12-11-2017, 05:20 AM
I don't know. I don't agree with that definition, and it seems a pointless idea to me. Moby-Dick may have used the sea as a symbol for American life. And the narrator seemed a man without a country. And the book was thought of as a flop, a critical failure in the 1800s. Maybe that's what America is all about.
I don't see the phrase used much anymore. Maybe the concept has been changed by people who think it's already been accomplished. From what I've read from the writers themselves, the idea was a motivating challenge rather than anything else. Based on an idea of someone like Tolstoy rather than any historical fact. As facts are mere deerticks attached to a truth, writers don't trouble so much with them, and create their own worlds. I think Kafka's American novel is a great american novel. Though certainly not the Great American Novel. But maybe close.
I don't see the phrase used much anymore. Maybe the concept has been changed by people who think it's already been accomplished. From what I've read from the writers themselves, the idea was a motivating challenge rather than anything else. Based on an idea of someone like Tolstoy rather than any historical fact. As facts are mere deerticks attached to a truth, writers don't trouble so much with them, and create their own worlds. I think Kafka's American novel is a great american novel. Though certainly not the Great American Novel. But maybe close.