If you haven’t heard of Rachel Kushner, then you probably haven’t heard that, according to Salon‘s Laura Miller, she’s written the Great American Novel. So says Miller in her June 5, 2013 review-article, “Rachel Kushner’s ambitious new novel scares male critics.”
John Updike is mentioned several times as one of the old guard writers expected to have produced such a work . . . but maybe he already has. Published as a collection by Everyman’s Library, Rabbit Angstrom: A Tetralogy tells the sweeping saga of an ordinary, middle-class man in 20th Century America. That in itself would seem a marvelous enough achievement to qualify for the title, but then to have it validated with two out of four books receiving the Pulitzer Prize?
Laura’s assessment is actually this:
“The Flamethrowers” isn’t a perfect novel — but “ambitious” novels rarely are. Still, it is very good, especially in parts, and above all it is unsettling.
The article is about what gets considered a Great American Novel, about it being exclusive to people with dicks. Here’s someone doing the ambitious thing, without one.