List No. 048

TEN FAVORITE AMERICAN NOVELS

Norman Mailer

1988

In January 1988, Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Norman Mailer was asked by editors of the Reader’s Catalogue – a curated directory of 75,000 novels that you might find in a local bookshop, all of which could be delivered to one’s door – to choose ten of his favourite novels for inclusion in the next edition. He responded with this list, saying,

“With the exception of Huckleberry Finn, which I reread recently, the other nine books were devoured in my freshman year at Harvard, and gave me the desire, which has never gone completely away, to be a writer, an American writer.”

Ten Favorite American Novels

U.S.A. John Dos Passos

Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain

Studs Lonigan James T. Farrell

Look Homeward, Angel Thomas Wolfe

The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck

The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway

Appointment in Samarra John O’Hara

The Postman Always Rings Twice James M. Cain

Moby-Dick Herman Melville