If you were teaching a college course called "Major American Authors", which six authors would you choose?

I will say that even though i LOVE reading I wouldn’t be able to formulate a list. I read mostly contemporary works. I do have one vote though:
Sherman Alexie (he is a predominant Native American author and we can’t leave out Native people when we talk about the Americas).

In no particular order and realizing there are many other possibilities:

Mark Twain
Willa Cather
Edith Wharton
F. Scott Fitzgerald
William Faulkner
John Steinbeck

Publius, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hunter S Thompson and Jack Kerouac.

Not a definitive list, by far, but six that I just came up with and think are worth study.

Edgar Allen Poe
William Faulkner
J.D. Salinger
Hunter S. Thompson
Tom Robbins

I’ve basically ignored anything but the 20th century except with Poe. (And Mark Twain, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald have all already been mentioned.)

So has Faulkner, actually, but I couldn’t leave him off my list.

Langston Hughes would be a must in my opinion. I think F. Scott Fitzgerald would be a good choice as well. Ursula K. Le Guin would add some flair and be unusual. Amy Tan would present a different view culturally (and she is an amazing writer).

That’s it, I can’t think of anyone else that is worthy.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Edgar Allen Poe
Mark Twain
William Faulkner
John Steinbeck
Ernest Hemingway

I don’t know, but I have to say, any list that doesn’t include Poe is WRONG. The end.

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man
John Updike
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
James Michener
Louise Erdrich
Adrienne Rich

@Yarnlady: Lurve for Vonnegut!

@MacBean: That’s kinda how I feel about any list that includes Hemingway.

These are great responses! I’m especially interested to see the authors of color that you recommended. When you’re compiling this list, it’s especially hard to get women and minority authors in there. My personal list would be Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald or Hemingway, and I’d like to save that last spot for someone from 1950 onward, but I can’t decide who.

I’d mix it up, throw in the old and the new.

Henry James
James Baldwin
Virginia Woolf
William S. Burroughs
Tomi Morrison
Steve Erickson

I’d add Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright (though their heyday was the 30s and 40s).

I think the list of Great American Authors will include David Foster Wallace in about 10 years.

Mark Twain
Walt Whitman
Edgar Allan Poe
Zora Neale Hurston
Henry James
Ernest Hemingway

@tinyfaery – Virginia Woolf is a personal favorite of mine, and I’d welcome the opportunity to teach her, but she’s not American. She’s English.

I don’t believe she ever traveled to the United States, though her father, Leslie Stephen, was very fond of the Boston area and had many friends there. One of those friends, James Russell Lowell, was Virginia Woolf’s godfather.

Hawthorne
Poe
Twain
Hemingway
Woolf
Kerouac

James Fenimore Cooper
Edgar Allan Poe
Herman Melville
Mark Twain
Zora Neale Hurston
John Steinbeck

But it is actually very difficult to pick.

Lurve for Melville.

Mark Twain
Edgar Allen Poe
O. Henry
F. Scott Fitzgerald
William Faulkner
John Steinbeck

@VzzBzz – O. Henry is very entertaining, but I am not certain he could be called a “Great American Writer.”

Faulkner, OTOH, is certainly considered a Great Writer by many, but he sure is hard to read in my opinion.

I think Toni Morrison would be a great choice for 20th century, woman and African-American. I think Beloved is one of the great American novels. Hadn’t thought of her.

Melville is also a great choice.

@janbb
that’s what we decided to, that Toni Morrison kind of corrects both problems.

This was my criteria for choosing someone “major”: that they have at least 2 works that are widely regarded today as “classics” today, and that they work in more than one genre. Emily Dickinson is my obvious exception to those rules, but because she was so prolific with her poetry, I think it’s merited. There are plenty of 19th century writers you could substitute though.

Yes – in my initial list, I was trying to cover regional diversity, gender and having written something significant about the American experience. It’s hard to limit it to just 6!

No one has mentioned Ayn Rand. Not a popular writer among this crowd, regrettably, but a phenomenal writer and philosopher nonetheless. Everyone else I’ve seen on these lists is rather…how shall I put it…overdone?

Ayn Rand tends to be incredibly popular with high school and college students, but then they mature. Objectivism basically says what many young folks would like to believe is the way life should work, that man is a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute. There is no god, no spiritual life and no altruism. Most people figure out this isn’t really the case once they have children.

She also was born and raised in Russia, and while she became an American citizen in 1931, her beliefs were strongly influenced by her experiences in Russia rather than themes underlying American life. Thus, she doesn’t really reflect American literature.

@Darwin I couldn’t have said it better myself. When the immature reader encounters Ayn Rand, they aren’t able to make the proper value judgments, her work is much better when read after most of the others listed above, if at all.

@Poser
You can’t really be “major” without being a little overdone though. Otherwise you’re sort of just up and coming.

I’ve also been pondering what six I would choose for a course on “Great Overlooked American Authors”.