There was an American lit thread this summer??? Sheesh what else did I miss while I was out getting chased by buffalo across the reservations....
The correct answer to the question of the thread is
The Grapes of Wrath. It has been the correct answer since it was published.
To elaborate: There are six (6) main "categories" of what makes a story good. Character development, plot development, immersion into the story, writing style(s), relatable nature of the plot and characters, and
striking moments. That last one is much more important than is generally regarded and we'll spend some extra time there.
To elaborate further:
Category 1: Character development. The Grapes of Wrath features a highly dynamic, and flexible cast of characters that many "great" stories lack. Late 19th and early 20th century American lit is
littered with stale, unmoving characters that invoke zero sense of curiosity or intrigue. Every member of the Joad family, and also preacher Casey, goes through some kind of intense restructuring, whether good or bad, through the story. Gatsby was always a fathead, Atticus Finch was always preachy and passive, and too many writers rely on weird, bogus tools in order to get their characters to budge from their static, one-dimensional design (though I'm not going to lie, I'm a massive Lord of the Rings nerd and I recognize there's some serious nuance to be applied here at times).
Category 2: Plot development. The great thing about
The Grapes of Wrath is the beautiful transformation of the story. It immediately opens with a contrast of freedom and oppression (release from jail to a home being seized by the bank), transitions to the next contrast of adventure and confinement (leaving on the open road, but restricted to specific routes, destinations), and amongst it all, it explores the common experiences of solidarity and isolation (every adult Joad feels some sort of alienation and some even leave the family, though they are a strong loving family, and every family feels isolated on the roads and in the camps, though they are from the same places and there for the same reasons). Hemingway's idea of plot development for
A Farewell to Arms is to take the most interesting war that had ever occurred in human history up to 1918, and turn it into
The English Patient, or that Pearl Harbor movie with Ben Affleck.
Category 3: Immersion into the story.
The Grapes of Wrath is beautifully immersive, due the narrative world building that is only attainable by having real experiences with real people in real places. Steinbeck famously worked as a newspaper writer in California in the 1930s, and between his experiences and those he (kinda) stole from Sanora Babb, he was able to recreate that world vividly in succinct, poignant, descriptive text that immediately transplants you into the story. This gets overlooked more than it should, especially in the world of "classic" American literature. It's particularly egregious for some writers like Harper Lee, who don't seem to be able to paint a setting to literally save a life, even though they lived there and only there for their entire lives. Hot courtroom. There's hot people in it. It's the south. It's hot.
Wow, it's like I'm really there! And while I understand there's a larger reference toward the racial tension in the south with that, I still expect some world building outside of the immediate room where something is happening in my 'great works of literature'.
Category 4: Writing style. This is clearly the most flexible of the group, as tastes in style vary so greatly among people. However, Steinbeck had an absolute
knack for delivering serious amounts of gravity with stoic immovability and poetic grace. Compare these two "popular" excerpts from
The Grapes of Wrath and
The Great Gatsby:
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. [...]
And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates—died of malnutrition—because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.
The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down into a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage. - The Grapes of Wrath
Beautiful prose, vivid imagery, and an important point to make.
Again at eight o’clock, when the dark lanes of the Forties were lined five deep with throbbing taxicabs, bound for the theater district, I felt a sinking in my heart. Forms leaned together in the taxis as they waited, and voices sang, and there was laughter from unheard jokes, and lighted cigarettes made unintelligible circles inside. Imagining that I, too, was hurrying toward gayety and sharing their intimate excitement, I wished them well. - The Great Gatsby
Absolute
drivel. You can attribute this to cherry picking all you want but I dare you to find a passage out of this book that isn't hollow and meaningfully bankrupt.
Category 5: Relatable nature to plot, characters, and overall story. I'm not going to speak for everyone on HuntTalk, but more of us here can connect to the world of the Okies better than we can the world of WWI-themed romance novels or gilded-age New Jersey self absorption. We've all struggled financially, worried about our homes and families, and even had to lose them even though we have done nothing wrong. That's the story of us, the story of working Americans. We're lucky to have our story told by such an excellent writer! Our story could have been told by James Patterson....
Category 6: Striking moments (congratulations, you made it to the end of my nonsense, and got rewarded with a labor pun!).
The Grapes of Wrath has echoed throughout literary history and American creative culture at large since its publication. This is a result of the staggering amount of unique and profound characters, moments, and narrations throughout the book. Numerous references to these elements of story have been made in art, movies, music, TV, and even other stories. Driven from home. Facing starvation and persecution. A woman using her stolen gift of motherhood to save another suffering person - and in the end, we can never know what the real outcome will or could ever be. Hard-hitting writing done with tact and strategy stands out very clearly against writing that meanders, self obsesses, delivers nothing substantial in the end. The striking moments - those memorable, unique moments that really resonate with you - are what makes the story stand the test of time and become a piece of the culture at large. When these moments don't exist, we rely on institutions and tradition to keep the stories alive, which is effectively a kind of life support.
The Joad family became a symbol of the struggles of the American working class for the next
ninety years. The legacy left behind by
The Grapes of Wrath far exceeds legacies of other works, which have been largely relegated to classrooms and rightfully bored students.
The Grapes of Wrath is the great American novel.
Sorry there weren't more jokes in this post - enjoy a picture of this big bull elk I snuck upon a couple weeks ago (I'm not good at estimating sizes, he was a 6x7):
