best american literature

Illustration by Wojtek Kozak, www.wkozak.com

Marianne Wiggins, author most recently of Evidence of Things Unseen and The Shadow Catcher and professor at USC, recently compiled a list of the best American Literature.  She made the list at the request of an attendee at one of her recent public lectures with the caveat that while she wouldn’t take any work off the list, there are certainly some works that she would add with more thought.  Here are the books that she advocates are the best in our history:

• James Agee – A Death in the Family
• Louisa May Alcott – Little Women
• Sherwood Anderson – Winesburg, Ohio
• Willa Cather – The Song of the Lark
• Truman Capote – In Cold Blood
• Raymond Carver – Collected Stories
• Stephen Crane – The Red Badge of Courage
• EL Doctorow – Ragtime and The Book of Daniel
• Ralph Ellison – The Invisible Man (Agree?  Vote for The Invisible Man to win the Best National Book Awards Fiction)
• Ernest  Hemingway- Men Without Women, In Our Time, and A Moveable Feast
• Henry James – What Maise Knew
• Denis Johnson – Jesus’ Son
• William Kennedy – The Albany Series (Ironweed)
• Elmore Leonard – Get Shorty
• Cormac McCarthy – The Cities of the Plain Trilogy, Blood Meridian, No Country for Old Men, The Road
• Herman Melville – Moby Dick and The Confidence Man
• Joyce Carol Oates – Collected Stories
• Flannery O’Connor – Collected Stories (another one of the six finalists for the Best of the National Book Awards Fiction)
• John O’Hara – Collected Stories
• Annie Proulx – The Shipping News
• JD Salinger – Nine Stories
• Gertrude Stein – The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
• John Steinbeck – The Grapes of Wrath and Travels with Charlie
• Mark Twain – Collected Works
• John Updike – The “Rabbit” Works
• Tobias Wolfe – Collected Stories

Although she didn’t list Phillip Roth, I have heard her describe Roth and McCarthy as the best living American writers.  Regarding Roth, she recommended reading The Counterlife, American Pastoral and then everything he wrote after American Pastoral.

I find her list interesting, especially the works she did and didn’t pick for Cather, James, Hemingway and Steinbeck.   I would have assumed From Whom the Bell Tolls for Hemingway, but I’ve never read In Our Time. Now, I’m curious about In Our Time and otherwise wouldn’t have given it a thought.

I noticed that Edith Wharton isn’t on the list, and maybe Prof. Wiggins didn’t think of her; the next time I see her, that’s the author I’m going to ask about.  Which books would you add to the list?