores?
Sums it up nicely for me.
The best American writing is, and always has been, what is now classified as “genre fiction.”
Louis L’Amour
Robert Heinlein
Arthur C. Clarke
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Robert E. Howard
As for the “Great American Novel”, if being “highbrow” is a requirement, then it will almost certainly be thoroughly dreadful.
Perhaps someone can write the next Great American Novel. Here’s my suggestion on how to do it.
It’s a novel about action, about doing. Not about emoting and stewing.
It’s a novel with humour. It’s not about people mired in depravity and hopelessness, but about people striving to better their lot in life. It’s not a cynical look at “small town life”, or a nihilistic take on the emptiness of modern life, or a gut churning crawl through a psychopath’s mind, or a ridiculous carnival of sex and drugs.
An interesting comment that speaks to the intersection of what’s popular, what’s “good,” and what’s ignored. What’s “serious” and what’s perceived as being “serious.” It seems that genre fiction has just a little to much fun and easy gratification to be literature with a big “L” in the minds of many. My own opinion is that people conflate “serious” with “sober.”
Does a “great” novel depend on popularity or being seminal? Can a great writer be known by relatively few people?
As a thought experiment, I recently wrote a novel in the way you suggest; stripped of padding, streamlined and where characters are defined by what they do, with little or no backstory to who they are other than the context of their culture. Dialogue resembles a comments section. It may be a failure, but it moves at the speed of light from one very tiny section to the next. It was my reaction to novels with a distressingly similar descriptive form and character building that has come to resemble the equivalent of a boring and predictable white picket fence. I’m long tired of the arty cyberpunk novel that invokes Raymond Chandler and PC at the same time.
Unfortunately the cultures in my novel are mired in depravity based on a entrenchment due to a dog-eat-dog world. But it’s not pointless. It’s a science-fiction novel set 350 years in the future and a warning on how the concept of the greater good can disappear when a society like America is overwhelmed by migrating populations from the wrong places – a reversal of the the Enlightenment. No novel concepts really but an attempt at a novel form.
I enjoyed SF authors long ago who took chances like Ellison, “Repent Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman and Farmer, Riders of the Purple Wage and Heinlein, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.” Even more recent novels like “The Dragon Never Sleeps” by Glen Cook are fun. In terms of prose, novels like “Dune,” “The Mote In God’s Eye” and “Pandora’s Star” are almost polar opposites whose artistry is carefully buried.
And then you have that strange intersection of the cheapest action pulp and great artistry that was Robert E. Howard. In the end, it seems that the guiding hand of an editor and thoughts of serving an audience rather than self-indulging are key elements.
The whole of Cook’s, “The Black Company” series is a great read, but I don’t think he’s in the runnign for TGAN.
I agree, not at all. But if Cook has a mini-masterpiece it is not his mercenary sludge but in “The Dragon Never Sleeps”; it is unique. I was making a point about conspicuous use of prose. See also: virtually every single story by Jack Vance, one of the finest prose stylists in the English language.
Discovering these heartfelt words about what are also my own close-held favorite American writers has been a pleasure. Actually, overcome by emotion at this moment. On target validation does that. Further correspondence, and a look at my stuff, is available via my blog Synthetic Information. Easy to find at Google Page rank 1. Topics are strictly limited to anything we can think.
As for the “Great American Novel”, if being “highbrow” is a requirement, then it will almost certainly be thoroughly dreadful.
Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is certainly “highbrow,” but it should be on anybody’s short list for Great American Novel of the 20th Century.
John Dos Passos wrote a pretty good contender for Great American Novel, too; USA, which is actually three novels. All have at least “highbrow” elements, but the books are superb. Dos Passos is not read much now; he quarreled with Hemingway when Hemingway tried to defend the Loyalists’ murder of a friend of Dos Passos’. Once an IWW sympathizer in a vague sort of way, JDP became ever more conservative—and his stock with the literary crowd decreased accordingly. It is very interesting to read his “Midcentury,” which has an ongoing subplot of union corruption, and compare it with his more-favorable (but still-wary) sympathy for radicals in USA.
