Is the Great American Novel Destroying Novelists?

February 8, 2010 - 1:00pm — Blake

Is the Great American Novel Destroying Novelists?
Is the idea of the Great American Novel the worst thing that ever happened to great American novelists? Some days it does seem that way. American authors who struggle to define the American experience by cramming it all into one novel almost inevitably come to some version of grief, and no one epitomizes this dilemma better than Ralph Ellison, who published only stories and essays in the 40 years after he dazzled the literary world with Invisible Man. It was no secret that he was working on a second novel all that time—he published excerpts while alive, and a novel-length fragment appeared a decade ago.