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.
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