What I like about JDP is the deceptively effortless, smooth way his prose moves. Each sentence just leads you to the next, and the next, and then you just slide onto the next paragraph. Very affecting. First I read Manhatten Transfer which was just a mind-blowing experience. Then the three novels in USA and finally, Midcentury. Wonderful writer. He definitely should be read more.
Clarke was English, but your point is taken.
Thank you, BikerDad, for saying first what I was composing in my head as I read all the gas about “literary writers”; of all those mentioned above, Updike and Wouk and MacDonald are likely to remain read and enjoyed in the future. Mailer, Vidal, and most others mentioned will only be read if they are required reading in some unfortunate institute of learning.
Since, as jsallison points out, Clarke was English, I would substitute the late Ray Bradbury in your list. Fahrenheit 451, and the collection of tales that make up The Martian Chronicles are better than anything Vidal or Mailer ever wrote; and his books like Dandelion Wine take the Establishment’s hatred of small-town America and wipe that hatred out with a mere wave of the hand, and then sing, as only Bradbury’s poetic prose can do, of the glory, the marvelousness, and the love for one another which is the glue of small town America.
You’re describing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. That’s the great American novel.
Yeah, I know. But those have already been written, thus, they can’t be “Then Next Great American Novel”
Good points; I think you are right to some degree.
Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanity is, at least, the great novel of Reagan-era America. And his nonfiction book The Right Stuff is one of the great sagas of aviation, scientific exploration, and heroism. If Wolfe were a knee-jerk liberal who embraced all the fashionable causes and clichés, he would be held in far greater esteem by the literati.
Darn. Vanities, plural.
Wolfe is definitely due for a re-appraisal, and with a new book out this fall, he might get it. He was also the writer Mailer and Vidal loved to attack – probably hating him was the only thing they had in common.
Funny how all three of these guys, of whose works I read little or nothing, were confused together in my mind. Maybe, in my ignorance, I was on to something.
This essay by Algis Valiunas sums up Mailer pretty well:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-naked-novelist-and-the-dead-reputation/
However, the geniuses of MST3K put it more succinctly: they referred to Mailer, Vidal et al as “Hell’s Egos”.
Here’s my Norman Mailer story. It’s as true as I can remember; which may not mean much, so take it with a grain of salt.
In the early ’70s, I heard him speak on a college campus. He opened with a somewhat dirty joke, then berated the audience because they didn’t laugh hard enough (I had laughed my head off the first time I read the joke – in Playboy magazine, several months earlier). He then proceeded to his main theme : that Americans were paranoid about secret government spying, and that we needed a “People’s Public Secret Police” to spy on all the people who were spying on us. The intrinsically oxymoronic nature of this hypothetical organization seemed to have escaped his notice. Apparently, he believed that the cure for paranoia was to give people something else to be paranoid about. After that, I lost what little interest I had in his opinions (admittedly, not a great loss).
Fail Burton said “I disagree that a great novelist is in need of great empathy or particulars. In fact, I think those actually work against a great novel.”
– I am not a professional writer, I have two small essays plus a thesis published, and a lot of time years ago editing AP and UPI wire copy.
I recently had an opportunity to attend a “Pitch Fest” in Burbank Ca. there I took a short workshop given by Corey Mandell. Mandell, a UCLA faculty member is also a highly successful journeyman script writer. Hollywood writers live in a very competitive and high pressure business. I learned a lot in 90 minutes. His salient point of the workshop for me was “You have to care about your characters and what happens to them” I believe that does require empathy.
Check “6″
I wasn’t talking about the average TV show or Mary Tyler Moore – in fact empathy might be quite useful in that case.
If I was, the point would be the same; the best TV shows are the one’s that used the medium’s language to it’s greatest effect. Empathy doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it must be presented in an artistic construct rise to greatness.
If you look at seminal TV shows throughout its history that took the form to a new level, it is not an upgunning of empathic characters that is the deal-breaker, but in new styles of presenting those characters.
This is not a science. There is a lot of give and take here. I am talking in a very general way.
