Best American novel of the last one hundred years

[Buckmulligan]

This topic may have been used before in some shape or form but I'm really looking for some good literature and suggestions.

[shadow.]

i think that a very good argument could be made for a lot of stuff.

gatsby might be the "conventional wisdom" #1.

naturally, a lot of people will say catcher in the rye, but i think that it's over-rated.

stenibeck sucks, but a lot of people like him for whatever reason.

my personal favorite is sound and the fury.

hemingway is...good...but be careful with him.

check out all of john fante's stuff.

bukowski is great, but definetly not "greatest" material. he's a fantastic writer and has a unique voice and while i think that he will always appeal to many, he doesn't have that same timelessness that people like faulkner have. (i note that i'm opening myself to huge internerd flame wars here, but i'm not going to bother.)

robert penn warren is fantastic, although a bit long-winded.

thomas pynchon! just read gravity's rainbow. heh.

burroughs is fantastic, but not "best".

saryoan is great, but i am unsure whether to classify him as american.

thomas wolfe is also quite good, but he suffers from the same afflications that beset penn warren.

oh, how can i forget keroac? a lot of people will [censored] on him, but they're just hipsters.

anyway, i suggest reading all of keroac, bukowksi, fante, and faulkner. faulkner might seem a bit odd in that group, but whatever.

[Buckmulligan]

shadow-

I really like Wolfe and I also like Sound and the fury.

[Terry Tidy]

Catch 22

[bisonbison]

Catch 22

[tbach24]

gatsby was garbage

one flew over ftw!

[stabn]

The brothers k.

[chadplusplus]

No one mentions Atlas Shrugged? I've never previously had a book capture my attention span like that one. 'course, could just be my particular views on life.

Prior to reading that one, Catch-22 and One Flew Over... were at the top of my list.

Can anyone make a case for any of Vonnegut's novels?

[guids]

The DaVinci Code.

[zenfurni]

Shadow had a lot of good ideas -- in particular, "Gatsby" and Hemingway's "Rising Sun."

A couple of newer ones I would suggest you take a look at - Don DeLillo's "White Noise," which offers a pretty trenchant look at modern society (the details of which unfortunately sound a little dated). Also, read something by Philip Roth... I'm not sure if "American Pastoral" is his best, but I liked it.