Great Novels In English: Are There Any?

[zoomy]

Well, name them.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Well, name them.

#19 (page 2).

[amateur51]

Well, name them.

Ferney did, months ago, in msg #19

You're not Mandryka returned are you, zoomy?

Oops sorry ferney, cross-posted

[zoomy]

Oh for god's sake ...

Tristram Shandy, Tom Jones, Joseph Andrews, Austen, Wuthering Heights, Dickens, Middlemarch, Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, The Scarlet Letter, Hardy, The Rainbow, Sons and Lovers, Women in Love, Joyce, Woolf, Under Western Eyes, The Secret Agent, A Passage to India, The Sound and the Fury, The Great Gatsby, Chandler, The Sea, The Sea, The Black Prince, The Magic Toyshop, Nights at the Circus, Midnight's Children, Beloved, Money, London Fields, Chatterton, Sexing the Cherry, Art and Lies, Larry's Party, The Stone Diaries, Mao II, Underworld, Hotel World, Pratchett, Darkmans ...

... do not measure up to Dostoevsky, Gogol, Flaubert, Tolstoy et al. With the possible exception of Fitzgerald and his beautifully written Gatsby, they might be good, but they are not great.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

do not measure up to Dostoevsky, Gogol, Flaubert, Tolstoy et al. With the possible exception of Fitzgerald and his beautifully written Gatsby, they might be good, but they are not great.

Prove it. How, for example is Taras Bulba a "greater" novel than Darkmans or Underworld?

[zoomy]

If you seriously believe that the writers on your list are better the writers on mine - then we should simply agree to disagree.

[Nick Armstrong]

Oh for god's sake ...

they might be good, but they are not great.

Here we go again...

[amateur51]

Oh for god's sake ...

Tristram Shandy, Tom Jones, Joseph Andrews, Austen, Wuthering Heights, Dickens, Middlemarch, Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, The Scarlet Letter, Hardy, The Rainbow, Sons and Lovers, Women in Love, Joyce, Woolf, Under Western Eyes, The Secret Agent, A Passage to India, The Sound and the Fury, The Great Gatsby, Chandler, The Sea, The Sea, The Black Prince, The Magic Toyshop, Nights at the Circus, Midnight's Children, Beloved, Money, London Fields, Chatterton, Sexing the Cherry, Art and Lies, Larry's Party, The Stone Diaries, Mao II, Underworld, Hotel World, Pratchett, Darkmans ...

... do not measure up to Dostoevsky, Gogol, Flaubert, Tolstoy et al. With the possible exception of Fitzgerald and his beautifully written Gatsby, they might be good, but they are not great.

This the first glimmerings of an opinion, not as yet backed up by corroborative evidence.

We'll need that and some definition of 'great fiction' before we can proceed, I feel.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

If you seriously believe that the writers on your list are better [than] the writers on mine - then we should simply agree to disagree.

Where on earth did you read this? I "seriously believe" that the writers and works on my list have produced/are "great novels in English" - and worthy of comparison with the very best that he rest of the world has produced. No more, no less. To suggest that Darkmans is a greater novel than Taras Bulba is as futile as the suggestion that Taras Bulba is greater than Darkmans - only a slovenly reader of texts would make such a suggestion.

[Dave2002]

How does one ascribe the attribute of "greatness" to any work of art? Indeed, what does it mean to be great?

Can we say that Beethoven's 9th is greater than Bach's D minor harpsichord concerto, or Schoenberg's Gurrelieder or Webern's Five pieces for orchestra?

Can we say that Picasso was a greater artist than Breughel or Vermeer?

In the end it may be simply a matter of collective opinion, perhaps, and some comparisons don't make sense at all. Within genres comparisons may be difficult, and surely across genres it becomes harder. Mozart compared with Shakespeare or Rembrandt, for example.

[Pabmusic]

How does one ascribe the attribute of "greatness" to any work of art? Indeed, what does it mean to be great?

Can we say that Beethoven's 9th is greater than Bach's D minor harpsichord concerto, or Schoenberg's Gurrelieder or Webern's Five pieces for orchestra?

Can we say that Picasso was a greater artist than Breughel or Vermeer?

In the end it may be simply a matter of collective opinion, perhaps, and some comparisons don't make sense at all. Within genres comparisons may be difficult, and surely across genres it becomes harder. Mozart compared with Shakespeare or Rembrandt, for example.

How I agree. It's fun to talk about why I like one novel (or writer) more than another, and it means very little. But a thread title such as this one has is utterly meaningless unless "great" is defined for this particular context.

[Sir Velo]

I think what zoomy and mandryka (alter egos peut-etre?) condemn in the English novel is its tendency to become a "loose baggy monster" (James). This epithet, of course, was strictly applied to a certain type of formless novel, seemingly without a controlling artistic hand at the tiller. It should be acknowledged that James' description was applied not only to English novelists (in particular Thackeray) but also Dumas and Tolstoy. Of course, this reaction overlooks such obviously intricately woven novelistic achievements as Woolf's Mrs Dalloway; Joyce's Portrait of the Artist; Conrad's Nostromo(a French novel in English, surely, if ever there were one?) and The Secret Agent; Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49; Burgess' A Clockwork Orange; Wuthering Heights; Wells' The Invisible Man; Ford's The Good Soldier; Melville's Moby Dick; Heller's Catch 22; Lawrence's Sons and Lovers; Lowry's Under the Volcano;.... [That's enough novels - Ed.]

[Dave2002]

How I agree. It's fun to talk about why I like one novel (or writer) more than another, and it means very little. But a thread title such as this one has is utterly meaningless unless "great" is defined for this particular context.

I could go further - compare any of the previously mentioned artists with Messi or Wayne Rooney. Why not?

[Pabmusic]

I could go further - compare any of the previously mentioned artists with Messi or Wayne Rooney. Why not?

Wow! What an idea! There's no-one quite like Rooney! [Rooney = Mickey = Spillane = ?]

[french frank]

A novel is its own thing: it may be (self-evidently) good or (self-evidently) bad for various reasons; you may enjoy it or find it boring.

Certain works, like War and Peace or A la recherche du temps perdu have become, if you like, 'icons'. But that also does not not quantify their greatness as against each other or other works. The notion that other works would be just as well-known if they were 'great' novels is nonsense.

In what sense is Balzac greater than Dickens? Or Dickens greater than Gissing? Having studied literature for decades, I can't say that that was ever a consideration that arose. There's usually some kind of mundane practical reason for these 'Best Novels' 'Greatest Poets' competitions: sales, publicity &c.