Bill Lawrence is right. Great novels don’t come from East Coast highbrow Know-it-alls. Capote could never have written TKAMB, which is close to The Perfect Novel in any English-speaking country. Like Arthur Miller’s plays, it is about the greatest theme of US life, struggle and achievement – viz noble morality, not effete cynicism. It captures era and place exactly in a great structure..
I taught it with pleasure for years, as well as that small, but great masterpiece The Great Gatsby. This has early modern US life [the car a key feature] capitalism, corruption, idealism, the rise of the Big City, opulence, narcissism, embarrassing self-indulgence, middle class values, low-life poverty, violence and despair. All brilliantly evoked in under 200 pages, and all permanent features! Like TKAMB, it’s a succinct, dramatic thriller and wonderfully poetic as well. These will live on. Mark Twain is merely quirky in comparison.
I write as an Australian teacher who now finally lives among you all. The Great American Novel may well be from these two, and most of you don’t seem to know it!
If you think To Kill A Mockingbird is the great American novel, you might want to check out Hostess cupcakes as candidate for the great American food.
I agree with him, and strongly disagree with you. To Kill a Mockingbird is a great American novel. One of the greatest things about it is how short it is. When a book is that short, it’s hard for it to drag…something most modern publishers don’t understand.
Dittos about Gatsby.
Capote was really a Southern boy, believe it or not. The parlor game claims that he wrote Mockingbird stem from him growing up in Monroeville, Alabama as the next door neighbor of Harper Lee with whom he was close friends. The character Dill in Mockingbird is based on Capote.
Cool post, Bruce. Yes, Mailer wrote few book reviews, but his infamous “Talents in the Room” was among the generation’s boldest and best take on all the then front-running novelists. Among his targets is one other novelist you might have mentioned: William Styron.
You also say that, unlike Vidal and Capote, Mailer was hetro. Actually, screwing a man — he never contradicted Adele Mailer’s autobiographic assertion this happened — and drugs/booze seem to have destroyed his ability. Anality became a sort of cataract over his fictional vision. The repulsive and unreadable novel Ancient Evenings is a testament to this crippling psycho-sexual obsession.
Raintree County isn’t altogether forgotten. You might enjoy a book I’m reading by John Leggett called Ross & Tom (Da Capo Press), which carries on the spade work done by Budd Shulberg concerning the question of whether or not Ross Lockridge and Thomas Heggen (Mister Roberts) were driven to suicide by the treatment they received at the hands of American publishing and the entertainment industry.
Writing the Great American Novel only sounds quaint if you know in your soul you couldn’t do it.
Mailer was a poet, too. Perhaps his best-known poem was written after he was arrested for stabbing his wife, “Rainy Afternoon With The Wife:”
So long as you use a knife,
There’s some love left.
“Why Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, and Truman Capote All Failed to Write the Great American Novel”
Cause Mark Twain already wrote it.
Aside from all their shortcomings (personal and professional), which I do not dispute, the fact is F. Scott Fitgerald had already written the GAM before any of these guys even got out of High School.
I think it’s pretty obvious, when you stop to think about it for five seconds, that the great American novel is Atlas Shrugged. Sure, Any Rand wasn’t a native born American, but she wrote about America and became an American. If your criteria is a great yarn, then back to the real world, there are lots of such novels. No other novel can touch Atlas Shrugged’s influence.
I agree; there’s no question about it Isee below Comment 31).
I’ve tried reading Vidal, Mailer, Capote… I’m sorry, but I just don’t see the appeal. Terrible books, by terrible men. “Gatsby” is a better attempt, but it drags in places. And while I love Rand, well… “Atlas” is a slog as a novel; it’s more a bit of economic theory trying to wrap itself up in badly writ fiction. Mark Twain could be the great American Novelist, I suppose. But for my money, the “Great American Novel” was Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind.” What other book inspires such devotion and such division, after such a long time?
Which books did you read by Mailer, Vidal, and Capote? Why didn’t you like them? Why are the authors terrible people? You’re making huge claims without any details. And you’re making your own opinion into objective fact. Don’t you think that’s a little silly? You have every right to say you don’t like certain books. But do you really feel you can say those books are bad, just because you don’t like them?
