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 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.
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