Is The Great Gatsby the Great American Novel?

[Jeff Sunbury]

Dept. of splitting hairs i.e. Schizotrichosis - a neologism meaning "an
abnormal condition of splitting hairs" - I love Gertrude Stein, born in
America, wrote about America, inspired American writers, musicians, and
artists; but an avowed expat living in Paris. Doesn't that make her
Parisian? And her dog walker, Paul Bowles. He wrote some good literature
AND good music but lived in Tunisia; and Jane, his wife (insert 'Jetsons'
cartoon theme 'Chopsticks' played on marimbas here).


On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 6:20 PM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com>wrote:

> Can't quite follow your logic here. In any event, why can't GR qualify? It
> does take on American racism. It is clearly an American novel, written by
> an American, it is about America, surely, and while its setting is not
> restricted to the USA, it is uniquely American through and through. The
> critical error has long been corrected, trp, writes American, is. American.
>
>
> On Sunday, May 5, 2013, wrote:
>
>> Not all great American books would be in the running for Great American
>> Novel, unless that grandiose term simply means any great (well-written,
>> and/or with unforgettable characters, and/or incredibly entertaining or
>> moving or thought-provoking subject-matter, and/or etc.) novel written by
>> someone who has resided in the US for a reasonable amount of time (is
>> Nabokov really an American writer? Plenty of arguments to be made one way
>> or the other.) But I think most people would say that to qualify for the
>> title, a novel has to express some sort of overriding theme that's uniquely
>> American. Books that deal with American racism (Invisible Man, Huck Finn,
>> Beloved, To Kill a Mockingbird), or books with a broad panoramic scope
>> (USA, Against the Day) might be an example. But they aren't necessarily the
>> greatest books ever written in America. And where do Vonnegut and Heller
>> and Philip K. Dick fit in? What about On the Road (poorly written, but very
>> American). Confederacy of Dunces? Little Women, even. Gravity's Rainbow is,
>> in the opinion of many of us here, one of the greatest American books, but,
>> thematically, I don't think it's uniquely American, and certainly doesn't
>> qualify as a Great American Novel. So maybe being the Great American Novel
>> isn't all it's cracked up to be. As Tara points out, the 20th century was
>> the American century, and if it wasn't written by then, it ain't gonna be
>> written any time soon.
>>
>> Laura
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: jochen stremmel **
>> Sent: May 5, 2013 4:56 PM
>> To: malignd at aol.com
>> Cc: pynchon -l **
>> Subject: Re: Is The Great Gatsby the Great American Novel?
>>
>> Found One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest more daring.
>> Greater and more American, too.
>>
>> And Flannery O'Connor couldn't write rings around Hammett.
>>
>> And I seem to remember that nobody mentioned Everybody's Autobiography or
>> anything else written by Gertrude Stein?
>>
>>
>> 2013/5/5 <malignd at aol.com>
>>
>>> To pitch in another suggestion -- Sometimes a Great Notion
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
>>> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>> Sent: Sun, May 5, 2013 3:28 pm
>>> Subject: Re: Is The Great Gatsby the Great American Novel?
>>>
>>>
>>> Probably because none of these are called great by anyone in the USA.
>>> Rushdie, a double immigrant, but only to London, then to nyc, where, an
>>> understanding of America is, while not impossible, certainly idealized, in
>>> the romantic sense because nyc is an immigrant's world, where, unlike the
>>> immigrant experience in Europe, immigrants have great success, are not the
>>> poor rural masses who find rigid classes, but are skilled to educated
>>> working to professional class, and in a generation, are in th middle of it
>>> all, are New Yorkers, as Rushdie said in a recent interview, in no time. So
>>> Rushdie is right to say that he bothers who bombed boston were the dark
>>> side of this success story, or what their uncle called them, losers.
>>> On Sunday, May 5, 2013, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Three novels which haven't been mentioned yet:
>>>>
>>>> *Tender is the Night* (Fitzgerald)
>>>>
>>>> *VALIS* (Dick)
>>>>
>>>> *The Runaway Soul* (Brodkey)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> None of these is perfect, but each one is - as Rushdie wrote in his
>>>> review of The Runaway Soul - "worth a hundred safe little well-made books."
>>>> For my understanding of America these novels are very important.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>> ****
>>
>>
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