The Greatest Novel of All Time?

Fifty of one hundred writers worldwide said the greatest novel ever written is "Don Quixote of La Mancha." I say "To Kill a Mockingbird." What's yours?

Comments

[Ryan Sholin]

For Whom The Bell Tolls

[Carpenter]

Grapes of Wrath, baby.

[Carpenter]

... and the Bible is a close second.

[Sara]

To Kill A Mockingbird. Clearly.

[Joel]

Huckleberry Finn

[Ruma]

Sorry can't narrow it down to one...10 books kill a mockingbird would be one, oranges are not the only fruit, written on the body, LOTR,God of small things, i coulg go on...

The trouble with being born by E.M. Cioran.

[Don Myers]

Tie between 1984 and Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus

[cruelanimal]

Ulysses by Joyce gets my vote.

[roger]

I believe that would be The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

[bradley scott hunsinger]

ZORBA THE GREEK, nikos kazantzakis. it's like if all the other olympian gods were tryin' to fuck with zeus; they are all goddamn powerful, but ain't no taking on the obvious best. again: ZORBA THE GREEK. changed my life.

that is all.

[joshowitz]

Ubik, by Philip K. Dick, definitely

[Mark]

"Sometimes a Great Notion," by Ken Kesey. It has everything.

[allie mcneil]

I was so sure that I knew Exactly The Best Book...I thought it was To Kill a Mockingbird for sure...but then I saw the list above and realized atleast 10 are up there.....But I have to say that I think Harper Lee still wears the Crown..Trivia: Did she ever write another book????

[timj]

Great Expectations is the closest to perfect of the Dickens novels, and the only one with no clumsiness in the way it draws its female characters. This should mean it's the best novel in the world.

But then there's War and Peace.

Either book will make believers of any book-lovers who tackle them, as long as said tackling has nothing to do with any kind of school.

[juan hughjazz]

tie between "cat in the hat" or "PT-109"

[Gerald Bowman]

Native Son by Richard Wright
Nat Turner's Rebellion by Richard Styron

[cavanaghjam]

Tough to comment when I don't know the definition of "greatest". Stendhal's "The Red and the Black" cast the template for the modern novel; the two big Dostoevsky novels are perhaps the most profound; "1984" the most relevant in a political sense; the "Sirens of Titan" has the best ending. Strange that someone mentioned PKD; "The Man in the High Castle" is nearly perfect, "Flow My Tears..." rips your heart out.

[Kevin Freckman]

I put up "The Brothers Karazamov." I was instantly fascinated with the book and took six months to read it. Sure it's heavy, but I thought it was worth the effort to see one man's attempt (Dostoevsky's -- excuse the spelling) to understand how complicated our relationship to God truly is.

I also would like to mention "And Ladies of the Club" by (I believe) Helen Hoover Santmeyer. I really enjoyed the book and, even though it was eposidic, I thought it did an incredible job of following the changing times in the life of an Ohio town.

[paul]

I have to say Ulysses is not a book... It is a mind f#ck. If you have truly "read" it than it has truly changed your life. Nothing else on paper touches it (that I have read)... That being said the best novel of all time might be Rememberence of Things Past by Marcel Proust (for prose), Zorba The Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis (for sentiment), The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (for fun), Moby Dick by Herman Melville (for adventure)...

[Liam]

Finnegan's wake by joyce.
you will look at this book and either see complete garbage, or you will at least see, this is art.

[Kevin]

"Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace is the most impressive book I've ever read. While I don't want to say it's necessarily my favorite, I've read no other author that I believe would be capable of writing it. So in my mind it has a special distinction. As in everything, it seems that the best of today are, by any metric we can devise, better than the best of yesterday; and David Foster Wallace is the best writer of today.

[Spencer]

Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon is my absolute favorite, but I can't leave out To The Lighthouse, Catch-22, Morrison's Jazz, Ragtime, or Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid On Earth

[Spencer]

Oh, and if you want something published in the last five years that's still going to be here in a century, the best bets are The Blind Assassin, White Teeth, Never Let Me Go, and The Known World.

[Daniel]

The greatest novel ever written? Well, it would be unwise to assume that there is one novel that outranks them all; after all, writing is an art, no matter what some say, and like any arts, there is a plethera of talent- a wide scope of creators since civilization began.

I'd have to say that one cannot simply choose which novel is the best, taking to mind that there are various STYLES, FORMS, and INFLUENCES in each genre, with each writer.

But I'd probably end up saying: the best novel is the one yet written.