Greatest living American novelist?

Cormac McCarthy

DeLillo.

Cormac McCarthy

Another vote for McCarthy.

One of 17 Jewish authors writing books about fretting over their penii, if US publishing is to be believed.

The four obvious choices have been named already.

Philip Roth

Andrew Holleran, unless he's hibernating still.

Hands down, Philip Roth.

Margaret Atwood. Yeah, I know. Still, greatest living.

Mary Gaitskill

Atwood is fucking CANADIAN.

J. K. Rowling hands down

Stephen King

Oh-hhhh please. Are we getting THAT dumb?

I'll bitch and moan if you don't say ME!

McCarthy and the much-maligned Franzen.

Marilynne Robinson.

Don DeLillo.

Cormac McCarthy.

Toni Morrison.

Jonathan Lethem.

Philip Roth.

Atwood is Canadian, so if American includes Canada, you might also include Alice Munro, though she writes short stories, not novels. For US, I'd say Roth and Morrison are pretty close to each other--I think Roth has more great books than Morrison (who has a handful, such as Song of Solomon, Beloved, Sula, and The Bluest Eye)--and they both have their share of bad ones. I think Roth and Atwood both deserve serious Nobel consideration, though I doubt the committee will give another award to a Canadian female writer, and Roth may seem too vulgar to them (he can be, but I think he would deserve the award on the basis of the Zuckerman novels and the Nemesis quartet alone, the latter of which are like "Four Last Songs" in their poignant beauty).. I have a blind spot around DeLillo--I've really liked a few of his novels (such as Libra), but there's a coldness to him--I know White Noise is a great book, but I don't feel called to read it again.Roth and Morrison, for better or for worse, have real people in their books--sometimes sexist or annoying ones, but people nonetheless. This was true of Bellow, too.My favorite fabulist is Cynthia Ozick--her slim novel The Messiah of Stockholm and her story-with-novella The Shawl are great, as are her short story collections (The Pagan Rabbi, Bloodshed, Levitation.) McCarthy has some great novels, too.

Thomas Pynchon.

Nathan Englander

Y'all are fucked up.

Joyce Carol Oates

Except when she's not, R21, which is most of the time.

[quote]Philip Roth.

As he frets about his penis.

Oates is like the Sarah Palin of American writers. We Were The Mulvaneys puts her next to Roth, DeLillo, McCarthy?

John Irving

Another vote for John Irving.

Since Jackie Collins died, no one.

R23 That's not all Roth writes about. Yes, I'll grant you that troubled masculinity is a central theme, but to sum him up that way is like saying Eve Ensler only writes about cunts..... Oh wait, maybe that's true.

Jonathan Franzen

The Kardashian sisters -- they are the finest.

Franzen has written only one good novel. (I haven't read Purity but doubt it's any better than his other stuff, The Corrections excepted.)

I didn't like Purity, R31, though I liked Franzen's previous two a lot.

T. C. Boyle. Hands DOWN.

Richard Russo

The greatest living novelist in the English language would be Kate Atkinson. From her literary epics Life After Life and A God in Ruins to her lighter fare Human Croquet and Behind the Scenes at the Museum to her brilliant Jackson Brodie mystery series beginning with Case Histories, she is incomparable.

J. K. Rowling and Kate Atkinson are both British; they do not qualify as answers for the question asked in the thread title.

[quote] I think he would deserve the award on the basis of the Zuckerman novels and the Nemesis quartet alone, the latter of which are like "Four Last Songs" in their poignant beauty

Mary!

Roth hasn't written anything decent since he finished the American Pastoral/I Married a Communist/Human Stain trilogy.

I'll go with John Irving

1. Stephen King

2. Michael Chabon

3. Marcus Zusak

Zusak is Australian.

[quote]J. K. Rowling and Kate Atkinson are both British; they do not qualify as answers for the question asked in the thread title.

I assumed that the poster nominating J.K. Rowling was joking. In any case, I laughed.

