Books: In search of The Great American Novel
What is The Great American Novel? It probably should be epic, cover at least one important era critical to our history, feature characters reflective of the American experience, and somehow leave the reader with a feeling that only an American could really have written or truly appreciated the experience. My recent reading has allowed me to sample several candidates for The Great American Novel. Do any make the grade?
Philip Roth's The Great American Novel (1987) begins: "They call me Smitty"--like Moby Dick (a candidate), the prelude introduces us to the narrator, here an early 1900s sportswriter named Smitty who is fond of alliteration and extravagant language, and who seeks to write a great novel about baseball (hence the tongue-in-cheek title). The novel is an amusing yarn about the demise of the fictional Patriot League, an early competitor of the American and National leagues. Roth uses ample sarcastic humor to parody modern sports foibles (the players dope on chemically altered all-American Wheaties, The Breakfast of Champions) and echo baseball eccentricities of yore (e.g. the use of player-midgets to draw crowds, here perhaps seen by Roth as analogous to the 1940's debut of Jackie Robinson more as a ticket sales promotion than as a path breaking symbol of equality). There is ample reflection and sarcasm about America, e.g. this passage about the American aversion to losing:
While a bit too hyperbolic, over-the-top and occasionally silly for me, The Great American Novel is an amusing summer read if you are interested in baseball. The intro does contain a fascinating "nested boxes" section, in which the narrator chats with Ernest Hemingway (another Great American Novel candidate), who disparages several candidates for The Great American Novel: Moby Dick ("a book about blubber"), The Scarlet Letter ("the only one who's got any balls is the heroine"), and Huckleberry Finn ("adventure story for kids"). I'd add The Great Gatsby--about as denervated as a pithed lobster. Fitzgerald is not comparable to Roth, Updike, or Twain in drawing convincing characters. I don't agree with the denigration of Huckleberry Finn--I recently re-read it and found it to be an extraordinary chronicle of racism, regional language, history and humor, and American optimism in the face of adversity, just like the inspiring Obama speech at this week's convention. BTW, I think a well written biography about President Obama might stand in for The Great American Novel, or at least The Great American Story.
A better candidate from Philip Roth is American Pastoral (1997), which chronicles the failed American dream of a blond Jewish high school sports hero nicknamed The Swede, whose well ordered life running a family-owned Newark factory disintegrates after the race riots of the 1960's. Its tone is 180 degrees different from the above Roth farce; it's a dark, cynical view of a failed American Dream, as the somewhat dumbfounded protagonist neither relishes his local sports celebrity (unlike Donald Trump) nor feels he deserves the bad breaks he receives as the bland 1950's turn into the violent 1960s, complete with his daughter evolving into a Patty Hearst-style terrorist. We all know someone like the Swede, who maxed out in high school; this is at the heart of the dissatisfaction of many middle class white men of our time. Just as Moby Dick teaches us more than we wanted to know about the details of whaling, American Pastoral does so for the manufacture of hand-cut leather gloves, thus linking us to another Great American Novel candidate. Overall, this is a fast moving, taut paean to and critique of the values of my parent's generation, but is a little too pessimistic to be my Great American Novel.
John Updike also writes about average people's lives as reflections of historical evolution, just as modern social historians are now writing more about average people, not just kings and presidents. In the Beauty of the Lillies (1996) is a wonderful saga of four generations of an American family, taking us from beginning to end of the turbulent 20th century. The religious homogeneity and forced certainty of the early 1900's morphs into the individuality, narcissism and fake spirituality of the 1980's, with the novel's climax set in a Waco-style cult standoff. In Updike's world, neither vision works. People mostly gain their satisfaction from smaller things like sex and companionship, and must make do as best they can in a turbulent world. Updike writes with poetry about small personal events, e.g.:
The greatness of the Rabbit novels lies big and small: in both their scope and vividly drawn characters that so reflect American society, and in the micro-environments so keenly observed by Updike, a poet at heart. You must read these novels for narrative sweep, but also force yourself to slow down to appreciate his exceptionally detailed word-painting. While I still am drawn to Huckleberry Finn, I cannot think of a better choice for The Great American Novel. Read The Rabbit Angstrom Tetrology as one epic, as the author intended.
