How could Huck Finn not top any list of Great American Novels?

Thomas Hart Benton's depiction of Huck and Jim

Thomas Hart Benton’s depiction of Huck and Jim

A piece in The Washington Post this morning on the new book about living next door to Harper Lee mentions the status of To Kill A Mockingbird as a, if not the, Great American Novel — and casually links to a list.

The list isn’t explained. I don’t know who compiled it, or what the criteria may have been.

But of course I’m drawn in. The list extends to 358 books (which requires straining the definition of “great”), but let’s just examine the top ten:

  1. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  2. To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
  3. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
  4. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
  5. The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
  6. East of Eden, by John Steinbeck
  7. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
  8. Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
  9. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
  10. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck

OK, first, it’s just not right for Steinbeck to get three out of the 10. Especially since — confession time — I’ve never read the first two. The Grapes of Wrath is one of those novels I’ve meant to read for most of my life, and I will (my wife finds it utterly incredible I still haven’t). East of Eden, not so much.

And, to confess further, despite having started it again to great fanfare, I’ve still never finished Moby Dick. It just seems to start to drag after they go to sea. (Yeah, I know that’s pretty early in the book.) Which is weird, because that’s when seafaring tales generally get good.

I think all the other works are deserving of the top ten, although I might move up some of my faves from the second ten (On the Road, The Sun Also Rises, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Fahrenheit 451).

But my main beef is this: How could any list of the Greatest American Novels not start with Huckleberry Finn? Hemingway famously said, ““All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.” And I agree, except that I would delete the word, “modern.” It’s superfluous. All American literature, period.

It’s THE American novel. It’s episodic, picaresque structure is quintessentially American. Huck Finn, the freest character in literature, untainted by the history or culture of the Old World, couldn’t be more American. Huck can be anyone he wants to be, and slides in and out of identities throughout. And the central conflict in the novel is about the deepest, most profound issue of our history — in the sense that it has a central theme. Remember the author’s warning:

PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

Which is a very American sort of warning — notice in no uncertain terms that pretension will not be tolerated.

Even the novel’s weaknesses are very American. Such as the uneven tone — starting out with farcical comedy that is an extension of Tom Sawyer, moving to tragedy with the Graingerfords and other incidents, the slapstick and menace of the Duke and the Dauphin, and ending with the broad comedy of Tom’s insistence on throwing flourishes from literature into Jim’s escape from the Phelps farm — itself a deadly serious matter, which nearly leads to Tom’s death, and does result in Jim’s recapture (as a result of his own selflessness).

Sorry, that was a confusing sentence. But you see what I mean. The novel was no more constrained by a particular tone than life itself. Very free, very American. And certainly great.

OK, off the top of my head, my own list:

  1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
  2. To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
  3. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
  4. On the Road, by Jack Kerouac
  5. The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
  6. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey
  7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
  8. All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren
  9. The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane
  10. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller

Some runner-ups:

  • The Chosen, by Chaim Potok
  • Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes
  • City Boy, by Herman Wouk
  • The Natural, by Bernard Malamud
  • A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, by Mark Twain
  • Goodbye, Columbus, by Philip Roth
  • The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper
  • The Godfather, by Mario Puzo
  • God’s Little Acre, by Erskine Caldwell
  • Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein

Better stop there, as my quality was slipping a bit at the end there (Heinlein is fun, but is it literature?).

I’ll come back and explain those choices a bit another day. Gotta run now…

55 thoughts on “How could Huck Finn not top any list of Great American Novels?”

  1. Doug Ross

    Including The Fountainhead (which I just finished reading for the third time) and not Atlas Shrugged is simply bizarre. I am pleased to see five John Irving books on the list.

    There are plenty of books on the list that are considered “great” by a very small group of people… but that few people ever read or only do so because they are forced to by English teachers following the same old script. “A Confederacy of Dunces” falls into that category. That book only became famous because the author committed suicide.

    1. Silence

      Atlas Shrugged is a better read than The Fountainhead.
      Confederacy of Dunces was a great read, but not one I was ever assigned in school.
      Heinlein is literature, as much as anything else on this list is.

      1. Doug Ross

        Dunces has shown up more recently on high school reading lists. I found it weird and boring.

