The Literary Canon

I was eating breakfast yesterday and noticed the June 4 issue of The New Yorker on the table. As I never read it anymore because I just have too much else going on, I opened it up and found David Remnick’s short obituary of Philip Roth. I was struck by this:

He was in competition with the best in American fiction–with Melville, James, Wharton, Hemingway, Faulkner, Cather, Ellison, Bellow, Morrison–but he was funnier, more spontaneous, than any of them.

That looks like a Top 10 list of American writers to me and therefore a good entrypoint into a long comment thread arguing about it. I have no problem considering Roth one of the 10 best fiction writers in American history, but I can definitely say my Top 10 would look quite a bit different. I can’t see how Twain isn’t on there–I guess he’s not formalist enough–but dump James for him. Ellison is wonderful, but he did only publish one completed novel. To be fair, Invisible Man might just be great enough for him to belong there, but I’d probably go with Wright instead. I confess a rather slim knowledge of Wharton, Cather, and Bellow–I’ve read all of them of course, but only small parts of their work. Melville seems like he’s on there just because he has to be and I’d rather read Hawthorne, but OK. Faulkner and Morrison, can’t argue with. And while I might replace Hemingway with Steinbeck, I grant that the former was more important.

So while this is a thread that will annoy the commenters who really dislike literary fiction, what should the literary fiction canon look like? What is your Top 10?