The 333 Greatest Works of American Literature

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is often called the first detective story or the first modern murder mystery. It and the two sequels also featuring amateur sleuth C. Auguste Dupin, "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" and.... Critique • Quotes • At the movies • Buy

It's easy to overlook Mark Twain's bite in The Prince and the Pauper. The social criticism is not as sharp as in some of his later novels, like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

A century after its first publication, the story of George Babbitt can elicit reactions of both "This is so dated!" and "Just like today!" And often from the same readers. Sinclair Lewis's most influential novel, Babbitt, deftly satirizes.... Critique • Quotes • Text • Buy

Unbelievably, few people read The Great Gatsby when it was first published. In the roaring Twenties, its questioning of the American Dream may not have been welcome. Other American writers, like Sinclair Lewis.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

It may seem perverse to pick In Our Time as Ernest Hemingway's greatest story collection because many individual stories in later collections have become more familiar—and are arguably more accomplished than these earlier.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

When they got around to making the movie of Elmer Gantry—more than three decades after the novel came out—they still felt compelled to preface it with a warning: We believe that certain aspects of Revivalism can bear.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

A Farewell to Arms has been called the best American novel to come out of World War I. That could be accurate. I can think of few other American novels that are even contenders, though I can also think of.... Critique • Quotes • At the movies • Buy

Everyone who loves classic film noir knows the complicated storyline from the 1941 flick starring Humphrey Bogart. The Maltese Falcon involves intrigue among shady, eccentric characters to find a black bird made of gold.... Critique • Quotes • At the movies • Buy

A tip for reading Tender Is the Night. Don't try it right after The Great Gatsby, even though it was Scott Fitzgerald's next novel. If you do, you'll be disappointed. The tight writing of Gatsby—with its unforgettable.... Critique • Quotes • At the movies • Buy

If you've read or heard about Dashiell Hammett's hardboiled detective fiction, you may not be prepared for what you'll find in The Thin Man. Sure, there's a somewhat jaded private eye, one Nick Charles, as well as a..... Critique • Quotes • At the movies • Buy

Appointment in Samarra is about as perfectly structured and written a novel of American social critique as you could find in the first half of the twentieth century—up there with Babbitt and The Great Gatsby. True.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

It has always seemed like the perfect American novella. A poignant and disturbing story told effortlessly, of simple folks on the fringe of society who turn out to be quite complex. But read Of Mice and Men a second.... Critique • Quotes • At the movies • Buy

On the early covers of Thornton Wilder's play, Our Town, a small community is shown perched on the side of a lofty hill or mountain, giving the illustration a kind of aspirational feeling. What isn't immediately clear.... Critique • Quotes • At the movies • Buy

What may be most surprising about Lillian Hellman's play The Little Foxes is it's such an absorbing piece of drama despite being about a business deal. The Hubbard siblings—brothers Oscar and Ben and sister Regina.... Critique • Quotes • At the movies • Buy

The Grapes of Wrath is John Steinbeck's most controversial work, seeming to advocate a socialist revolution to end the misery of the dispossessed folks during the dirty nineteen-thirties. It can only be this apparent political.... Critique • Quotes • At the movies • Buy

The Day of the Locust was so underrated in 1939 when it came out and in the years immediately following author Nathanael West's death in 1940, that when critics eventually rediscovered the man's works they.... Critique • Quotes • At the movies • Buy

For me this is the big Hemingway book—his greatest work and one of the most significant novels of the twentieth century. And it is a big book, his longest. But For Whom the Bell Tolls does not read as long. Partly.... Critique • Quotes • At the movies • Buy

Few novels divide readers as The Catcher in the Rye does. This may sound like a bizarre thing to say, since J.D. Salinger's novel has been wildly popular since it came out in 1951. It's been lauded as changing the course of.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

A lot has been said about Hemingway's ideals of courage, grace under pressure, and all that. My own feeling is that what he really wanted was to be considered wise. His lead characters usually have a stillness about them.... Critique • Quotes • At the movies • Buy

Is it all timshel? Steinbeck has his main character drop the word at the end of the novel. Earlier it had been explained that the Hebrew word from the Bible meant that humankind may or may not triumph over evil, that we're.... Critique • Quotes • At the movies • Buy

It may seem Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is becoming less relevant these days, as hard-copy books are at risk of disappearing, pushed aside by digital communications. Without paper media, warnings about.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