Re: Comment 28 by Nmissi
“Gatsby…drags in places” – what doesn’t? Moby Dick drags for about three quarters of it’s length, yet it sticks in the mind of the reader because of the masterful, close to King James quality of the dialogue and it’s delineation of characters and their motivations. Hell, a whole lot of Shakespeare drags (especially his Comedies), but so damn what?
As long as I’m spouting on comments read here, I would add my own nominee for
GAN in the Science Fiction/Fantasy genres as “A Canticle for Leibowitz”. Am I the only one who thinks so?
Well if dragging in certan places is a criteria, it’s got that nailed.
Not much of a sci-fi reader but I second the motion on Leibowitz. And while I’m at it: Native Son, several by Faulkner, and a more recent one: Affliction by Russell Banks.
Oh, wow, somebody actually remembers “Canticle”!
That little book had perhaps the biggest emotional impact on me of any of the tens of thousands of novels I have read. Perfectly paced, devastating conclusion.
Of course, I am an engineer, and that may color my perception.
If you want to give their fiction another try, look up Mailer’s Deer Park or Vidal’s Creation. Those are two of the most interesting and fun books I’ve ever read. You might enjoy them too.
It’s been years since I read The Great Gatsby, but I don’t remember it dragging at all. I seem to remember it being less than 200 pages in length…if your attention span is that short, perhaps you should graduate to comic books!
As for the Great American Novel, I’d like to put forward a different pair of writers, of a genre that is at least mostly American in origin: private eye novels. My two candidates are a Communist (Dashiell Hammett) and a transplanted Brit (Raymond Chandler). Myself, I’m more of a fan of Chandler, but of Hammett’s stuff The Dain Curse and Red Harvest stand out. The gritty hardboiled protagonist going up against everyone, even though he was outnumbered, because it was the right thing to do…that was, in my estimation, very well-conceived, and I truly enjoy the books.
Nah, the American-Canadian Ross MacDonald (aka Kenneth Millar) was better than Hammett and Chandler, though he certainly owed a great deal to both of them. But then it’s often just a matter of taste and quirks in personality in these things. I lived in Southern California at a time when the glory of that region was faded but still perceptible. Reading a Lew Archer novel touched on the emotions evoked by that landscape. I’m sure his works hit me in a way someone from, say, Michigan wouldn’t completely understand.
All three were better than Hell’s Egos, but really, weren’t Vidal, Capote and Mailer just the precursors to Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton? Famous for being famous?
I too am a fan of MacDonald’s also. Oddly, he published his first novel under then pseudonym “John MacDonald” and changed it after the future creator of Travis McGee complained. John D. MacDonald always used that middle initial afterwards.
As you say, though, MacDonald came after Chandler and Hammett. And I still insist that there are several paragraphs in Chandler specifically where the writing is just so on point you have to marvel, when you read it. I just went and got my LOA Chandler, and turned immediately to this opening to one of his short stories (“Red Wind”):
“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.”
I submit that that, and the opening passage of “The Big Sleep” are among the best writing in American fiction, at least as far as what I’ve read. If you’ve ever been through an August in Southern California, you know exactly what he’s talking about. In one of the novels Marlowe winds up following his trail of clues to a dirty bookstore on Hollywood Blvd., which I still marvel at, amused.
As for Hammett, he was a Red of the first order and something of an obnoxious character, but when he was productive his stuff was really good. “The Maltese Falcon” is of course the most famous (and deservedly so, I think) but the Continental Op stuff was very good also, and remember, with the “Thin Man” series he also created Nick and Nora Charles, who went on to be the protagonists of a series of movies, which carried things far beyond the book the author wrote. In the original movies, the characters were played by William Powell and Myrna Loy. Anyway, I think Hammett was highly influential, not just because of how well he wrote but how his ideas translated and are more or less universal now. Red Harvest, his short story about the Continential Op essentially tearing down a whole city that he blames for his friend’s death, has been remade and remade, the last incarnation (officially) being the Bruce Willis movie “Last Man Standing”. The HBO miniseries “Deadwood” is also thought to be a descendant.
