Ernest Hemingway, W. G. Sebald, William Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy
The same suggester also offered support for following existing candidates:
Dickens, O'Neill, T. S. Eliot
Regarding the James Fenimore Cooper question, this is what the Cambridge Guide to English Literature, 1983 edition, has to say:
Cooper's great fame was deserved and his best work deserves its classic status; this in spite of considerable faults in structure and character drawing. When he was not dealing with frontiersmen or seamen he failed to give life to his characters and he did not begin to overcome this fault until the last trilogy [the Littlepage Manuscripts: Satanstoe, The Chainbearer, and The Redskins (1845-46), which concern "contemporary life in New York State"]. But his readers were fascinated by the redskins and palefaces and the romance of frontier life; that was what mattered and the reason why, probably, he has remained a favourite with younger readers, to whom conventional adults are always made of wood in any case. But as a celebration of the westward move of America the five novels of the Leather-Stocking Tales have no rival and Cooper's sea stories earned the praise of Herman Melville. The last trilogy, the first family chronicle in the American novel, deserves to be better known.
I'm not sure that this explanation helps iron out my indecisiveness, but it does make me wonder exactly which sort of wood I'm made of and whether we should add Melville to our list of possibilities.
Okay: I'm smacking this tennis ball back to you now.
5 comments:
I'd be glad to tackle Faulkner, but does that exclude our younger readers? Cooper probably deserves attention. He did create some of the first "super heros".
I like the Melville idea; I've never read "Moby Dick," and I've been meaning to do so some time soon.
Sure, I'll do Moby dick as perhaps I am now old enough to appreciate it more. Thanks for "messin'" with this????
Melville would be great...though I was kinda into Cooper.
I had this idea that we all nominate a book and then Dawn would write the name of each nominee to a tin can or whatever it is that goats eat and then whichever tin can her goat ate first would be the book we read.
But I would read Moby Dick again, too. But if we do the goat thing I would nominate Great Expectations.
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