Chandler's longest novel is also his most praised. Which makes me wonder whether it's the length the critics are praising. Or if maybe they think it must be deep since it's so long. Is The Long Goodbye long because.... Critique • Quotes • At the movies • Buy

Critics may not have known what to make of it when it came out in 1954, but what has been made of I Am Legend since then has been several fields of popular fiction, multiple movie adaptations, lots of knockoffs, and.... Critique • Quotes • At the movies • Buy

On the Road is the easiest novel to find "great lines" in. Open to any page. Jack Kerouac's writing is at such a consistent intensity that important, poetic, rhythmic, quotable sentences typical of the book's overall tone.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

It starts as a simple case for a rich old family, as many fictional P.I. cases seem to. Rich old Mrs. Galton wants to find out what happened to her son, whom she has not seen in twenty years—not since he disappeared with.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

John Updike is most known for Rabbit, Run but it's not his best or best-reviewed novel. It's not even his best or best-reviewed novel in the book series it kicks off. That would be the sequel, Rabbit Redux, the one critics.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

Whenever he was told he's never written anything else as good as Catch-22, Joseph Heller was tempted to reply, "Who has?" A bit of hyperbole. There are plenty of modern novels as good as, or better than, Catch-22.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

Around the time of this novel, Philip K. Dick was being heralded as the next scifi writer to break into mainstream popularity after Kurt Vonnegut. The Man in the High Castle won the prestigious Hugo Award for science fiction.... Critique • Quotes • At the movies • Buy

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress has much—maybe too much—to appeal to followers of all Robert Heinlein's diverse interests. For science fiction fans, with an emphasis on science, it suggests interesting ideas for how a colony.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

If you've heard that the highlight of 1967 was the Summer of Love, check out The Armies of the Night to discover the famous summer was followed by the Autumn of Confrontation. At least in the United States.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

The Left Hand of Darkness is about a lot of things. But, unlike many science fiction writers, Ursula K. Le Guin doesn't lay it all out for you in comic-book-style exposition. Rather, like a serious mainstream author.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

It was one of the naughtier books—but not the naughtiest—in a long line of books that scandalized some and enticed many more in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Even if you never read Portnoy's Complaint then, you'd heard.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

Writers are commonly asked by editors to cut their introductory passages and start their narratives in the midst of the action—in media res for the learned among us. For John Updike's Rabbit Angstrom series I might have.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

Two kinds of people are apt to hate Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: advanced philosophy majors and advanced novel readers. As a novel, Zen is terrible. Virtually no narrative, cardboard characters, and generally.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

You may find online a video of John Irving discussing how both he and Stephen King have striven not to please, but to appall. Once you get over the shock of discovering literary icon Irving and horrormeister King are mutual.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

The story behind the discovery of this novel has become such an inspiring and sad modern legend that I want to be able to say the novel itself is brilliant. Either that, or be able to call it a disaster—to spite misguided.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

Gorky Park was quite the sensation when it came out in 1981, as it presented an American-style detective story in the previously unexplored setting of the Soviet Union. And it still seems to entice readers who.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

In The Cider House Rules you can find nearly everything great about John Irving's writing, and probably much that his detractors think not so great. It could be his most characteristic novel—a return, after what.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

So many people, whose opinions I otherwise value, have told me how incredibly impressed they were by The Bonfire of the Vanities that I wonder what I'm missing, as I have only a middling appreciation for.... Critique • Quotes • At the movies • Buy

This is a great 600-page novel. Unfortunately it's 1,200 pages long. No, that's unfair to Norman Mailer. In Harlot's Ghost he occasionally displays bouts of typical Mailer verbosity and falls back on his favourite writing ticks.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon is the one Kaye Gibbons novel about which some critics might be right when they say she's preachy. The story does seem to stop for long stretches to let her good characters make.... Critique • Quotes • Buy

As always, Tom Wolfe's writing shows evidence of an incredible amount of social research. Even a journalist reading this extremely thick novel has to wonder: how did he learn so many details about the Southern real estate....Critique • Quotes • Buy

Of all Philip Roth's novels, The Human Stain comes closest to being a masterwork comparable to classic literature. Compared to most of his other works, which offer discrete slices of American life, the 2000 novel.... Critique • Quotes • Buy