  2. Kathryn Braun Fenner

    One female author out of twenty? Zero nonwhites?

    What are your criteria for judging the greatness of a novel?

    1. Brad Warthen Post author

      Well, demographics don’t enter into it at all. Which is why the list is bound to fail a test such as yours. I made no attempt to put any book on the list BECAUSE of the author’s demographic group.

      As for only one woman — my two other favorite novels by women don’t qualify for this list. Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights. Not very American…

      My favorite American book by a nonwhite author is The Autobiography of Malcolm X. But that’s not a novel…

      1. Brad Warthen Post author

        By the way, I just looked at the original list. The first nonwhite author comes in at position 23, and the second woman at position 29.

        So I guess I’m not alone in this…

    2. Brad Warthen Post author

      Do I not get any credit on your scale for five of my authors being Jewish? Probably not.

      But that was just as unintentional as the demographics of the rest of the list…

    3. Brad Warthen Post author

      What WERE my criteria? Not many, beyond it having to be great (a VERY subjective, personal measure; I did not attempt to bow to anyone else’s preferences), American, and a novel.

      By “American,” I mean an American voice telling a quintessentially American story. Probably the weakest on that “quintessentially American story” measure are The Sun Also Rises (about expatriates, both British and American), Flowers for Algernon (essentially a science fiction story, but I think the yearning of the central character to be “smart” like everybody else spoke to a sort of American aspiration) and Fahrenheit 451 (in the film version, a British actress and German actor played the leading parts).

      In those cases, my own personal liking gave them a boost. I love all three of those books.

      The rest fit the criteria VERY well.

    4. Bryan Caskey

      For Kathryn, I’ll give you my top 5 books by an American Female Author: (excluding TKAM, since it’s already up there)

      Gone With the Wind (This comes in at #2, BIG gap down to everything else)
      [GAP]
      The Color Purple (and she’s African-American, so I guess that’s a double-word score)
      Little Women
      The Little House on the Prairie Collection
      The Good Earth

      Funny story about Gone With the Wind. One of the women on my dad’s side of the family is a hospital administrator for the hospital system that’s associated with Emory University near Atlanta. When I was little, we were over visiting, and she was re-reading Gone With the Wind for probably the umpteenth time. After dinner, she left to do some reading while the rest of the family stayed around the dining table to talk. Some of the other people visiting were from up north, and at one point, they called to her in the next room, to ask her if she could put some more coffee on for them. Her reply was, You Yankees can get your own damn coffee!

      1. Mark Stewart

        Ethan Frome / The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
        The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Carson McCullers
        Beloved – Toni Morrison
        Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriett Beecher Stowe

        1. Kathryn Braun Fenner

          My Antonia by Willa Cather
          The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
          The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty
          Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
          The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
          Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
          …….many of these won Pulitzers or National Book Awards

      2. Silence

        Top books by women authors (authoresses):
        “How to Make Money” – Robin Banks
        “Ghosts” – Sue Pernatural
        “The Yellow River” – I.P. Freeley
        “After the Feast” – Kay O’Pectate
        “Veterinary Illnesses” – Ann Thrax
        “Moonlight on the Sahara” – I. Rhoda Kamel
        “Colleges of the Empire State” – Cora Nell
        “Fallen Underwear” – Lucy Lastic
        “Modern Circutry” – Ana Log
        “The Wonderful World of Antibiotics” – Penny Cillen
        “Drug Addiction” – Anita Fix

        1. Pat

          Sounds a lot like Car Talk’s lawyers, Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe, and the divorce lawyers across the hall, Ditcher, Quick, and Hyde. 😉

  3. Brad Warthen Post author

    Speaking of Heinlein, did you notice that Stranger didn’t make the list, but at least two other books of his did? I thought that was weird.

    I thought Stranger to be a much more American story than Starship Troopers…

    1. Silence

      Stranger in a Strange Land is hard to read. I don’t think it’s his best work, I think his young adult fiction is the best stuff. The Rolling Stones, Orphans of the Skies, Starship Troopers, that sort of thing.

  4. Bryan Caskey

    No serious objections to your top ten, but mine would be slightly different. I would find a place for the following in my top ten:

    Absalom, Absalom! (Faulkner’s best work, IMO)
    The Great Santini
    The Things They Carried (I would substitute this for The Red Badge of Courage

    All great books listed, though. It’s hard to make a a top ten list of such a broad category. It’s like trying to make a list to top ten baseball players ever. There are more than ten you want to put on there.

