But if you had to pick just one …
That’s my mantra this time of year, as I try to entice friends and colleagues into playing my favorite parlor game: Name the Great American Novel.
Resistance is always prompt and principled: There’s no such thing. America is large and diverse; different novels have different agendas; and what does “great” actually mean, anyway?
To which I always retort: Yeah, yeah. But if you had to pick …
With the glorious Fourth looming dead ahead, it’s an excellent time to play the home version of this game: What’s your pick for Great American Novel? Not the best novel written by an American. Rather, the best novel written by an American that most clearly reflects the spirit, character and destiny of America, both its good and bad sides, its mistakes and its triumphs.
Complicated process
It’s more than a game, of course. Selecting a novel that encapsulates a nation’s soul is a sneaky means of interrogating your deep beliefs about the place, your prejudices and your expectations. When I tried it in 2003, I came up with Theodore Dreiser’s “An American Tragedy” (1925), the bleak and somewhat clumsily written tale of ambition and murder. What can I say? It was that kind of year.
But I’ve changed my mind regarding the Best American Novel, as I do about as often as I change the oil in my car — about every three books or 3,000 miles, whichever comes first. At first, it was a tossup between John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” (1939) and Bret Easton Ellis’ “American Psycho” (1991). And because you probably couldn’t find two novels more diametrically opposed in subject matter, style and critical reputation, I should perhaps warn you that this Great American Book-picking pastime is not for the faint of heart or logical of outlook. It’s a messy, complicated business. It can evoke puzzled glances and churning stomachs. (All of which makes it sound a great deal like a certain bowl of potato salad I brought to a memorable July 4th picnic, but never mind.)
Before settling on Steinbeck or Ellis, I also considered F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” (1925), because of its lovely theme of perpetual self-invention. It’s such an American ideal, this notion of creating yourself anew — as Gatsby, nee James Gatz, does — and it is indestructible. Before the tragedy kicks in, America is the land toward which a man can look and see “something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”
But the tragedy must be present, too, and not just the private tragedy of a lovesick guy. That’s why I put aside “Gatsby” and moved on to “Grapes of Wrath,” in which Steinbeck gives his homeland a sock in the jaw. It’s written with ravishing biblical cadences and an epic sweep, and it’s angry and bitter and unforgettable. But the country has outgrown Steinbeck, I think. His world was the world of the 1930s and ’40s, and the novel, for all of its majesty, feels as dusty as Tom Joad’s trousers.
Simple dichotomies
Willa Cather, anyone? I could argue on behalf of “My Antonia” (1918) and “Song of the Lark” (1915), with their deceptively simply dichotomies of the rural and urban worlds. Like Fitzgerald, Cather wrote simply and cleanly about that beautiful, doomed species: the American dreamer. Again, though, her novels are a bit frayed by time. And Cather’s world is peculiarly sexless, which only matters if you’re asking them to encompass the entire American experience.
Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” (1985) is a contender. Ditto for Joyce Carol Oates’ “You Must Remember This” (1987). Neither writer is afraid to get her or his hands dirty, reaching into the dark guts of this country in search of the meat, the meat that’s always closest to the bone.
Still, for the purpose of being cantankerous and starting arguments with the many kind folks who e-mail me, I’m momentarily partial to the violent incantations of “American Psycho.” Reviled upon its initial publication for its gleeful gore, Ellis’ novel about an unrepentant serial killer strikes me these days as witty and knowing. It’s filled with brand names and sex and social anxiety, a triumvirate typically ignored by novels that focus only on a narrator’s interior journey.
For this precious nanosecond, then, I’m going with “American Psycho.” The “in” box for hate mail at jikeller@tribune.com awaits your submissions. Got an idea for best American novel? Send it on — along with your permission to publish.
Happy Fourth, everybody.
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jikeller@tribune.com
