Aaah, but best is subjective. Many people will argue that Hermann Melville (Moby Dick) is the greatest American author and the Moby Dick is the greatest piece of American Literature, ever. However, I would beg to differ. In my opinion, his writing is awful and Moby Dick was incredibly booooooooooooring!

You cannot ask for the best without getting as many different opinions as there are people who read.

Me, I would choose Steinbeck. And Harper Lee.

Thats quite a tough one to answer without having read and studied American literature.

So im gonna annoy you even more and say Charles Dickens! haha

I'd have to select Fitzgerald's Gatsby as the best American novel, but would also rate Steinbecks Grapes of Wrath, Melville's Moby Dick, Hemingways The Sun also Rises, Pnychon's Gravity's Rainbow, Frank Norris' The Octopus, Capote's In Cold Blood, John Cheever's Falconer, and Dom deLillo's Underworld as worthy competition.

DeLillo is certainly, in my opinion, the finest still breathing american novelist.


With regard to poets, none surpass Whitman. Though i would highly recommend people revisit Ezra Pound. Putting his politics aside, few if any American writers have had as profound an influence on their contemporaries. Yeats, Eliot, Williams, Frost, Dolittle, Lawrence,(and the list goes on and on) all at one point in their lives openly admitted a debt to Pound and his unfailing ear.

YEATS, Forever William Butler Yeats.

Sorry again Mitch!!!

Stephen King has never pretended to be anything more than he is, and to quote King himself -"I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries."

Though I'm not exactly sure what to you qualifies as "real literature", I've enjoyed King's non-genre works as much as his horror novels- All of Different Seasons, The Green Mile, Roadworks. I read King for entertainment, and whatever genre he's writing in, it works for me.

I agree, I think to discuss literature you have to have a working definition of what it is. I'm not sure I'd put King into a "classic" literature kind of category, however, he is inarguably one of the best in his genre, if not the best.

Literary equivalent of a Big Mac, that's funny

I liked Frank Herbert...Dune was really good. Nathaniel Hawthorne had some cool old school novels. Herman Melville even though I only read moby dick it was really good. Michael Crichton and Robert Jordan and I guess that's all I can 'member 4 now.

Oh... almost forgot Hubert Selby Jr.

Henry Miller

John Steinbeck
His brilliant vignettes transform the mundane and his insight into the female psyche is unbelieveable

See Mark David Chapman for starters..... It has an appeal to the disaffected youth of America. In fact it is possibly a touchstone for a shift in the attitude of youth, and not necessarily a good one.

Another writer who, I think, writes female characters unbelievably well is Wally Lamb.

...Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Upton Sinclair, Ralph Ellison, Harriet Beecher-Stowe, Carson McCullers, Willa Cather...

Was more taking issue with the back handed slap at me, it was anything but nice.







And the same has been said of Tropic of Cancer(Miller), Naked Lunch(Burroughs), On the Road(Kerouac), Howl(Ginsberg), American Psycho(Ellis)...etc...

I meant no disrespect to you. I am truly sorry. Many brilliant people love Catcher. It is just that book Chapman was carrying around in his pocket. That speaks volumes to me... If it was any random book I would not be singling it out, but Catcher has always come under that type of scrutiny.

Could also equally be said...If a book has that ability to so strongly affect with such sway, it bodes that it is a testament to how powerful a book it really is.

There is no denying its power and greatness. I said that at the outset or rather I said "brilliant and important."

Take the Bible as another example of a book which has power and greatness(Though not to me!), yet is poorly written.