  5. Brad Warthen Post author

    By the way, I ended up bumping The Thin Red Line by James Jones from both lists. I initially had it in the also-rans, but realized after posting that I’d left out Catch-22. That had to be addressed. It bumped The Chosen down to the honorable mentions, and bumped Jones off the lists altogether…

  6. Doug Ross

    You realize there are books that have been written in the last 45 years, right?

    The most recently written book on your list of twenty is The Godfather, from 1969… a book I secretly acquired and read when I was about 13 years old in 1974.

    You’ve missed out on so many good books since then. John Irving’s Garp, Meany, Cider House Rules, and Widow For One Year are fantastic. Three of them were written more than 25 years ago.

    1. Bryan Caskey

      There are lots of good books in the last 40-45 years, to be sure. However, it still remains to be seen if they’ll stand the test of time. Therefore, I’m fine for the list to be slanted towards older books.

      Think of it like baseball. You have to be retired for a certain amount of years (I forget how many exactly) before you’re even eligible to be considered.

      1. Doug Ross

        Only 5 years for Hall of Fame… but we already know who’s great while they are being great. Derek Jeter is going to be in the Hall of Fame.

        1. Bryan Caskey

          Yeah, but not everyone is Derek Jeter. And we’re talking about a really exclusive club here, the TOP TEN. Would Jeter be in your list of top ten baseball players?

          1. Doug Ross

            With baseball, all we have to go by is what other people say about players from the old days… I can read a book and decide for myself.

            Babe Ruth is great within the context of the time he played. I am not sure he would be great today. Ruth’s opponents did not include blacks, Latins, Japanese.. nor players who trained year round with the most advanced methods.

            1. Doug Ross

              Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Greg Maddux would make a top 10 list. And they were on the list a couple years before they finished their careers.

            4. Bryan Caskey

              And then they lost the right to be mentioned in the same sentence as great players who did it without cheating. They dishonored themselves and they dishonored the game.

              But your point is well taken. Clemens has seven Cy Youngs, two separate 20K games, and a fierce mentality on the mound reminiscent of Nolan Ryan and Bob Gibson. The Rocket.

              Bonds has seven MVPs, was a 14 time all-star and has 8 gold gloves. I can still remember his throw from left field in the 1992 NLCS. He wasn’t a big guy, but he was a heck of a ballplayer.

              Then, at some point, they both decided that they would cheat. It’s a shame. I would prefer that they had aged gracefully and bowed out as time took their gifts away. I know the counter-argument is that it’s not the “Hall of Saints”, but that’s where I choose to draw my line.

              And I’ll argue with you all day that Ruth was the greatest. Ruth’s HR record fist broken when it took Aaron over 11,000 at bats, followed by Bonds who needed over 9,000. Ruth needed only 8,399 to set it.

              Think about that.

              A combination of extra at bats and PED’s were required to overtake two records that were first set by a ballplayer who can out hit anyone today. And it’s not just what other people say. The one thing about baseball is the continuity. That’s why baseball fans love stats. You can compare players. PEDs kill that, which is why I toss Bonds and Clemens out. They’re DQ’ed – which is a shame.

            5. Doug Ross

              Ruth didn’t face pitching anything close to Aaron and Bonds faced. He didn’t face bullpens bringing out 90+ lefty setup men in the 7th, 8th inning or 100 mph closers. My guess is Ruth would be closer to David Ortiz/Mark McGwire had he played in the modern era.

    2. Brad Warthen Post author

      See, I was worried that the list was TOO recent — that there were too many books published in my lifetime. Too much emphasis on books that were all the rage when I was young. Like with pop music.

      So Doug’s observation makes me feel better. Maybe my list is just right…

    3. Brad Warthen Post author

      And Doug, I tried to read Owen Meany. Only got through the first chapter, and hated it. Same deal with Pat Conroy’s “Prince of Tides.”

      If I read your first chapter, and my main reaction is, “That’s f___ed up,” then I quit reading. Novels that start with something horrendous happening to a central character have to be really awesome for me to keep going. It makes me think, “I’ve got enough stress in MY life…”

      Conroy’s protagonist was SO totally messed up in that first chapter — nothing about his life was going well — that I gave up on him.