Roth is overrated, a few of his later books were excellent, but on the whole he is tedious, narcissistic, preachy, and can't create a believable female character to save his life. Portnoy's Complaint was such a piece of shit, a dated fossil of its time, easily the most overrated so called classic I ever read. And far from being shocking, it didn't break any ground as far as sexual explicitness goes that hadn't already been broken more effectively by Henry Miller and William S. Burroughs beforehand.

My choice for greatest living American would be Ursula K. LeGuin. She does what science fiction and fantasy writers should always do, use the genre conventions to write novels of ideas, to explore alternative societies and hypothetical civilizations. Like in The Left Hand of Darkness, she wonders what it would be like if people's biological sex changed with the seasons, if the same person changed from male to female and back to male again in the course of time. And she wonders what sort of planetary environment might produce such a species? LeGuin is like the anti Philip Roth, she's interested in everything, whereas he's fixated on his own navel - and his own penis.

[quote]whereas he's fixated on his own navel - and his own penis.

All men are fixated on their dicks. Roth is at least honest about it.

He can be as honest as he wants, R44. That doesn't mean I want to read him.

[quote]All men are fixated on their dicks.

Not as writers, they're not. As men in their daily life, maybe, but not when functioning as novelists. Tell that to Balzac, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, or any number of male novelists who created entire world's populated by characters, including female ones, who are not just mirrors of their creators but are granted an independent life of their own.

R46 has obviously never heard of Bukowski, Hemingway, Melville, Bulgakov, etc.

R47, your comment doesn't even make any fucking sense. Not even remotely.

I do know all those names, and have read them all except Bukowski. What the fuck relevance does that even have to what I wrote?

R48 You seem to have problems with concentration and linear logic.

R49, just because you're stupid, that doesn't mean R48 has "problems with concentration and linear logic." Good lord, go to bed instead of having another drink and continuing to embarrass yourself.

[quote] Atwood is fucking CANADIAN.

This reminds me of a final Jeopardy question/answer from many years ago.

Answer:: This city has the largest Italian population in North America.

You guessed it: No one got it right

Question: What is Toronto?

r47/r49, I agree: you sound idiotic. Give it up while you're behind.

R48 can't follow a simple, linear discussion

R50 displays his "intelligence" through juvenile name-calling

R52 is a clueless cunt who is compelled to post SOMETHING witless

Gentlemen, I give you the dregs of DL.

Wally Lamb. She's Come Undone was magnificent.

The problem is you, not us, R53. You're not making any sense, you're just drunkenly rambling. That's not our fault.

McCarthy and Donna Tartt.

Roth's writing career is all books about his despair that blonde girls really don't find him attractive, and even when they do, something is wrong with them, and other people get mad.

[quote] Gentlemen, I give you the dregs of DL.

Yes, we had all already figured that about you, r53.

R57 = Martha Reganhart

Don Delillo, Donna Tartt and the Canadian Alice Munro. And Toni Morrison. And, I guess, Phillip Roth if we need another male.

I wish Louis Auchincloss was still alive.

This thread is making me depressed (now that the verbose Donna Tartt and Jonathan Franzen are considered "great').

Denis Johnson. Thread closed.

Alice Walker.

Second for Ursula LeGuin.

Alice Walker? Ursula LeGuin? Really.

Marilynne Robinson.

Margaret Mitchell

Per above.Half asleep didn't see the word Living. My bag.

Benjamin Alire Sáenz Is my current favorite. “Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe” Is amazing.

Annie Proulx Is my second favorite. Not because of Brokeback Mountain, but because of The Shipping News.

yea! yet another thread for people to argue, insult, and go crazy on each other gain.....

Murakami Haruki ....Japanese yet, but totally global. so sue me.

Marilynne Robinson is the greatest living American novelist.

Sherman Alexie

Chuck Palahniuk

Stephen King

Stephenie Meyer

It has to be Toni Morrison. The Road by Cormac McCarthy is a must read, an incredible achievement in literature. It's a difficult question because different genres. Both have an amazing collection of novels and have had significant impacted on humanity.

Jonathan Franzen

McCarthy.

but but........but what about ME???

Don DeLillo