NP:Greatest Dead Novelist

[David Casseres]

Homer, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Moby-Dick match all five
criteria.  For me, Ulysses meets 3 before it meets any of the others.
Maybe because I didn't go to grad school.

On 9/15/06, kelber at mindspring.com <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> We all have our own criteria for what makes a novel great.  For me, for a novel to be among the greatest, it has to:
>
> 1. Be intellectually thought-provoking.
> 2. Cause me to stop reading now and then to drift into emotional reveries.
> 3.  Be enjoyable to read, i.e it shouldn't feel like a chore or a duty to get through it.
> 4.  Have memorable characters.
> 5.  Have humor.
>
> Gravity's Rainbow and Brothers Karamazov fulfill all of these for me.
>
> Canterbury Tales misses 1 and 2.  Ulysses misses 3.
>
> Laura
>
> -----Original Message-----
> >From: mikebailey at speakeasy.net
> >Sent: Sep 15, 2006 2:47 AM
> >To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> >Subject: NP:Greatest Dead Novelist
>
> >
> >Do I become a lightweight if I see them as a sweet spot of 20th century lit, humanistic but not nihilistic, not fanatic, usually not terribly depressing, and full of humour, imaginative but not intrusively experimental?  Smooth like a good scotch.
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