  7. Doug Ross

    And look at the ratings for the books that are supposed to be great:

    Gatsby is #1 but doesn’t even get 4 stars out of 5 from 1.7 million ratings! Moby Dick gets a 3.4 average rating. #21 Lonesome Dove gets a 4.4 rating — higher than every book ahead of it. The Red Badge of Courage gets a very average 3.15.

    Doesn’t greatness have to be obvious to most people?

    1. Bryan Caskey

      Well now you’re into the idea of what is a “great” book. Is it a book that is critically acclaimed, or is it a book that is widely read? That gets me thinking: What are the top books that people claim to have read, but actually haven’t? I know that no one here would do such a thing, but I would say the top five books people claim to have read (but actually haven’t) are:

      5. Moby Dick All the chapters about whales are really boring; just get to the action, man!
      4. The Bible Just skipping around isn’t the same thing as reading it from start to finish.
      3. Treasure Island Everyone I know has seen the Disney movie.
      2. Pride and Prejudice I never read this, nor would I claim to. I saw the play, and it didn’t seem like something I would like to read. I think people claim to read this because they want to seem smart, or impress a girl.
      1. Ulysses If anyone tells you they have read this, they are very likely lying to you. If they tell you they really liked it, they’re DEFINITELY lying, or you should be slightly afraid of them. Avoid these people.

      1. Brad Warthen Post author

        Now, you’re just overwhelming me with guilt.

        Main books I know I should read, and fully intend to read, but haven’t yet:

        The Bible — As you say, all the way through. I’ve gotten through Exodus several times, but then the narrative breaks down, and doesn’t carry me along anymore. Seriously, up to then, it’s a story. Then you have to wait a long while before it gets back to story.

        Moby Dick. — Got to finish it. I really like the first chapters, but then it starts to drag. Of course, last time I tried to read it, I got laid off right about the time I perceived that it was dragging, so it may have been me and my circumstances.

        Ulysses — I love Dubliners (“The Dead” may be my all-time fave semi-short story), and appreciated Portrait of the Artist. Gotta read Ulysses. And Finnegan’s Wake.

        Grapes of Wrath — It’s just that it seems like it’s gonna be such a BUMMER, ya know?

        All of those books — mostly history and biography — on my bookshelves that I HAD to have, and members of my family gave me for Christmas or birthday or Father’s Day, and which I just haven’t gotten to.

        Good news is, I’m currently reading TWO of those gift books, and am almost done with one of them — Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies, by Ben Macintyre. I’ll write something about it when I’m done. The other is James Madison, by Richard Brookhiser. I got through the part about the writing of the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers, and then sort of set it aside to concentrate on the spies. Need to get back to it…

    2. Brad Warthen Post author

      “Great” and “popular” are not the same thing. I’m not saying they have to be opposites, but they’re not the same thing.

      If they were, we wouldn’t have discussions like this one. We’d just do a poll, and it would all be settled…

      Frankly, if we went by most popular, romances and self-help books would be the great novels of all time.

      1. Doug Ross

        But if a million people read a book and rate it as average, how can it be great? In what other context can something that most people find to be average be considered great?

        Greatness in literature is more a function of snobbery and self-fulfilling literature curriculum. Great Gatsby is great because, well, my English teacher back in 1979 said it was great.

        1. Doug Ross

          Atlas Shrugged has inspired far more people than Moby Dick ever has or will. That makes it a great book.

          1. Mark Stewart

            I think more people know of Moby Dick. That’s a pretty easy certainty…

            I’m not sure “inspired” has much meaning in this context.

            1. Doug Ross

              “Know of” or read?

              Atlas Shrugged has sold more than 7 million copies… Even today, it’s ranked #1126 on Amazon’s list of top sellers (compared to Moby Dick #32,454).

          2. Brad Warthen Post author

            Inspired them to do what?

