What is The Great American Novel?

I just started reading this for the first time. Steinbeck started every chapter of Of Mice and Men with a vivid visual of the stage before characters appear. The first chapter of this one is the same, but the stage is the character. The land become hostile and threatens its inhabitants. I’m eager to keep reading. I mean the title alone is ominous. This isn’t going to end well.

What is the Great American novel? Is it this? Another?

I nominate:

>Of Mice and Men
>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Discuss.

Moby Dick

I was forced to do my fucking term paper in junior year of high school on that book. Fuck that book.

Fucking commie.

>I mean the title alone is ominous.
That novel has the greatest title drop in all of literature, so look forward to that.

>The great american novel

I hereby present to you, the Greatest American Novel

>>Of Mice and Men
>>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
>Best American Novel
Incredible

Steinbeck is a fine choice faggot

This is the answer though.

>Steinbeck is a fine choice faggot
1-No
2-That's not even his best book

I nominate Catch-22

I think first and foremost the Great American novel has to be American more than it has to be great, which is why I'd say Gatsby even though I'm not a fan.

>Anything but Moby Dick
It's not even close desu

>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Grapes of Wrath is weak. It wasn’t an accurate reflection of what the Dustbowl actually was. If you are talking about strinbecks greatest, it would be East of Eden.

But the true Great American Novel is Moby-Dick; or The Whale by Herman Melville.

Serious question, why is The Great Gatsby never mentioned here?

Can't speak for the other anons, but I have never read it and I don't offer any opinions on works I haven't read yet.

It's too mainstream for my tastes.

Because it's traditionally assigned as high school reading and litfags are too fucking pretentious to admit that one of the greatest American novels of all time is assigned reading in pleb-tier education.

I mean, it's good if you like rich people problems. I know you Euros only like reading and imagining yourselves as kings and queens and pompous pricks.

America's conscience is more in tune with folklore.

What do you mean? Litfags admit to loving shitty assigned high school books like Metamorphosis on here all the time.

The Dick is the only choice

neither of those.

its huck finn or moby dick

Who assigns metamorpheses? get out of here mario

Sometimes A Great Notion or Mason & Dixon

I was, so I assume plenty of others were as well.

I'm not sure a great American novel can exist. Most states or regions might be able to produce a great work but I'm not sure America as a whole could.

I'd say Twain transcends regions better than anyone else if that's the criteria you want to go by. Not the most refined choice, but we're not exactly the most refined country.

I think now is the perfect time for the great American novel since Americans, meaning whites, the people who created and built America and read more than anyone else, are for arguably the first time facing a crisis in which they're going to have to redefine or define for the first time who they are in opposition to the flawed notion that anyone from any third world corner of the planet can be transplanted into their neighborhoods, pass a test, and magically become them.

moby dick is the "great American novel", but whitman's Leaves of Grass epitomizes American spirit and foundation.

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail is probably a better pick for HST. Love all his work though, at least the earlier stuff. Surprised he doesn't get his due here; the man's got prose.

This. The dustbowl is literally like the European migration crisis. It was engineered by the government to turn California Democrat. All of the Okies were economic migrants.

Huck Finn