NOMINATIONS: ILX Greatest Novels of All Time

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This will be open to any and all novels! For the purposes of making things a little easier, this will only include works that have the traditional novel style, i.e. no Shakespeare plays or The Canterbury Tales.

I'd limit the number of nominations, but honestly there are too many novels to work with, and I'd like to make this open to as many as possible. Let's try to be realistic, though; I'll include Tom Clancy novels on the list of nominees if they're picked, but c'mon guys...

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:06 (twenty years ago)

Actually, this should work more as a thread for discussion than nomination, since the point was raised that people should just vote for whatever they want, without having to choose from a list.

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:08 (twenty years ago)

Emile Zola's Germinal
Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon

― Ian Riese-Moraine has a grenade, that pineapple's not just a toy! (Eastern Mantr, Monday, 25 April 2005 22:11 (twenty years ago)

I would like to mention right away The Master and Margarita, since that was the novel that inspired this poll!

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:13 (twenty years ago)

The Valley of the Dolls is the only novel in the top ten best sellers of all time, so there you go:
http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/bestsellerFARQ.html

― andy --, Monday, 25 April 2005 22:15 (twenty years ago)

Ok, so we're only doing nominal nominations, but I nominate Saul Bellow's Seize the Day*

*I am not nominating this because he just died. I first read the book about 6 years ago and have read it at least two or three more times since.

― Hurting (Hurting), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:15 (twenty years ago)

The Man Without Qualities - Musil

― M. White (Miguelito), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:19 (twenty years ago)

I'll just be really obvious and get Ulysses, Lolita and Mason & Dixon out of the way.

― Failin Huxley (noodle vague), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:20 (twenty years ago)

Moby Dick
War and Peace
The Brothers Karamazov
Gravity's Rainbow (do i get to nominate this one?)
The Moviegoer

― ryan (ryan), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:22 (twenty years ago)

The Trial

― ryan (ryan), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:22 (twenty years ago)

okay, screw it. I'll go with nominations, just because otherwise I'll go mad. Limited the poll slightly might make the tallying a little easier in the end and provoke some entertaining discussion once the results unfold.

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:23 (twenty years ago)

Ulysses

― kyle (akmonday), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:23 (twenty years ago)

So, we're nominating OK, so I nominate:

Richard Ford, The Sportswriter
Thomas Pynhcon, V
Philip Roth, American Pastoral

It's hard to believe you will get enough votes for any single book unless you narrow the process somehow, like people have done with the album and film polls (i.e. "20th Century novels" or "Novels in English" or something--those are just examples because my picks fit into those categories, but they could be anything).

― Scott CE (Scott CE), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:29 (twenty years ago)

Vladmir Nabokov- Lolita
Jane Austen- Pride and Prejudice

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:29 (twenty years ago)

Crime and Punishment - Dostoyevsky
The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoyevsky
Catcher in the Rye - Salinger
The House of Mirth - Wharton
Underworld - DeLillo
Love - Toni Morrison
Paradise - Toni Morrison

more incoming...

― jed_ (jed), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:30 (twenty years ago)

I was thinking of limiting it to a particular period, but decided to keep it wide open to any and all periods.

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:33 (twenty years ago)

tristram shandy
the marquise of o--
summer (edith wharton)
elective affinities
pale fire

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:35 (twenty years ago)

A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
Resentment - Gary Indiana
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Joyce

― jed_ (jed), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:36 (twenty years ago)

I was already beaten to Lolita and Gravity's Rainbow, so I guess I'll go for a fringier one and say The Quick and the Dead, by Joy Williams.

― kirsten (kirsten), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:36 (twenty years ago)

Beckett's Trilogy

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:37 (twenty years ago)

well i guess marquise of o-- is a novella.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:37 (twenty years ago)

I suppose I'm also misreading "the greatest" as "your favorite," so, yeah.

― kirsten (kirsten), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:37 (twenty years ago)

Oh, that was an x-post.