            I’m sure that, if I can just finish Moby Dick, I’ll be consumed by the urge to go kill a white whale…

            Seriously, probably the only thing on my list that ever inspired me to do anything was God’s Little Acre, and it’s best we don’t get into that… 😉

  8. Brad Warthen Post author

    You know who I wanted to add, but couldn’t figure out how? Martin Cruz Smith. I think he’s awesome. But what would be his “American” novel? Gorky Park has a compelling American character, but it’s not really an American novel…

    Gorky Park was one of the most amazing, engrossing novels I’ve ever read. But my favorite by him might be the far lesser-known Rose, which began this way:

    ‘The most beautiful women in the world were African. Somali women wrapped in robes suffused with purple, vermillion, pink. Around their necks beads of amber that, rubbed together, emitted electricity and the scent of lemons and honey. Women of the Horn who peered through veils of gold, strands in the shape of tinkling eardrops. They stood veiled in black from head to toe, their longing compressed into kohl-edged eyes. In the Mountains of the Moon, Dinka women, dark and smooth as the darkest smoothest wood, tall and statuesque within beaded corsets that would be cut open only on their wedding nights. And the women of the Gold Coast in golden chains, bells, bracelets, dancing in skirts of golden thread in rooms scented by cinnamon, cardamom, musk.’

    The BEST passage was the very ending, but I won’t give that away…

    1. Brad Warthen Post author

      If Martin Cruz Smith has a flaw, it’s that he uses the same characters over and over. Even when it’s not an Arkady Renko novel, someone plays the Arkady role. Then there are four or five other stock characters who have a certain kind of relationship to the protagonist…

      But I like that familiarity.

  9. Norm Ivey

    The list is a popularity list–the books get bumped up by user votes. You have to sign up for Goodreads to vote, but other than that there’s no qualifications. It only takes 35 votes to make the top 20. So take the list with several grains of salt.

    I’m not going to try to justify my list as great books, these are the top five that have stuck with me (in no particular order):

    Johnny Got His Gun
    Catcher in the Rye
    Hawaii
    The Pigman
    The Giver

    That list would change, I think, if we included short stories. Poe and Bradbury would both show up

  11. scout

    To please Doug and Kathryn, I nominate Barbara Kingsolver – a woman who has written books within the last 45 years. I particularly like Prodigal Summer.

    1. Brad Warthen

      I think my wife has read some of those. I’ve seen that name around the house. But they come and go so quickly. She gets several books from the library each week.

      It’s much easier for her to know what I’m reading. A new book generally takes me weeks, and I read passages aloud, wanting to share. It’s not easy, living with me…

  13. Dave Crockett

    I admit to being terribly under-read (is that even a term?) because I cannot have any distractions when reading (tv, music, Warthen blog or other demands on time) and even in retirement, I find myself constantly distracted. I’m sure no one would call my two favorite books ‘great’ by any definition (I use ‘memorable’ as a criterion) but I enjoyed sci-fi contributions: “Childhood’s End” by Arthur C. Clarke and “The Time Traveler’s Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger.

    I’ve read a bit of non-fiction by journalists like Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Bob Schieffer, Daniel Schorret al. and they were good reads…just not terribly memorable.

  14. Nadesan Permaul

    I don’t disagree with all of your choices, but to place “The Fountainhead” or “Atlas Shrugged” as major pieces of American fiction is at best a stretch. They are certainly important ideological narratives, and in many ways connect to James Fenimore Cooper, the creator of the American Western and all its subsequent permutations. After having taught both “Huckleberry Finn” and “Moby Dick” for 25 years, one can say that of classic American literature they are two powerful reflections of American society; one progressive, one trying to be progressive. As other have noted about “Huck Finn” if Clemens had ended the book before Tom Sawyers return, it would not have returned to the framework of Cooper’s Leatherstocking novels. What makes “Moby Dick” great is that it leaves us a choice, one that Ishmael survived to share with us. 166 years later, those choices still resonate.

    1. Brad Warthen Post author

      I love it when someone comes back to a good discussion years later!

      Here’s hoping someone else takes it up, as this was a conversation that should continue indefinitely.

      Oh, and confession time — more than two years later, I STILL haven’t finished Moby Dick or Grapes of Wrath, although I did make a brave attempt at the latter back in the summer of either ’14 or ’15. Where I stopped, they still haven’t gotten to California. But I can sort of tell this isn’t going to end well. And, you know, I’ve seen clips of Henry Fonda’s big speech at the end…

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