The Great British Novel

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When a young person tells you they want to be a writer, you say, You might write THE Great American Novel. You don't say, You might write the NEXT Great American Novel. The Great American Novel is a mythical, ever elusive ideal. It came out of the struggle of Americans to overcome their European literary traditions. Hemingway fighting Turgenev and then taking on Tolstoy. The Americas and the British don't have and don't need THE great novel. And you'd be hard-pressed to find a Russian or a German one today either.