Still Searching for the Great American Novel

by Conroy

I’m slowly making my way through the American literary cannon, a book at a time, in search of the elusive Great American Novel. I just completed David Foster Wallace’s massive tome, Infinite Jest, one of the more recent nominees for this title [1]. At over 1,000 pages (included over 90 pages of footnotes [2]) Wallace’s dense and multi-layered story certainly has the size of an epic. But his semi-parodic near future America and focus on a Boston tennis academy, the residents of an adjacent halfway house, wheelchair-bound Quebecois separatists, and an illicit movie so entertaining that it’s lethal to all viewers is in my mind a bit too idiosyncratic [3] to fit the bill as the Great American Novel. But what does fit the bill?

In concept, the Great American Novel is a title given to the novel, written by an American, which best encapsulates the American Experience, the spirit of the nation and the people, or better described by borrowing a term from German, the work that captures the zeitgeist of America. It’s the American equivalent of the national epic; America’s Les Miserables, Ulysses, or War and Peace. There’s no shortage of candidates for the title; here’s a shortlist (in chronological order):

• Moby Dick by Herman Melville (1852),
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1885),
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925),
• The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929),
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939),
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1951),
• The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Below (1953),
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov (1955),
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960),
• Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973),
• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (1985), and
• Underworld by Don Delillo (1997) [4].

Many of these books sit on my bookshelf, and many of them were rich rewarding reads, and certainly each captures a portion of the American Experience. For instance, in Moby Dick [5] there is the struggle of democracy, equality, and power, which echoes American pre-Civil War struggles with slavery; in Blood Meridian we are shown in stark tones  the violence that accompanied the settling of the American West; The Grapes of Wrath explores the crushing poverty of the Great Depression; and Underworld gives us lives lived in the low heat of the Cold War during the last half of the twentieth century.

But like the still view of a photograph each of these novels and all the others listed above can at best only capture a facet or a few facets of America, a limited angle, nuances and not the whole. After all America is too large, with a huge diverse population drawn from all over the world, and a history and culture too sprawling to ever be captured by one writer in one novel no matter how kaleidoscopic the story or how broad the cast of characters. And the same could be written about the efforts of a single filmmaker or historian or journalist. But this isn’t meant to diminish the writers (and other chroniclers) that attempt great novels or reach to express what America means. In fact I much admire the ambition of writers that yearn to express the soul of America even if the best they can achieve is partial success.

Whenever I think on novels and literature I always fall back to James Joyce and Ulysses because I’ve never read anything better. Joyce set out to write an Irish national epic and perhaps he succeeded (it’s worth keeping in mind that Ireland is a much smaller country than the United States), but what really speaks to me when reading Ulysses isn’t the Irish elements. Instead, when I strip away the structural and stylistic flourishes and place the literary, philosophic, and religious (and many other) correspondences in perspective, I find the most alive book I’ve ever read. Joyce’s Leopold Bloom, Stephan Daedalus, Molly Bloom, and what seems to be the whole population of Dublin come alive through their thoughts, emotions, motivations, memories, physical urges, biases, their interactions with each other, and their shared histories. Ulysses takes place over less than 24 hours, but it gives us the fullest glimpse of life and lives of any fiction I’ve read or watched or listened to [6]. Scholars and academics may be kept busy dissecting Joyce's techniques and allusions, but for me it’s the life of the novel that makes it important and worthwhile.

And indeed, while I can say pretty emphatically that Wallace’s Infinite Jest is not the Great American Novel, it is a book teeming with truths. Wallace’s collection of tennis prodigies, recovering (and not recovering) alcoholics and drug addicts, terrorists and government agents, and everyone they interact with, is vivid and bursting with life. At the core, after you’ve taken his weird future in stride, Wallace’s characters struggle with what it means to be a family, to make and sustain human connections, and to cope with the burden of being alive. It’s his take on the plight of what he considers to be the sad post-Cold War generations and our collective need to find some distraction, be it drugs or entertainment or sexual conquests, from the day-to-day struggle. And his remarkably fluid writing style (the words seem to have flowed onto the page from his mind), massive vocabulary (Wallace makes you keep your dictionary close), and talent for perfectly expressing detail (that tool that all great novelists must have) make Infinite Jest a first-rate and worthy read [7].

I’ve always believed that great artists, and especially novelists, are better equipped to describe the workings of the mind, from our motivations and emotions and rationalizations to our physical cravings and how we perceive the world, than science or religion or philosophy. Novelists like Joyce and Wallace offer insights into what is means to be human. As the great critic Harold Bloom noted, reading a novel isn’t going to make you a better person, but hopefully reading a great novel will provide at least a tiny explanation of life. If an author can do that, he or she has achieved a great success.

So I’ll continue searching for the Great American Novel. I doubt I’ll ever find one book that expresses all that “America” means or is, but I am certain that what I will find is even more important, glimpses of truth and life. That’s all we can seek from any art.