― kirsten (kirsten), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:37 (twenty years ago)

include author names please! (i mean i presume i'm not the only one who has no idea what "Elective Affinities" is?)

― jed_ (jed), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:38 (twenty years ago)

I Served The King of England - Bohumil Hrabal
They Came Like Swallows - William Maxwell
Loving - Henry Green

― M. White (Miguelito), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:39 (twenty years ago)

another vote for Ulysses (tho I'd also accept Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man also). As the inventor of the novel-written-in-first-person-narrator's voice, Joyce has got to be the winner.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 25 April 2005 22:40 (twenty years ago)

elective affinities is goethe

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:40 (twenty years ago)

1984 - george orwell
winesburg, ohio - sherwood anderson

― Michael B, Monday, 25 April 2005 22:41 (twenty years ago)

also does proust count?

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:41 (twenty years ago)

Joyce did not invent the first person narrator!

which reminds me that "Heart of Darkness" by Conrad should be on the list and used the format in 1902.

xp - why wouldn't Proust count?

― jed_ (jed), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:46 (twenty years ago)

Journey to the End of the Night - Louis-Ferdinand Celine
Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:48 (twenty years ago)

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

― Jeff-PTTL (Jeff), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:48 (twenty years ago)

As the inventor of the novel-written-in-first-person-narrator's voice, Joyce has got to be the winner

What does this mean?

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:49 (twenty years ago)

"Notes from Underground" - Dostoyevsky (1864, also first person narrator)

i'm also nominating this.

― jed_ (jed), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:49 (twenty years ago)

The Wanting Seed - Anthony Burgess
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Stranger - Albert Camus

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:54 (twenty years ago)

"As the inventor of the novel-written-in-first-person-narrator's voice"

Joyce was the first author (that I know of) to have the writing itself reflect the personality/voice of the main character. The first few lines of "Portrait of the Artist" are written w/the language of a child, for example. As the narrator grows older, the writing changes and grows with him, etc. Then there's the fact that those first couple sentences also contain all the major themes and imagery of the rest of the book... Joyce was the first person to really integrate all these things together, to frame the novel as a unique narrative experience, its own self-contained world where style and substance were completely intertwined.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 25 April 2005 22:55 (twenty years ago)

The Centaur in the Garden - Moacyr Scliar
The Last of the Just - Schwartzbart
Midnight's Children - Rushdie

― M. White (Miguelito), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:56 (twenty years ago)

other authors had written first-person narration, but stylistically the language was still conventional "novel" language - there were no stylistic abberations designed to reflect the mindset/interior language of the narrator.

x-post

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 25 April 2005 22:57 (twenty years ago)

fuck the predictable "classics".

i'll nominate hunter s thompson's 'the rum diary', bukowski's 'factotum' and plath's 'bell jar' and suskind's 'perfume'.

― katharine (katharine), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:58 (twenty years ago)

If you're gonna pick 'The Stranger', I'm gonna pick 'The Plague'. Actually, scratch that, 'The Fall'.

― M. White (Miguelito), Monday, 25 April 2005 22:59 (twenty years ago)

hmmm, actually now that I think about it Twain may have beaten him to the punch with "Huckleberry Finn" and Huck's unique voice, use of slang, etc. But Joyce still completely opened up what was possible with writing and how a novel could manipulate and integrate linguistic and structural experiments into a narrative.

*backpedals furiously*

x-post

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 25 April 2005 22:59 (twenty years ago)

Getting these out of the way...

William S. Burroughs - Naked Lunch
Alexander Solzhenitsyn - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

― Ian Riese-Moraine has a grenade, that pineapple's not just a toy! (Eastern Mantr, Monday, 25 April 2005 23:00 (twenty years ago)

I have never understood why "Perfume" is so highly thought of. Also, this is a disturbingly Eurocentric list. Where's the nominations for Cortazar, Mahfouz, etc.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 25 April 2005 23:01 (twenty years ago)

i see what you're getting at, shakey, although "portrait..." isn't written in the first person either.

many xposts - it seems like a good idea for another thread though?

