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’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.
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