I distinctly remember walking out of an office building in Orange Country, across the street from John Wayne Intl, one summer evening when a Santander was blowing and thinking “This is the climate of the place human beings first lived. This is what we were meant for.”
That was long ago and I live in Washington State now.
It’s not fair really, driven out of paradise twice. I swear I didn’t pick fruit from any of the trees…
After reading all of the postings above, its surprising to see that Ayn Rand’s work is not mentioned. Yeah, she wasn’t born here, but her work has to be considered quintessentially American in its sensibilities. And no other author has had the impact that she has had on shaping American thought. She’s even a player in this year’s election.
Thank you for your comments on Norman Mailer. Thought I was pretty much alone in thinking his novels basically unreadable. Although I tried. Many times. Always got the feeling that each was an “audition” of sorts for the title of GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL. His ego seemed to provide the armature for his writings. On the other hand I thoroughly enjoyed the books by Herman Wouk whom you never hear about anymore. Surprised that he is still alive.
Great article and great comments, too. The twentieth century was not a great time to be writing novels because of Modernism and its opposition to God and, thus, to stories and story-telling. This is why Ulysses is the archetypical Modern novel, much as Tristram Shandy was for the Enlightenment, an age that resembles our own in many ways. Gatsby isn’t really much of a story, after all. More of a dazzling exercise in prose-poetry. But if by “great American novel” we mean a novel at the level of Pride and Prejudice or The Prince–good luck waiting for that. Those don’t come down the pike very often.
They are crashing bores, we have such a great world class author as James Lee Burke who is unsurpassed…
“Once an Eagle”, so far, for me. Anyone here recall it, or is it a Military Subculture thing? I hope not, that would be a shame.
Yes, it was excellent, but probably dismissed as mere “military” fiction.
Anton Myrer and Herman Wouk were 2 of my favorite novelists, growing up. “Once an Eagle” is a great novel, and “The Last Convertible” is very very good also. Wouk’s still alive, and supposedly about to publish a new book…
Vidal and Mailer were all bulster and self-promotion. I couldn’t wrestle through The naked and the dead either, harlot’s Ghost or anything Mailer ever wrote and Vidal rewrote history to suit himself. At least Capote seemed in on the joke. Bruce, please contibute more, you’re work is greatly missed
From what I read posted on this topic, there is no ‘Great American Novel,’ only ‘Great American Novels.’ The problem we have here is a futile search for a fictional work that will encompass all that makes America – America and with the sensibilities that will express what makes an American an American.
Looking at the responses here, we can safely assume that most readers have their own lists of ‘Great’ novels, and, as an exercise, makes trying to find the ‘Greatest of the Great’ meaningless, yet stimulating.
IMHO Tom Wolfe’s follow-up novel “A man in full” is even better than “Bonfire of the vanities.”
And don’t forget James Jones’s “From here to eternity” and “The thin red line”.
When I was in college, I was forced to read “The Executioner’s Song” by Norman Mailer. It is a very, very, long book (way too long) and what I resented most about it was that it made the “hero” of the book, convicted murderer Gary Gilmore, seem like some sort of poor, unfortunate, victim. In Mailer’s entire book, he rarely focused on Gilmore’s murder victims, the people who actually suffered from Gilmore’s crimes. By turning Gilmore into some sort of romantic victim, he tried to make this thug look sympathetic, trying to make us feel sorry for him. Bunk. Gilmore was insane and a psychotic murderer, nothing more and nothing less. I can’t stand bleeding heart liberals who try and make scum like this into sympathetic characters, all just to sell books. Mailer didn’t seem to shed a lot of tears for the people Gilmore killed, let alone for the families of the victims. That’s why I have no use for “writers” (some would call them liberal propagandists) who show sympathy for killers.
Capote is pretty good, Mailer is difficult and Vidal, other than Lincoln perhpas, is pretty forgettable. Saul Bellow is my guy. Herzog is a tremendous work as are Henderson the Rain King, The Adventures of Augie March and Mr. Sammler’s Planet. But I guess, he’s technically a Canadian. Then there’s Joseph Heller. If nothing else, Catch 22 is brilliant and hilarious. Vonnegut, at least early Vonnegut, is pretty terrific. A case can be made for Tom Wolfe. But at the end of the day, Elmore Leonard is the guy I will always read and love.
