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Get Breaking News on your cellLiterary smackdown: Huck Finn vs. Gatsby vs. Beloved
6:13 AM Thu, Jul 03, 2008 | Permalink
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July 2008
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Before everyone scatters to the beach/mountains/liquor store for the holiday weekend, are you up for a meaningless literary debate? Good, here we go. It's an American literature version of "Beatles vs. Rolling Stones" battle for July 4: Which is the greatest American novel: Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, F.Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby or Toni Morrison's Beloved?
Gatsby deals with the very American ideals of excess wealth and the nature of being a self-made man. And it has the closing line most discussed by high school English teachers.
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Huck Finn has contains the Mississippi River, a very American road trip (albeit on a raft) and a confrontation of racial issues that's still rattling us all these years later. It also has the blessing of Hemingway's quote: "All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."
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