6 Novels about America. And what’s wrong with it.

by Prentis Rollins

|

6 books

A lot of the finest American literature is comprised of books about America—if only inadvertently (as are the 6 books in my list). America: the land of opportunity, freedom, wide open spaces, self-realization. America: the republic, the constitutional democracy, the nation founded and forever dependent on an idea—we the people are self-determining. And America: the cruel bully, at home and abroad; the hypocrite, tearing itself asunder with its own contradictions and seething psychoses. This patient, at once heroic and profoundly sick, has many times found itself on the couches of psychoanalyzing authors—with astonishing results.

Read more... Read less...

Babbitt

Sinclair Lewis, 2015

Sinclair Lewis was a great master of the diagnostic novel. In Babbitt, he’s diagnosing George Babbitt—46, a respectable businessman living with his wife and children in the idyllic suburbs, a rotarian, a golfer, a perfectly conforming uber-nebbish. And at a certain point, Babbitt begins to suspect that something is missing—he lacks the vocabulary to say what it is, but he begins rebelling in some very amusing ways. Written over a century ago, Babbitt remains an oddly topical critique of American conformism and smug complacency. You may not like George Babbitt—but by the novel’s rousing wrap-up, I guarantee you’ll be cheering for him.

Atlas Shrugged

For all her myriad shortcomings as a writer, and the polarizing nature of her capitalist rhetoric, Ayn Rand had a passionate love for her adopted homeland. For her, America was the natural home of reason, rational self-interest, and self-aggrandizement through thought and effort. Atlas Shrugged depicts a dystopian America where thought and effort are being rendered futile by a burgeoning authoritarian regime. Train executive Dagny Taggart tries to keep her company, Taggart Transcontinental, afloat through this ordeal, and falls in love with the mysterious genius/rationalist savior John Galt along the way. Whether you love Rand’s politics or hate them, Atlas Shrugged remains an important, era-defining book--and one hell of an enthralling, thought-provoking yarn.

The Human Stain

Philip Roth, 2001

The Human Stain is set in 1998, the year of Bill Clinton’s impeachment, a year in which America rolled pig-like in the muck of righteous sanctimony. Coleman Silk, 70-ish, is a respected professor of classics at a posh New England college. He’s fired after trumped-up charges of racism are levelled at him (he’s cancelled, before that usage of the word even existed). What Roth then does is magic—we slowly learn Silk’s backstory, and everything we had assumed goes right out the window. The Human Stain was published in 2000, and eerily presages the storm of wokeness and cancel-culture we now inhabit. It is a meditation on American race-relations, American self-invention, and academic hypocrisy. It is also unforgettable.

The Jungle

Upton Sinclair, 2004

In 1904, Upton Sinclair spent 7 weeks incognito in the Chicago meatpacking plants—the result was The Jungle, a passionate novel/expose about the gauntlet of horrors facing the workers therein. Jurgis Rudkus is a Lithuanian immigrant; things go from bad to worse in the plants for him and his large family: exploitation by con men, brutal, unhygienic conditions, illness, multiple deaths in the family—Jurgis at one point ends up working in the fertilizer works, which is considered ‘death for the dead’ amongst the workers, so low is their life-expectancy there. A ghastly, harrowing novel that speaks to the plight of immigrants even today, The Jungle will stick in your craw like a chunk of tainted beef.

The Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck, 2023

The Grapes of Wrath stands shoulder to shoulder with The Jungle in its unflinching depiction of the agonies inflicted on poor people just trying to survive in America. Only the poor here are the Joad family: native-born Oklahoma farmers forced to flee the state in the wake of depression-era dust bowl devastation. The Joads make their way to California, tempted by the promise of plenteous work and good wages—only to be met with hideous exploitation, starvation, and corporate and police violence. The Grapes of Wrath remains a topical and stinging indictment of American callousness and indifference to the suffering of its own. The final scene left me in tears for a week.

The Stepford Wives

Ira Levin, 2011

Joanna Eberhart is a wife, the mother of two children, a talented photographer, and a newly-arrived transplant in the idyllic suburban town of Stepford, Connecticut. She becomes increasingly convinced that the impossibly beautiful, homespun, docile wives surrounding her have been brainwashed or otherwise dinked-with by the town husbands—especially after her friend Bobbie (also a new arrival) turns eerily perfect after a ‘nice weekend away’ with her husband. The mystery and tension builds like a gathering icy wind in this feminist horror classic. The Stepford Wives is a darkly funny takedown of the American male’s response to feminism, brain-dead American consumerism, and the American obsession with uniformity and physical perfection.