We take this opportunity to thank the Breitbart organization and the author of this remarkable essay. Thoughtful, literate, and on-target writing. First rate. Nice work. Please give us more quality stuff like this one.
RE: Vidal-Mailer-Capote
We observe that Royalty has clowns and jesters at hand for the amusement of court. The Vidal-Mailer-Capote trio’s enthusiastic willingness to jump into clown suits for the cameras, exuded an oily unseemliness that’s off-putting to real Americans. Real Americans view royalty, pretense, and posturing with casual disdain. It’s a character thing with us.
Oh, you now full well why they were famous – they wrote shit for people who have shit for brains but who happen to control (or, at least, controlled) the levers of popular culture. Sorry for the vulgarity, but there’s really no polite way to put it.
Surprised no one mentioned “All the King’s Men,” by Robert Penn Warren. Would not call it “THE” Great American Novel, but it is certainly The Great American POLITICAL Novel and should be on the Top Ten List of American Novels in general.
The Qu’ran is great fiction along with the BuyBull.
“It was a dark and stormy night………………….
I never paid any attention to Mailer or Vidal, but did make the mistake of reading “In Cold Blood,” which was over-rated and on which Capote dined out on for the rest of his unproductive life. “Blood” doesn’t hold a candle to Joseph Wambaugh’s “The Onion Field,” and Capote wouldn’t have made a pimple on Wambaugh’s behind. Any of Wambaugh’s true-crime works far surpasses “Blood.” No surprise, since Wambaugh is one of the best writers of American prose now working. But he’s never been a phony “celebrity,” and is just an ex-blue-collar cop.
Others have mentioned how un-productive Truman Capote was. My sister read me an essay by him once, that leaves no doubt in my mind about why. He started writing as a child for fun. Just for fun. A time he clearly missed. But before long, the “Bitch Goddess”, as he termed it, called ART, came calling, and writing became hard work.
And as you pointed out, letting a sociopath into his head, was not a good idea. It ruined whatever was left of him.
A further thought on Wambaugh. He would never have befriended any of the criminals he wrote about, as he always recognized their psychopathy. He probably knows more about that disorder than most psychiatric professionals.
The issue of whether he would have befriended a killer is somewhat problematic, given that he wrote that book about the arsonist John Orr after essentially doing just that. He made a deal with Orr (I heard him tell about this in an interview) where essentially he’d write a book outlining everything that happened, without coming to any conclusions about the guy’s guilt. The book is titled “Fire Lover” and the author does essentially that, he avoids telling you Orr was the arsonist. Now, given how the book is structured, and the mountain of facts that it contains, any intelligent chimp could read the book and figure out that Orr was guilty as sin…but Wambaugh never said it, and more or less made friends with the guy, at least for the purposes of using him. Sort of Joe McGiniss-style…
Thomas Pynchon’s V, and Gravity’s Rainbow are both masterpieces, both compulsively readable, and leaving the reader to constantly wonder about the kind of mind that could fashion such different parts into a seamless whole. As for Mailer, Vidal, and Capote, who cares?
anyone up for John Gardner? Sunlight Dialogues, and all that?
Personally, it’s not “THE” great American novel, but Seth Morgan’s Homeboy is like the criminal cousin of Confederacy of Dunces. And, it’s short stories, but The Emperor of the Air, by Ethan Canin, makes me nearly sick with happiness. Bright Lights, Big City, for the eighties.
My all-time favorite novel of Joseph Wambaugh is The Golden Orange.
After reading it, any time you should ever chance to hear the old classic song, “Where or When”, you’ll think of Wambaugh’s beautiful, magnificent book.
Guaranteed.
History (and society) will decide whose works are classics for the ages. I sincerely doubt Mailer, Vidal, or even Capote, will make the cut. There are so many great American novels, I think it’s impossible for America to decide on just one. We are too big and sprawling for that, and so is our literature.
For my money, some of the best books I ever read were considered genre works (mysteries, science fiction), therefore no worthy in some eyes for the classification of “literature”. I disagree, but as I said, history and society will decide.
