my diary desu

>>25637058
So many novels are first-person that this question is not really much less pointless than “What's the greatest novel?”

Perhaps a slightly less silly question: "If all novels are divided into two groups, first- and third-person, is one group appreciably better, and if so, which?"

Yes, the category edges are a bit fuzzy sometimes:
— books with both first and third person (Ulysses, The Sound And The Fury)
— books technically in third person but so tightly anchored on one character that they're effectively first-person (Wolf Hall)
— books with a thin first-person framework around an effectively third-person narrative (Moby Dick, Lord Jim)
— other oddball things, like dialogue-only books [Kiss Of The Spider Woman]

But setting that aside, my guess would be that third has more stuff. Most of Dickens, Hemingway, Henry James, Tolstoy, Dumas, Balzac, D. H. Lawrence, etc. Austen is always third, as is Cormac.

>>25637058
The Good Soldier and Lolita are the only contenders of note I can think of.

>>25637058
Lolita makes the best use of first person perspective.

Pale Fire.

First person + someone recounting events and writing them down = peak writing