Tracking the ever-elusive Great American Novel

[MalignD at aol.com]

<< Speaking of which, maybe you could clarify why you'd label (and dismiss) 
Toni Morrison's work as "[s]elf-consciously ethnic literature", though not 
Philip Roth's? (Or Pynchon's for that matter.)>>

Because I think the shoe fits in the one case, and not in the others.

What I meant and perhaps was not clear about, was the difference between 
writing about Jews, Jews as grist, as Roth does, and correcting the record, which 
is what I think Morrison does.  

I think fiction that attempts to do anything but be good fiction is doomed to 
mediocrity.