Johnny, you asked, “Which books did you read by Mailer, Vidal, and Capote? Why didn’t you like them?”
Capote’s “In Cold Blood” is well- written, but there’s far too much of the author injected into the story. He tries too hard to be clever. There’s one bit I recall, where he’s talking about a character’s build and then goes into describing the incongruity of his feet- suggesting they’re fit for dancing shoes or something. And that was just weird, it was forcible-quirkiness, a bit of “look how smart I am” from the author. And the book is just full of that sort of thing. Perhaps it’s just that I do not like the writer’s voice, but I found it offputting. He never let me forget him while I was reading. Futhermore, he goes out of his way to try to empathize with the murderers. I was left feeling annoyed with Capote, and rather disgusted with myself for having finished the book.
I read Gore Vidal’s Lincoln about twenty years ago, so my recollections aren’t fresh. But I recall thinking that the book just wasn’t that impressive. He’d taken this fascinating historical character, and somehow, rendered him, and the times he lived in… boring. The book had a gossipy sort of feel to it, but not in a good way. It focuses too much on the mundane, and brings too little gravitas to the most serious events of Lincoln’s life. I can’t say I hated the book, but I found it disappointing.
As for Mailer, the kindest thing would be for someone to collect every single copy of “Ancient Evenings” and pulp them for yard mulch. That book is just vile; a long slow, slog through Mailer’s sick fascination with rape and violence. The man can put words together beautifully, but what he does with them is embarrassing. Even aside from the sexual violence, the more disturbing thing is the juvenile, puerile focus on body parts and body odors. The man waxes positively lyrical about farts and belches. Reading AE made me literally ashamed for Norman Mailer; even if a man entertains such ideas privately, I have to wonder what sort of person releases them out into the world publicly.
These three, as much as any other writers or artists, exemplify the fact that Western civilization hit a nadir prior to the turn of the century.
One writer that is overlooked today, who came 20 years earlier but overlaps with the World War II generation, is James Gould Cozzens. His Conservative values have caused him to go out of vogue, I suspect, but he wrote GUARD OF HONOR (1948) which received the Pulitzer–and the 1957, BY LOVE POSSESSED I think was considered for a Nobel, which he said he would not accept if it were offered. So it was not offered.
From a literary standpoint, Cozzens outshines all these and others mentioned in the comments here. His work was hated by John Updike and Irving Howe who did their best to remove him from the literary scene. Too bad. It is our loss.
Talk about serendipity! Thanks for answering my question about Cozzens. Nothing is more spiteful than contemporary lit infighting. Norman Podheretz was certainly right when he titled one of his collections of essays “The Bloody Crosroads – Where Literature and Politics Meet.”
If we’re auditioning candidates for the “Great American Novel” (and I assume we mean post-World War II) then how about a hand for “Deliverance?” James Dickey just nailed it with a power, lyricism and insight that seemed beyond Mailer, Vidal and Capote.
My #2 spot would be Tom Wolfe’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities.” Has there ever been a book that more richly captured the feel and desparation of the legal process as “Bonfire?”
Since we are on the subject, how about a word for James Gould Cozzens and “The Just and the Unjust” or “Guard of Honor?” Cozzens had a huge reputation in the late fifties and early sixties and then it suddenly collapsed. I’ve never been quite sure why.
Larry McMurty- Lonesome Dove.
Vidal had an unfortunate personality, but his “Lincoln” is a fine piece of work.
Vidal, Mailer, and Capote were power groupies. What little I know about them suggests they liked authoritarian belief systems or belief systems with a high content of deductive reasoning elements. Such folk feel that those who disagree are blasphemers, especially when the disagreement is hard to cope with. Why wouldn’t they be fascinated with murderers, who are a step beyond them?
Literary experiment: Read, if you can find it, The Left in Europe, by Caute. It also is full of lovely pictures of the famous Progressives. Then next read All Quiet on the Western Front, by Remarque. The characters are political summaries. The 1930s movie is a significant improvement.
All of you are trying to describe the impossible, because the Great Novel is only in the eyes of each individual reader and only at a particular time.
