{"id":3657,"date":"2017-01-09T12:00:54","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T18:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=3657"},"modified":"2017-01-09T12:03:51","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T18:03:51","slug":"writer-offers-brief-survey-of-the-great-american-novels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2017\/01\/09\/writer-offers-brief-survey-of-the-great-american-novels\/","title":{"rendered":"Writer offers Brief Survey of the Great American Novel(s)"},"content":{"rendered":"

You’ve heard the debate. Probably participated, as well.\u00a0Is there a Great American Novel<\/em>?<\/p>\n

\"literary-map-of-us-america-reads-anthology\"<\/a>Emily Temple<\/strong>, writing for Lit Hub<\/em><\/a>, takes readers back to 1868 when John William DeForest “coined the now inescapable term ‘the great American novel’ in the title of an essay<\/a> in\u00a0The Nation\u2014<\/em>a term he defined as representing “the picture of the ordinary emotions and manners of American existence.” DeForest thought that the Great American Novel hadn’t been written yet, but since his early speculation\u00a0there’s been no shortage of “contenders.”<\/p>\n

Temple assembles a list of the usual suspects plus a few unique ones, among them (of course) John Updike’s\u00a0Rabbit, Run<\/em> (or rather, the collective\u00a0Rabbit<\/em> tetralogy). She blurbs each entry with a learned quote. For Updike it’s\u00a0one from Troy Patterson written for\u00a0Slate<\/a><\/em> in 2009:\u00a0“To consider the 1,700-odd pages of his Harry Angstrom saga\u2014the bounding tetralogy of\u00a0Rabbit\u00a0<\/em>books and their limping postscript\u2014is to find yourself considering a work with an excellent claim as the Great American Novel, but you’d be forgiven for preferring to spend time with four or five Very Good ones.”<\/p>\n

Other contenders on Temple’s non-exhaustive list are:<\/p>\n

The Great Gatsby<\/em>, F. Scott Fitzgerald
\nMoby-Dick<\/em>, Herman Melville
\nTo Kill a Mockingbird<\/em>, Harper Lee
\nThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/em>, Mark Twain
\nMason & Dixon<\/em>, Thomas Pynchon
\nAmerican Psycho<\/em>, Bret Easton Ellis
\nThe Grapes of Wrath<\/em>, John Steinbeck
\nUnderworld<\/em>, Don DeLillo
\nLolita<\/em>, Vladimir Nabokov
\nU.S.A.<\/em>, John Dos Passos
\nInvisible Man<\/em>, Ralph Ellison
\nBlood Meridian<\/em>, Cormac McCarthy
\nLight in August<\/em>, William Faulkner
\nAbsalom, Absalom!<\/em>, William Faulkner
\nInfinite Jest<\/em>, David Foster Wallace
\nThe Adventures of Augie March<\/em>, Saul Bellow
\nGentlemen Prefer Blondes<\/em>, Anita Loos
\nBeloved<\/em>, Toni Morrison
\nThe Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay<\/em>, Michael Chabon
\nFreedom<\/em>, Jonathan Franzen
\nThe Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao<\/em>, Junot D\u00edaz
\nThese Dreams of You<\/em>, Steve Erickson
\nThe Flame Throwers<\/em>, Rachel Kushner<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You’ve heard the debate. Probably participated, as well.\u00a0Is there a Great American Novel? Emily Temple, writing for Lit Hub, takes readers back to 1868 when John William DeForest “coined the now inescapable term ‘the great American novel’ in the title … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lists","category-updike-in-context"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3657"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3661,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3657\/revisions\/3661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}