― jed_ (jed), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:03 (twenty years ago)

the third policeman by flann o'brien

nostromo by joseph conrad

the adventures of huckleberry finn by mark twain

coming up for air by george orwell

the new york trilogy by paul auster

traditional novel style may be funny.

crossposts

― RJG (RJG), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:04 (twenty years ago)

It's an interesting point, Shakey. I'd say that Swift and Sterne had given Joyce clues in that direction (Lemuel Gulliver's about as unreliable as narrators get), and Wilde and Huysmanns and Conrad were pushing towards it (or Baudelaire and Lautreamont, outside the novel) but I can't think of an example pre-dating Joyce (he does the same thing in Dubliners but not as dramatically).

― Failin Huxley (noodle vague), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:04 (twenty years ago)

that sounds horribly patronising and isn't meant to be, sorry

xpost

― jed_ (jed), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:04 (twenty years ago)

I know it isn't strictly speaking in the first person jed, I can't think of a term that describes what Joyce was doing - where the form of the text is tied directly to the content...

― Shakey Mo Collier, Monday, 25 April 2005 23:05 (twenty years ago)

Naked Lunch - William S. Burroughs
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Nowhere Man - Aleksandar Hemon

― Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?) (Gear!), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:05 (twenty years ago)

so, uh, make some nominations for them (xposts re eurocentrism)

"Fathers & Sons" - Turgenev
"A Minor Apocalypse" - Konwicki
"My Brother" - Jamaica Kincaid (this might be disqualifiable based on criteria in that it is biographical but written novelistic style?)
"The Reader" - Bernhard Schlink

― Allyzay do not obtain to make download of yours MP3 (allyzay), Monday, 25 April 2005 23:06 (twenty years ago)

Skipping 217 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

oooh, i want to throw
Jitterbug Perfume - Tom Robbins
into the dogpile

― Fetchboy (Felcher), Monday, 8 August 2005 21:56 (twenty years ago)

I nominate The Monster At The Ond Of This Book by Grover. Also, Hop on Pop.

― The Original Jimmy Mod: A Negro (The Famous Jimmy Mod), Monday, 8 August 2005 21:58 (twenty years ago)

haha i seriously only opened this thread to nominate the monster at the end of this book!!

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 01:31 (twenty years ago)

Great book.

― The Original Jimmy Mod: A Negro (The Famous Jimmy Mod), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 01:34 (twenty years ago)

David Markson - Wittgenstein's Mistress
Jean Rhys - Wide Sargasso Sea

― fauxhemian (fauxhemian), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 02:12 (twenty years ago)

re: The Monster At The End Of This Book

Amen. This was the crucial text in one of my most triumphant PhD-skool moments. Mostly Mal d'Archive and apocalypse and epistemology and stuff, but G. Monster held his own with J. Derrida (if more as a practicioner than a theorist).

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 04:25 (twenty years ago)

Seriously, people. Everything you need to know about the structure of knowledge is in there.

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 04:26 (twenty years ago)

it's not a Novel.

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 11:00 (twenty years ago)

― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 11:01 (twenty years ago)

Patrick McCabe-The Butcher Boy

― Ronan (Ronan), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 11:20 (twenty years ago)

it's not a Novel.

Hmm. That is an excellent point.

Greatest Little Golden Books of All Time?

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 14:18 (twenty years ago)

George Eliot – Daniel Deronda
Henry James – Portrait of a Lady
Richard Yates - Revolutionary Road

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 14:35 (twenty years ago)

http://www.bump.com/

― Fetchboy (Felcher), Saturday, 13 August 2005 20:02 (twenty years ago)

one month passes...

um, no love for agee?

death in the family and let us now praise famous men!

― t0dd swiss (immobilisme), Friday, 23 September 2005 23:09 (twenty years ago)

one month passes...

bump.

