Literary discourse: topic of debate: Who is the best American writer of all time?

Question

Support your nominee with cogent argument.

My nominee is the one American writer most often singled out by nearly every American luminary in the field: The immortal Thomas Wolfe (1900-1931). "O, lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again."

Thomas Wolfe's works are enshrined at the Harvard University Library. He is regarded as rawly emotional and at the same time lyrical and poignant. His semi-autobiographical work describes both a young man and a young country coming of age with such austere and, at times, tragic beauty that his novels read like epic poems. I mosty highly recommend Thomas Wolfe to any reader who lusts for the shared experiences of living and who loves the written word with all the blind passion of a steam locomotive hurtling toward the next bend in the rail.

My second choice is the great Henry James. What follows, a list of his works, speaks for itself:

Novels
Watch and Ward (1871)
Roderick Hudson (1875)
The American (1877)
The Europeans (1878)
Confidence (1879)
Washington Square (1880)
The Portrait of a Lady (1881)
The Bostonians (1886)
The Princess Casamassima (1886)
The Reverberator (1888)
The Tragic Muse (1890)
The Other House (1896)
The Spoils of Poynton (1897)
What Maisie Knew (1897)
The Awkward Age (1899)
The Sacred Fount (1901)
The Wings of the Dove (1902)
The Ambassadors (1903)
The Golden Bowl (1904)
The Whole Family (collaborative novel with eleven other authors, 1908)
The Outcry (1911)
The Ivory Tower (unfinished, published posthumously 1917)
The Sense of the Past (unfinished, published posthumously 1917)

Novellas and tales
A Passionate Pilgrim (1871)
Madame de Mauves (1874)
Daisy Miller (1878)
A Bundle of Letters (1879)

The Author of Beltraffio (1884)
The Aspern Papers (1888)
A London Life (1888)
The Pupil (1891)
The Real Thing (1892)
The Middle Years (1893)
The Altar of the Dead (1895)
The Turn of the Screw (1898)
In the Cage (1898)
Europe (1899)
Paste (1899)
The Great Good Place (1900)
Mrs. Medwin (1900)
The Birthplace (1903)
The Beast in the Jungle (1903)
The Jolly Corner (1908)

Travel writings
A Little Tour in France (1884)
English Hours (1905)
The American Scene (1907)
Italian Hours (1909)



[edit] Literary criticism
French Poets and Novelists (1878)
Hawthorne (1879)
Partial Portraits (1888)
Essays in London and Elsewhere (1893)
New York Edition (1907–1909)
Notes on Novelists (1914)
Notebooks (various)



[edit] Autobiography
A Small Boy and Others (1913)
Notes of a Son and Brother (1914)
The Middle Years (unfinished, published posthumously 1917)



[edit] Plays
Theatricals (1894)
Theatricals: Secon

Answer 1

Edgar Allen Poe. Perhaps best known for the poem "The Raven" and short stories like "The Tell-Tale Heart," Poe is often seen as a writer of horror, and he can be considered the father of the modern horror story. With his three stories featuring C. Auguste Dupin ("Murders in the Rue Mourge," ""The Mystery of Marie Roget," and "The Purloined Letter"), he can be considered the father of the modern mystery/detective story. Aurthor Conan Doyle called Poe "a root from which a whole literature has developed." His only novel "Narrative of A. Gordon Pym" influenced early science fiction authors like Jules Vern and H.G. Wells. His intrest in the field of cryptography, displayed in "The Gold-Bug", lead him to write essays on the topic, one of which was used by the British during WWI. He even touched on physics in his work "Eureka" which anticipated future theories like the big bang and blackholes by at least eighty years.