Philip Roth's The Great American Novel (1987) begins: "They call me Smitty"--like Moby Dick (a candidate), the prelude introduces us to the narrator, here an early 1900s sportswriter named Smitty who is fond of alliteration and extravagant language, and who seeks to write a great novel about baseball (hence the tongue-in-cheek title). The novel is an amusing yarn about the demise of the fictional Patriot League, an early competitor of the American and National leagues. Roth uses ample sarcastic humor to parody modern sports foibles (the players dope on chemically altered all-American Wheaties, The Breakfast of Champions) and echo baseball eccentricities of yore (e.g. the use of player-midgets to draw crowds, here perhaps seen by Roth as analogous to the 1940's debut of Jackie Robinson more as a ticket sales promotion than as a path breaking symbol of equality). There is ample reflection and sarcasm about America, e.g. this passage about the American aversion to losing:
- All the world loves a winner......Losing is tedious. Losing is exhausting. Losing is uninteresting. Losing is depressing. Losing is boring. Losing is debilitating. Losing is compromising. Losing is shameful. Losing is humiliating. Losing is infuriating. Losing is disappointing. Losing is incomprehensible. Losing makes for headaches, muscle tension, skin eruptions, ulcers, indigestion, and for mental disorders of every kind. Losing is bad for confidence, pride, business, peace of mind, family harmony, love, sexual potency, concentration, and much much more. Losing is bad for people of all ages, races, and religions, it is as bad for infants for the elderly, for women as for men. Losing makes people howl, scream, hide, lie , smolder, envy, hate and quit. Losing is probably the single biggest cause of suicide in the world, and of murder. Losing makes the benign malicious, the generous stingy, the brave fearful, the healthy ill, and the kindly bitter. Losing is universally despised, as well it should be. The sooner we get rid of losing, the happier everyone will be.
While a bit too hyperbolic, over-the-top and occasionally silly for me, The Great American Novel is an amusing summer read if you are interested in baseball. The intro does contain a fascinating "nested boxes" section, in which the narrator chats with Ernest Hemingway (another Great American Novel candidate), who disparages several candidates for The Great American Novel: Moby Dick ("a book about blubber"), The Scarlet Letter ("the only one who's got any balls is the heroine"), and Huckleberry Finn ("adventure story for kids"). I'd add The Great Gatsby--about as denervated as a pithed lobster. Fitzgerald is not comparable to Roth, Updike, or Twain in drawing convincing characters. I don't agree with the denigration of Huckleberry Finn--I recently re-read it and found it to be an extraordinary chronicle of racism, regional language, history and humor, and American optimism in the face of adversity, just like the inspiring Obama speech at this week's convention. BTW, I think a well written biography about President Obama might stand in for The Great American Novel, or at least The Great American Story.
A better candidate from Philip Roth is American Pastoral (1997), which chronicles the failed American dream of a blond Jewish high school sports hero nicknamed The Swede, whose well ordered life running a family-owned Newark factory disintegrates after the race riots of the 1960's. Its tone is 180 degrees different from the above Roth farce; it's a dark, cynical view of a failed American Dream, as the somewhat dumbfounded protagonist neither relishes his local sports celebrity (unlike Donald Trump) nor feels he deserves the bad breaks he receives as the bland 1950's turn into the violent 1960s, complete with his daughter evolving into a Patty Hearst-style terrorist. We all know someone like the Swede, who maxed out in high school; this is at the heart of the dissatisfaction of many middle class white men of our time. Just as Moby Dick teaches us more than we wanted to know about the details of whaling, American Pastoral does so for the manufacture of hand-cut leather gloves, thus linking us to another Great American Novel candidate. Overall, this is a fast moving, taut paean to and critique of the values of my parent's generation, but is a little too pessimistic to be my Great American Novel.
