What is a good American Classic? (Book)?

Question

I am doing a book report for school and it has to be over an American Classic so if you know any that is really good and not boring...LET ME KNOW! It can't be really long either. I was going to read East of Eden but that is like 600 pages so yeah. I don't have very long to read it....help!

Answer 1

Why don't you try Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dolloway? It's easy and understandable.

Answer 2

Hmmm.... An American Classic....

There's William Faulkner. You can try reading him but it won't be very entertaining. Luckily his novel "As I Lay Dying" isn't very long.

Winesburg Ohio by Sheerwood Anderson is also short, although it is technically a collection of interwoven short stories that make up the novel. Technicalities...

There's To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, very classic.

One of my favourites, Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury incredibly short, and you can't put it down.

Walden by henry David Thoreau (it's a tad boring though)

And, of course, the great Mark Twain. It doesn't get much more classic or American then that. "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and such. Hilarious humor, fast action and adventure.

There's more. It really depends on what you mean by classic. Is it in the literary canon? Most of these technically are. At least they're all taught in American school systems.

p.s~ Virginia Woolf is British and as a modernist novel Mrs. Dalloway is the epitome of boring. Unless you like modernism. Then it's wonderful, but I wouldn't reccommend trying to do anything but a college level essay on it. It would be like trying to write on James Joyce in high school. Good luck with that. Most Joyceian scholars have trouble writing on him.

Answer 3

Salinger's probably a good bet. His books are short and really interesting.

John Dos Passos' "USA" trilogy is really good. I did "The 42nd Parallel" for a book report in school. However, it is a little longer.

Most of Steainbeck's other works are pretty short. You could try "Of Mice and Men" or "Tortilla Flat," though I'll warn you that I've had people cry all over me because of the ending of the former.

You could also try a play. Tenessee William's work (while I have unfortunately not read any) is supposed to be absolutely incredible.

Good luck with your report!

Answer 4

First off, book length, while we shy away from it during school years, is actually, frequently part of what makes a book classic. Meaning, while its content is far more important and artfulness deeply so, literature that had been truncated in length compared to a norm, often, in history represented something cheaper. That's to say that people who wrote to fit a certain number of words into a pamphlet or a short form medium, perhaps did so because they could not afford the paper, the ink, the printing and such that would have made the piece longer. This, can restrict an author from the full breadth of art in a grand number of ways, making a final product not only cheaper price-wise, and therefore looked at as less WORTH saving, but cheaper art-wise, getting only what one pays for.

These statements should not, however, detract at all from the staggeringly artistic pieces created purposefully to be both brief and uplifting, many now classic. Short stories, short form poetry, expository writing, the novella, articles, one-act plays, even heartfelt letters and documents like mission statements and constitutions have achieved heights of literary greatness that most equally brief press releases, catalogs, case studies, emails, white papers, technical writing, lists, brochures, blogs, pamphlets, commercials, and stray notes could never hope to become. Short form works are of no less inherent value when elevating literature itself to new plateaus. I merely separate the two because your question asked about BOOKS, and short form pieces, unless collected under a single title, quite infrequently qualify as actual, classic books.

That said, while both addressing your question and keeping an open mind as to what constitutes a classic book, I offer you these suggestions:


The Mill on the Floss (George Eliot)

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Samuel Clemens, Mark Twain)

The Call of the Wild (Jack London)

Walden (Henry David Thoreau)

Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe)

The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison)

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Washington Irving)

The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner)

You Can’t Go Home Again (Thomas Wolfe)

Leaves of Grass (Walt Whitman) (Poetry)

Lust for Life (Irving Stone)

The Transcendentalist (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Billy Budd (Herman Melville)

The Fall of the House of Usher (Edgar Allan Poe) (Short Story)

The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Naked Lunch (William S. Burroughs II) (barely classic)

Omnibus (Zane Grey) (barely classic)

Answer 5

You know that movie, the war of the worlds,
Well did you know that it was a book from the great depression.

This is a little background, It might khelp to make the report a h^ll of a lot more interesting,

When the author ( I forgot authors name) wrote the book, before it was finished they read it on the radio, as a skit. But a lot of people across america tuned in late, so while they were reading it, people took it SERIOUSLY. They genuinely thought we were being invaded by aliens. It caused a country wide panic, and every one was SO pissed when they found out it was just a story, they went out and bought it.
It was really funny to learn this when the movie came out, and simpsons made fun of it last night.

Answer 6

Read Kate Chopin's "The Awakening" it's very short, very easy to read and definitely an American classic.

For heaven's sake, DON'T read East of Eden or Moby Dick (sheesh!) if you want something interesting and short! If you like Hemingway (and you really will, if you know how to read subtle stuff) try "For Whom the Bell Tolls" or "The Sun Also Rises".

Answer 7

both these books are short about 100 -200 pages, The Great Gatsby, and The Catcher in the Rye. I recommend The Catcher in the Rye but it's been banned in several places and schools. I have heard many people refer to the Great Gatsby as the best book ever written but both are classics.

Answer 8

Anything by Steinbeck, Faulkner, Hemingway would do. The last of the Mohicans is a great one, the scarlet letter by Hawthorne and there are also several amazing american classic plays like Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf, by Edward Alby.

Answer 9

- To Kill a Mockingbird
- Catcher in the Rye
- 1984
- White Fang
- Of Mice and Men
- Fahrenheit 451
- Animal Farm
- Lord of the Flies
- Invisible Man
- Around the World in 80 Days
- Importance of Being Earnest

Answer 10

Read To Kill a Mockingbird. One of the best books ever, and an American classic. Not an easy read, though.

Answer 11

Other American classics include The Grapes of Wrath, The Last of the Mohicans and Moby Dick.

In my opinion, Moby Dick is one of the greatest books in history but it is a bit of a tough read.