― Fetchboy (Felcher), Tuesday, 8 November 2005 23:29 (twenty years ago)

John Le Carré - Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (& Honourable Schoolboy & Smiley's People)
Richard Price - Clockers
Irvine Welsh - Marabou Stork Nightmares

― recovering optimist (Royal Bed Bouncer), Wednesday, 9 November 2005 00:28 (twenty years ago)

predicted winners of an ile poll:

1) gravity's rainbow
2) moominland midwinter
3) dhalgren
4) catcher in the rye
5) lolita

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 9 November 2005 01:08 (twenty years ago)

S.E. Hinton: "Rumble Fish"

― shookout (shookout), Wednesday, 9 November 2005 02:47 (twenty years ago)

five months pass...

whatever happened to this?

― The Brainwasher (Twilight), Saturday, 29 April 2006 07:16 (nineteen years ago)

Ayi Kwei Armah - Two Thousand Seasons

― jared, Sunday, 30 April 2006 15:50 (nineteen years ago)

I can't believe there was a whole discussion on how great The Monster At The End Of This Book is that I didn't start. I've been prosyletizing about that book for years here.

It's actually by Jon Stone. The sequel, which features Elmo, is awful.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 30 April 2006 17:33 (nineteen years ago)

I can't believe there was a whole discussion on how great The Monster At The End Of This Book is that I didn't start. I've been prosyletizing about that book for years here.

I have to second this--it was my FAVORITE book when I was growing up, had it read to me every night.

― Jessie the Monster (scarymonsterrr), Sunday, 30 April 2006 19:01 (nineteen years ago)

three months pass...

I was going threw this thread and amazingly enough, didnt find those great masterpieces (correct me if im wrong):

Elsa Morante - The history
Ginter Grass - Tin Drum
Zeigfred Lenz - Lesson In German
Primo Levi - Il sistema periodoco
Melcolm Lowry - Under The Volacano
Proust - Remembrance of Things Past
Cervantes - Don Quijote
Dostoyevsky - crime and punishment
Perec - life
Sabato - about graves and heroes
Celine - Journey to the end of the night
Balzac - Le pere goriot

― emekars (emekars), Sunday, 30 July 2006 23:24 (nineteen years ago)

wrong

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 30 July 2006 23:42 (nineteen years ago)

explain why

― emekars (emekars), Sunday, 30 July 2006 23:47 (nineteen years ago)

Ctrl+F

― a.b. (alanbanana), Monday, 31 July 2006 00:29 (nineteen years ago)

ok.ctrl+5.so this is the updated list:

Elsa Morante - The history
Zeigfred Lenz - Lesson In German
Primo Levi - Il sistema periodoco
Melcolm Lowry - Under The Volacano
Cervantes - Don Quijote
Perec - life
Sabato - about graves and heroes
Celine - Journey to the end of the night

― emekars (emekars), Monday, 31 July 2006 01:06 (nineteen years ago)

My three favourite aren't here:

Siddartha - Hermann Hesse
Love in the time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Island - Aldous Huxley

― hobart paving (hobart paving), Monday, 31 July 2006 13:29 (nineteen years ago)

its "quixote," emekars.

― S-L-U-G (plsmith), Monday, 31 July 2006 16:39 (nineteen years ago)

and its already there

― S-L-U-G (plsmith), Monday, 31 July 2006 16:39 (nineteen years ago)

it's quite commonly Quijote w/ spanish speakers.

― jed_ (jed), Monday, 31 July 2006 16:47 (nineteen years ago)

Elsa Morante - History: A Novel

is a fabulous, fabulous, book.