John Updike also writes about average people's lives as reflections of historical evolution, just as modern social historians are now writing more about average people, not just kings and presidents. In the Beauty of the Lillies (1996) is a wonderful saga of four generations of an American family, taking us from beginning to end of the turbulent 20th century. The religious homogeneity and forced certainty of the early 1900's morphs into the individuality, narcissism and fake spirituality of the 1980's, with the novel's climax set in a Waco-style cult standoff. In Updike's world, neither vision works. People mostly gain their satisfaction from smaller things like sex and companionship, and must make do as best they can in a turbulent world. Updike writes with poetry about small personal events, e.g.:
- At the moment when Mary Pickford fainted, the Rev. Clarence Arthur Wilmot, down in the rectory of the Fourth Presbyterian Church at the corner of Straight Street and Broadway, felt the last particles of his faith leave him. The sensation was distinct -- a visceral surrender, a set of dark sparkling bubbles escaping upward.
This is a terrific novel that should be read by anyone interested in how the 20th century got us where we are now.
But I think my leading candidate for The Great American Novel(s) is Updike's Rabbit Angstrom: A Tetrology (1960-1990). While I had read Rabbit Run as a young man, I recently read these novels in one fell swoop, and was blown away by the construction, the pacing, the poetry, and the insight into the angst, triumph, and confusion present in all of us. It is extraordinary how Updike can create a very average, dully normal protagonist that somehow reflects every critical trend of the late 20th century and demonstrates all of our responses to this turmoil. The events of the tetrology are carefully connected and self referential, making a consecutive read of the 1200+ pages very satisfying, much like seeing the scope and vision of a well constructed TV serial (e.g. The Wire) when all episodes are viewed together. Updike sees poetry and cosmic import in the smallest of human experiences and natural things, and is perhaps the most detailed (and explicit) admirer of good sex that I have read. I both smiled and cringed at his keen descriptions of the blandness of Florida retirement communities, the stifling conformity of the suburbs, and the religious conformity and repression of middle America. His characters, like Roth's are buffeted by the 1960's, but somehow Updike's terrorism seems more human, more connected to existence, and less operatic than Roth's. It is this mix of poetry and groundedness that makes Updike such a magnificent writer in the Rabbit novels. For example, note this apt description of the involuted isolation and tribal-ness of late 1950's America:
- Outdoors it is growing dark and cool. The Norway maples exhale the smell of their sticky new buds and the broad living room windows along Wilbur Street show beyond the silver patch of a television set the warm bulbs burning in kitchens, like fires at the backs of caves.
Or this grim description of 1970's suburban sprawl and rape of nature:
- Usually on a Saturday Route 111 is buzzing with shoppers pillaging the malls hacked form the former fields of corn, rye, tomatoes, cabbages and strawberries. Across the highway, the four concrete lanes and the median divider of aluminum battered by many forgotten accidents, stands a low building faced in dark clinker brick that in the years since Harry watched its shell being slapped together of plywood has been a succession of unsuccessful restaurants and now serves as the Chick Wagon, a specializing in barbecued take-outs.... Beyond its lot littered with flattened takeout cartons a lone tree, a dusty maple, drinks from a stream that has become a mere ditch.
The greatness of the Rabbit novels lies big and small: in both their scope and vividly drawn characters that so reflect American society, and in the micro-environments so keenly observed by Updike, a poet at heart. You must read these novels for narrative sweep, but also force yourself to slow down to appreciate his exceptionally detailed word-painting. While I still am drawn to Huckleberry Finn, I cannot think of a better choice for The Great American Novel. Read The Rabbit Angstrom Tetrology as one epic, as the author intended.
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