Each reader is a fickle variation, and is beholden (forgive me!) to that author on the table right then.
The sum of the preference(s) of all of these eyes simply isn’t reachable.
So, I guess that the only tangible measure of “greatness” is the number of editions of published copies or dollar revenue?
No. There will be intellectual howls of protest at the gasping mere mention of crass popularity.
See where I’m going? The subject here is all so very circular, ain’t it?
American Novels I have read in the last few years that I considered exceptional:
“Underworld” Don Delillo
“Shadow Country” Peter Mathiessen
“Blood Meridian” Cormac McCarthy
“Adventures Of Augie March” Saul Bellow
My vote goes for Andersonville, by MacKinlay Kantor (b.1904), which in the course of depicting the diverse inmates, captors, and neighbors of a Confederate prisoner or war camp with great empathy truly draws a picture of America and the American soul. If you want to know why Kantor was able to write such a book, and the three figures described in this article never could, just read Kantor’s biography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacKinlay_Kantor . Kantor did not observe America from a literary salon, or visit among its people on a few occasions – he really lived it, on farms, in police cars, troopships, bomber turrets, and the liberation of Buchenwald.
If you haven’t read Andersonville, please do so. It really is the Great American Novel.
I failed to mention:
“All the Kings Men” Robert Penn Warren
“The Sound And The Fury” William Faulkner
Anyone else here like Joyce Carol Oates? Anyone-???
Well. Anyway….Maybe instead of a GAN we need FIVE GANs : One for the southeast (GWTW?) , One for the northeast, one for the midwest, one for the west-pacific coast , and one for the pacific coast.
Who was it again who said the three most depressing words in the English Language was Joyce Carol Oates? Was that Vidal? Hmmm…I confess I couldn’t finish “them” or whatever it was called. She’s a great writer…for a woman. Sorry, there it is.
In all this discussion I kept waiting for someone to mention John Steinbeck. Has he really fallen this far out of favor?
Perhaps this writer does not fit the criteria above, but I’m surprised that no one has mentioned Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian”.
One of the greatest novels ever written on the nature and horror of war.
My apologies, missed “bkjazfan’s” inclusion of Blood Meridian in his post.
Mailer, Vidal and Capote are most remembered not for their fiction but for their non-fiction. When it comes to non-fiction William Manchester eclipsed the lot of them.
My beef is with those who put “the Steps of the Pentagon” in the non-fictoin (or history!) section. No other reporter saw what Mailer claimed to have seen.
Perhaps Mailer was a great fiction writer, only his fiction is on the wrong shelf.
The surprising thing about Capote is how big his reputation is despite how little he actually wrote. If you look at his bibliography, he produced six novels including “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” — and two of those novels were published after he died; about two dozen short stories; a couple of nonfiction books; a couple of screenplays . . . and that’s it, in a writing career that spanned four decades.
Contrast Mailer, who cranked out a dozen novels, a dozen nonfiction books, and a ton of essays and short works. Or Updike, who published 29 novels, a dozen books’ worth of short stories, a dozen volumes of poetry, and tons of nonfiction pieces and essays. Or even the notoriously slow-working Tom Wolfe, who has still managed to publish as many novels as Capote did while alive (and big bastards they are, too), and a dozen volumes of shorter pieces.
Truman Capote was basically a one-hit wonder, or charitably a two-hit wonder, who leveraged his literary success into a career as a “celebrity” in the same way Paris Hilton did with her sex video. (The similarities between Truman and Paris are quite striking.)
Vidal is, I think, an essayist, not a novelist.
However, his Lincoln book almost comes to life. I believe he truly came to love his subject, someone who was also greatly alienated from all around him.
i agree they all intellects..but does that make them entertaining?
shouldnt a grEAT novel entertain?
how many of these novels have you read more than once?
like a great movie you see over and over.
i agree they strived for Profound novels..rahter than great novels.
did Dickens entertain?..or did he write for the iluminati?
the great american novel…what utter egomaniacal crap
A GREAT novelis irrespective of borders
A House for Mr. Biswas is very, very good.
‘Shompo! Lompo! Gomp!’