― Damn, Atreyu! (x Jeremy), Monday, 31 July 2006 16:48 (nineteen years ago)

Vera Britten - A Testament of Youth
Rebecca West - Return of the Soldier

― Damn, Atreyu! (x Jeremy), Monday, 31 July 2006 16:49 (nineteen years ago)

"Elsa Morante - History: A Novel
is a fabulous, fabulous, book. "

yes.it is one above everything else probbaly.
a person who doesnt cry during reading this book is not a human being.
so much compession and hu,anity and so well written, and also importend, it's probably the best novel of the last 100 years.
it is everything you ecer wanted from a a novel and more.
more a "classic" than a "modern" book - it's style dont resemble most of the best books of the century, more of Tolstoyevsky sort of style, but again, with much more compession for humanity.also the best novel on world war 2, though almost not dealing with it directly.

― emekars (emekars), Monday, 31 July 2006 22:46 (nineteen years ago)

three years pass...

So this'll never come to anything, huh?

― Fetchboy, Tuesday, 5 January 2010 15:30 (fifteen years ago)

Get thee to the ILX Books of the 00s voting thread - plenty of novels there, some very good, and the nearest we're going to get to this for a while. Just one week of voting to go!

― Ismael Klata, Tuesday, 5 January 2010 17:11 (fifteen years ago)

wish he'd done the poll before he left ilx : /

― A™ machine (sic) (omar little), Tuesday, 5 January 2010 17:44 (fifteen years ago)

seven years pass...

So many books

― viborg, Friday, 7 July 2017 16:00 (eight years ago)

But which one is the best? Other than Ulysses.

― viborg, Friday, 7 July 2017 16:01 (eight years ago)

https://images.contentful.com/g8qtv9gzg47d/image_post_38524/d8112e3b21907a454af9e3c8b33f53c1/Slider_1_-_Naomi_Campbell_Is_Psychic__Also__A_Novelist_?fl=progressive&fm=jpg&q=80

― more polls about food and reactionary art (Noodle Vague), Friday, 7 July 2017 16:52 (eight years ago)

doesn't surprise me anymore that it's the books that sell the least that are the greatest

sure, there are a lot of contenders, but this one is definitely top 5, at the very least

http://d28hgpri8am2if.cloudfront.net/book_images/onix/cvr9781451623758/a-shore-thing-9781451623758_hr.jpg

― i n f i n i t y (∞), Friday, 7 July 2017 17:13 (eight years ago)

honestly thought that read 'the blackout member of the cast' & didn't think twice

― johnny crunch, Friday, 7 July 2017 17:21 (eight years ago)

six months pass...

Anyone up for this

― remember the lmao (darraghmac), Saturday, 20 January 2018 01:08 (seven years ago)

What piques my interest is someone describing what they like about a book, not the bare fact that they like it. And all of ILX is cordially invited to I Love Books to trade burbles about books they like, whenever the urge strikes them. Just compiling a bare list of titles/authors seems rather pointless to me. Then again, listicles are an evergreen feature of newspapers, magazines and the web, so I seem to be in the dour minority.

― A is for (Aimless), Saturday, 20 January 2018 01:20 (seven years ago)

i think this would be fun, not least because i feel like this would be a genuinely unpredictable poll -- i have no idea what a top 10 novels list on ilx would look like, but i doubt it'd be the modern library list

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Saturday, 20 January 2018 01:51 (seven years ago)

at one point i would've said gravity's rainbow would top the list but i think that era of ilx has come and gone

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Saturday, 20 January 2018 01:51 (seven years ago)

My serious choice would, of course, be something too rockist for modern day ilx

― infinity (∞), Saturday, 20 January 2018 01:55 (seven years ago)

would vote in and rly enjoy this, esp if the voting base ended up big

― difficult listening hour, Saturday, 20 January 2018 02:29 (seven years ago)

pynchon's got a votesplitting problem i think. feel like dead souls has an outside chance

― difficult listening hour, Saturday, 20 January 2018 02:36 (seven years ago)

holy shit this thread has the monster at the end of this book talk! only thinking about that partic masterpiece more frequently as we fall faster

― difficult listening hour, Saturday, 20 January 2018 02:40 (seven years ago)

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