Answer 2

Mark Twain
just look at these book he wrote and tell me that these ain't great.i didn't read all of them, but i intend to.
* (1867) Advice for Little Girls (fiction)
* (1867) The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (fiction)
* (1868) General Washington's ***** Body-Servant (fiction)
* (1868) My Late Senatorial Secretaryship (fiction)
* (1869) The Innocents Abroad (non-fiction travel)
* (1870-71) Memoranda (monthly column for The Galaxy magazine)
* (1871) Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance (fiction)
* (1872) Roughing It (non-fiction)
* (1873) The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (fiction, made into a play)
* (1875) Sketches New and Old (fictional stories)
* (1876) Old Times on the Mississippi (non-fiction)
* (1876) The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (fiction)
* (1876) A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage (fiction);
* (1877) A True Story and the Recent Carnival of Crime (stories)
* (1877) The Invalid's Story (Fiction)
* (1878) Punch, Brothers, Punch! and other Sketches (fictional stories)
* (1880) A Tramp Abroad (travel)
* (1880) 1601: Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors (fiction)
* (1882) The Prince and the Pauper (fiction)
* (1883) Life on the Mississippi (non-fiction)
* (1884) Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (fiction)
* (1889) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (fiction)
* (1892) The American Claimant (fiction)
* (1892) Merry Tales (fictional stories)
* (1892) Those Extraordinary Twins (fiction)
* (1893) The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories (fictional stories)
* (1894) Tom Sawyer Abroad (fiction)
* (1894) The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson (fiction)
* (1896) Tom Sawyer, Detective (fiction)
* (1896) Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (fiction)
* (1897) How to Tell a Story and other Essays (non-fictional essays)
* (1897) Following the Equator (non-fiction travel)
* (1900) The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (fiction)
* (1900) A Salutation Speech From the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth (essay)
* (1901) The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Updated (satire)
* (1901) Edmund Burke on Croker and Tammany (political satire)
* (1901) To the Person Sitting in Darkness (essay)
* (1902) A Double Barrelled Detective Story (fiction)
* (1904) A Dog's Tale (fiction)
* (1904) Extracts from Adam's Diary (fiction)
* (1905) King Leopold's Soliloquy (political satire)
* (1905) The War Prayer (fiction)
* (1906) The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories (fiction)
* (1906) What Is Man? (essay)
* (1906) Eve's Diary (fiction)
* (1907) Christian Science (non-fiction critique)
* (1907) A Horse's Tale (fiction)
* (1907) Is Shakespeare Dead? (non-fiction)
* (1909) Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven (fiction)
* (1909) Letters from the Earth (fiction, published posthumously)
* (1910) Queen Victoria's Jubilee (non-fiction)
* (1912) My Platonic Sweetheart (dream journal, possibly non-fiction)
* (1916) The Mysterious Stranger (fiction, possibly not by Twain, published posthumously)
* (1924) Mark Twain's Autobiography (non-fiction, published posthumously)
* (1935) Mark Twain's Notebook (published posthumously)
* (1962) Letters from the Earth (posthumous, edited by Bernard DeVoto)
* (1969) No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (fiction, published posthumously)
* (1985) Concerning the Jews (published posthumously)
* (1992) Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War. Jim Zwick, ed. (Syracuse University Press) ISBN 0-8156-0268-5 (previously uncollected, published posthumously)
* (1995) The Bible According to Mark Twain: Writings on Heaven, Eden, and the Flood (published posthumously)

Answer 3

He lived safely overseas, away from the war that was killing his relatives...

Chaim Potok (1929-2002) grew up in one of the most important generations of Americans. He witnessed the Great Depression and also WWII. Mr Potok was a devout Jew and, while learning his studies, also took in the goings-on of war.
He has been criticized for being too "simple," as if a written painting could ever be classified as "simple." Most of his fiction books, Mr Potok knew, experienced, what he wrote. Many of his characters grew up in the same time and New York area that he did. Many of them have a deep faith in Judaism, and many lose their families overseas, just as he once did. But they are all different in the coming-of-age choices they must make. Do they realize that Judaism isn't correct to them and must study the Bible? Do they understand that they need to pick artistry over their religion and thus become ostracized?
Writers often claim that the best writing is writing about what you know. Chaim Potok wrote about what he knew: the anxiety of being a Jew during a war that tried to execute your religion; coming of age and accepting responsibilites; the heartache of life not coming together.
Chaim Potok died in 2002 from a brain tumor. He left behind a legacy that many do not know, and a small idea of a third book of a series, what I believe to be his greatest works of all.
The Chosen
The Promise
In the Beginning
My Name is Asher Lev
The Gift of Asher Lev
*** The unwritten third story of Asher Lev
I Am the Clay
Davita's Harp

And many more...

Answer 4

Mark Twain, I would have to say. I love Faulkner too. I don't know if Will Rogers would fit in here, possibly.

Answer 5

no doubt that Jane yulen is best author of America...she is Hans Cristian Anderson of America.OK?