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Friday, January 14, 2005

This I Believe (2)

That One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey is the best novel of the 20th Century.... this I believe.

5 comments:

S. T. Karnick said...

I agree that it's good, but wouldn't rate it as the best. Offhand, I would say Decline and Fall, by Evelyn Waugh; A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess; The Man Who Was Thursday, by G. K. Chesterton; The Code of the Woosters, by P. G. Wodehouse; Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis, A Dance to the Music of Time, by Anthony Powell, The Ginger Man, by J. P. Donleavy; War in Heaven, by Charles Williams; Lolita and Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov; Flashman, by George MacDonald Fraser; a couple of Faulkners; and Sister Carrie, by Theodore Dreiser, are all a cut above. And I'm probably forgetting some others that belong in that rank. Sam

Hunter Baker said...

The best novel of the late twentieth century that I read was Lancelot . . . this I believe.

For the best novel I've ever read, I probably have to give the nod to The Brothers Karamazov . . .or The Destroyer #35, you know six of one, half dozen of the other. That Remo Williams really kicked some a$$.

Jay D. Homnick said...

I guess I have to reread my Faulkner, if I can find an English translation. And if you include Wodehouse on the basis of styling, then you have to add a Truman Capote, either Other Voices, Other Rooms or The Grass Harp.

I still say: reread One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. You don't have to read it ten or fifteen times like I have, just once more. Then let me know.

S. T. Karnick said...

And of course one could hardly forget The Great Gatsby, by Fitzgerald, as one of the top rank.—STK

Jay D. Homnick said...

You're right. I had hardly forgotten it.