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I don't know if or where he's talked about it, but here's one clue I've found:

http://www.populistbooks.com/authors/i/john_irving/john_irving.htm

He's a big Dickens fan. Half of Trying to Save Piggy Sneed is Dickens appreciation, from what I remember. And the book of choice to be specifically honored in The Cider House Rules is none other than...

Writers that had things to say but delivered it in a way I did not care for:

Theodore Dreiser
Jules Verne
Charles Dickens
F. Scott Fitzgerald
James Joyce


It seemed like Dreiser didn't...

A list of disturbing novels would be incomplete without:
Gunter Grass - The Tin Drum
Flannery O'Connor - Wise Blood
Par Lagerkvist - The Dwarf


A list of bleak/depressing novels would be...

Nope. At least not that I can remember.

My vote for novel would probably be Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley.

Author is a tougher choice, as I have barely gotten past the more recognized novels by any British authors, and don't really...

I loved it. It caused me to go on to a few other Irving novels, which I also enjoyed though many of the themes got repetitive (bears, incest, Austria, hotels, etc.)...

I was easily hooked on The...

Dr. Seuss's works will be, if they are not considered so already, classics. If not in general then definitely within the realm occupied by the brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, etc.

I didn't know it was as qualitative a definition as "classic" or some other selective term. When I watch tv at three in the morning I can request some literature on a real estate program. I'm...

My mom watches Oprah every day. The last year or so, Oprah has been doing "the classics", with books like One Hundred Years of Solitude, Anna Karenina, East of Eden, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and...

Anthony Burgess; A Clockwork Orange

I loved it. The language really helps pull you into Alex's world, and ooh what a world it is.

I could have sworn he was on there, but I can't find him either. I have about a dozen different lists bookmarked, this one being my favorite as it does what I was doing anyways -- cross-checking the...

merrycollie - http://www.stanford.edu/~bkunde/best/bl-crank.htm#T
(I hope that works)

I like to peruse this list, as it lists the Modern Library, Radcliffe, and a couple other top lists and...

I love that book, though I doubt if it'll let me post one of my favorites...

I tend to get all my books at a place where they give me their store bookmark every time I buy something there, so I use those if I happen to see one laying around when the need arises. Otherwise,...

Have you checked with any area bookstores or anything to see if they have anything like that going on? The Twin Cities is full of lit nuts... where I work seems to be an English professor graveyard,...

I wasn't overly impressed with Catcher in the Rye when I first read it, though I still enjoyed it and find a great many things to think about in there. But what really bowled me over were Nine...

Some other similarities:

The turtle is determined to go in one direction, though where and what for, Tom Joad does not know. Similarly the Joad family travels to California, resolved to get there,...

Ooh I just read this book a week or two ago and sort of wondered the same thing. All I could come up with was:
Tom Joad disappearing wasn't a real upper or downer ending, and from what else I've...

Watch tv for more than 30 minutes around here and you're likely to see enough drug commercials to bring up Brave New World memories.

H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds also supposedly...

I think Hermann Hesse's "Siddhartha" might fit in there pretty well.

He (the narrator, Rabo Karabekian) tells the story of Bluebeard killing his wives and putting them all in a room because he (Rabo, once again) has a barn/shed that is locked up and he won't let...

I could see Vonnegut being a bit upset by the Dresden firebombing, since he was in the midst of it. It definitely comes up in his writing a lot.

For some other the-world-just-sorta-ended fun,...

I can't think of much...

E.M. Forster's "A Passage to India"
Robert Graves' "The Siege and Fall of Troy" (currently reading a collection of his short stories)
Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's...

I sure didn't think "Time Must Have a Stop" was by any means bad, but it might not make it to any list I might make of favorite or best novels. It was just... worth it but nothing spectacular. Hope...