I’m re-reading Blood Meridian which seems to be regarded as “the Great American Novel” and I have no idea what that actually means.
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It means a book that captures and examines a fundamental American experience. By reading and understanding it, you get a deep picture of what American life was like for a particular American or class of Americans at a particular time, and that picture helps to understand a fundamental aspect of American culture in history.
Many books have been labeled “The Great American Novel”. _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ is one such book – that book helps to capture what rural life was like in the American South just before the abolition of slavery. Through the eyes of the protagonist, we understand what slavery was really like during that time and, through his journey, help to understand how many transformed their view on the morality of slavery during that period. This was a major cultural event that is somewhat uniquely American.
_The Great Gatsby_ is another such novel. Set in the middle of the Roaring 20s, it examines the empty decadence that came before the Great Depression. Through the eyes of Nick, we get a scathing critique of both old and new money in America and how no one was truly happy, no matter how much wealth you had. While not uniquely American, this was another major cultural point in US history – the book condemns the very concept of the American Dream as both unobtainable and fictitious.
I always thought the “Great American Novel” was supposed to be something that captured the mythological idea of the greatness and ingenuity of the American spirit. Blood Meridian is great, but horrendously dark and joyless.
I see something like Steinbeck’s “The Grapes Of Wrath” as a good contender, but I’m sure some other Redditors can list off other good titles as well.
It’s just a term, coined by John William De Forest in the 1800s, to refer to a hypothetical book that best encapsulates the spirit of the U.S. and those who live there. There’s also a tacit belief that this book would arguably be the best novel by an American author. So, just the quintessential American novel.
Keep in mind that this term started gaining traction around a century after the U.S. became a country, so it was during a time when people were starting to question and examine American literature and the arts as having its own identity. As time goes on and the country’s identity becomes increasingly multifaceted and historically layered, the term becomes increasingly meaningless.
On the road – Kerouac. I believe this coined the term, or the term was coined about it. Can’t remember which. Just a story about struggling and exploring across the country. Captures the mood of the times. I believe the Grapes of Wrath is another one, by steinbeck. It’s all about the struggle.
It came about from an idea that every great civilization produced an iconic piece of literature – like Dante’s Inferno for Italy, Shakespeare for England or War and Peace for Russia – and that, for the USA to truly arrive as a great world power it must do the same, and there was a race on to be the author that did it.
Honestly, it’s kind of fubar. And in any case the only reason that America doesn’t have a single piece of literature like that, is because it’s produced so much great literature, too much for any one work to be dominant. And I say that as a British person.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin really shook consciences in its time. It was a major phenomenon and will be forever linked to the imminent moments prior and leading to the Civil War.
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