great American novel

[Mr Haney]

robinlandseadel> > "Me too I ate one sour too. . . ."> [old Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers by way of Blondie]. 
Blondie?  Dagwood & Blondie or Heart of Glass Blondie?
 
That was one of the all time great FFB episodes, anyway.
(though there are so many, like the one where Fat Freddy
sez to the librarian, "In the name of the revolution, I hereby
liberate all the fuck books in this library", or the one where
Freewheelin' Franklin in Mexico encounters a stop sign, which
reads "alto", and knowing that "alto" means "high" figures it
means he is supposed to get high...or the one where also in Mexico
they meet Don Longjuan...or the one where Phineas dreams up the
funniest idea for a comic strip...I could go on and on...)> > And please allow me to start an argument by saying > that Mason & Dixon is probably the greatest of them all.> 
Mark Kohut wrote:
don't 'member them all, but he had GR and M&D (maybe half a stride behind, I think he wrote)
Gatsby............All the King's Men..............Slaughter-House Five......................Sun Also Rises
one Bellow?.........maybe a Roth?............Sound & the Fury..........................Moby D......
Scarlet Letter?.........................Huck Finn............................
 
 
I figure nobody will notice this comment, way down under everything,
but I'd pick Tom Sawyer over Huck Finn.  I think the contrasts and symbolism
in Huck Finn are too simplistic, and the evocation of character and life is
stronger, more vivid, and more enjoyable in TS.  So what if it reads like a kid's book?
 
I was also going to choose
the Heller book after Something Happened but before Good as Gold...just
to be different...obviously...but Catch-22 was awfully good...
 
I know we're not doing desert island lists, but given a chance to say
teach a survey class, I'd want to use --
 
Tom Sawyer, Desolation Angels, unknown Heller book (or maybe just Catch-22)
GR (actually, to my mind, _Vineland_, to be perfectly honest, if I can only have
one Pynchon), One of the Henry Miller trilogies,  Joyce Carol Oates _Foxfire_,
_Song of Solomon_ (Toni Morrison's), a Gaddis, a Barth (leaning toward Sot-Weed),
and maybe good old Moby Dick or else a Hawthorne, or else um, a Henry James...  
hopefully some students would be up for extra credit and want to do sf & detective also...
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