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NOTES:

[1] Infinite Jest was published in 1996, when Wallace was just 33-years-old.

[2] Anyone familiar with Wallace’s writing, fiction and non-fiction alike, knows of his very effective use of footnotes, which I must admit is a bit of an inspiration for my own notes.

[3] This is but the barest synopsis of Infinite Jest, which is rich in characters, sub-plots, themes, and exquisite detail.

[4] And this list could be expanded to include Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Robert Penn Warren’s All the Kings Men (1946), Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy (1925), Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1953), Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996), Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952), Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940), Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), John Updike’s Rabbit series, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five (1969), Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (1926), John Dos Passos’s USA Trilogy (1938), and Henry James’s The Wings of the Dove (1902), to name but a few.

[5] A work I must admit that I don’t particularly care for.

[6] I’ll be returning to discuss Ulysses much more fully in future posts.

[7] After reading the novel and Wallace’s descriptions of the crushing weight, the unendurable weight, of clinical depression, it is less of a surprise that he killed himself in 2008. He suffered from depression all his life and eventually the medications stopped working for him. It’s deeply sad and will deprive us of any more work from this gifted American writer. He left behind not only Infinite Jest but a large collection of entertaining, informative, and incisive essays and non-fiction pieces along with a couple of short story collections and a couple of other novels (the last of which, The Pale King, was unfinished upon his death and published posthumously).

Word Play in Bullet Park

After reading Conroy's post about the mot juste, I decided to run a search on my Kindle for narthex, one of the words that Conroy identifies as being part of the specialized vocabulary used to describe castles and churches. My hope was to see it used in the context of a story, and I was pleasantly surprised to find it in Bullet Park, a novel by John Cheever. The passage in which it appears, quoted below, showcases Cheever's mastery. He often chooses not merely le mot juste, but le mot musical; when he writes of the "sound of the priest's voice in the vestarium," we hear the alliteration and marvel at Cheever's skill in using just the right word in just the right place. And by drawing from the "system of terms" appropriate to a church—pew, font, narthex, vestarium—Cheever places us inside of one:

This division of Nailles’s attention during worship had begun when, as a young boy, he had spent most of his time in church examining the forms captured in the grained-oak pews. In certain lights and frames of mind they seemed quite coherent. There was a charge of Mongol horsemen in the third pew on the right, next to the font. In the pew ahead of that there appeared to be a broad  lake—some body of water—with a lighthouse on a peninsula. In the pew across the aisle there was a clash of arms and in the pew ahead of that there seemed to be a herd of cattle. This lack of concentration did not distress Nailles. He did not expect to part with his flesh or his memory in the narthex. His concerns in church remained at least partially matter-of-fact, and on this winter morning he noticed that Mrs. Trencham was carrying on her particular brand of competitive churchmanship. Mrs. Trencham was a recent convert—she had been a Unitarian—and she was more than proud of her grasp of the responses and courtesies in the service; she was bellicose. At the first sound of the priest’s voice in the vestarium she was on her feet and she fired out her amens and her mercies in a stern and resonant voice, timed well ahead of the rest of the congregation as if she were involved in a sort of ecclesiastical footrace. Her genuflections were profound and graceful, her credo and confession were letter-perfect, her Lamb of God was soulful, and if she was given any competition, as she sometimes was, she would throw in a few signs of the cross as a proof of the superiority of her devotions. Mrs. Trencham was a winner.

At the beginning of the passage, we learn that when Nailles was young, he would pass the time in church transforming random, mundane patterns seen in the grain of wooden pews into iconic boyish imagery. In the latter part of the passage, we watch him transform Mrs. Trencham into a burlesque of sanctimony. And here we see more specialized vocabulary put into play; we learn of Mrs. Trencham's disingenuous amens and mercies, her genuflections and credos, her confessions and Lambs of God. These terms—together with a couple of striking phrases ("competitive churchmanship" and "ecclesiastical footrace")—heighten the bathos of the scene. This is diction at its best.

Project: War and Peace - Post 3

by Conroy

This my third post (of six) discussing Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. It's taken me a bit longer than anticipated to get this post prepared, but with the holidays behind me I hope that the future posts in this series will follow at shorter intervals. The first post discussing this project and second post discussing Volume 1 can be found here:

Project: War and Peace - Post 1
Project: War and Peace - Post 2 

As I stated in Post 2, I'm going to write about each volume based on what I find interesting, eschewing a set structure. After finishing Volume 2, and comparing it to Volume 1, I think this approach is validated.

War
In Volume 2, war, while present, retreats from the center of the action. After the Russian defeat at Austerlitz, so vividly described near the end of Volume 1, Tolstoy does not present the action at the Battle of Friedland, in which the French decisively defeated the Russian army in early summer 1807 and ended the War of the Fourth Coalition. We see the peace made between Napoleon and Alexander at Tilsit, which made Russia and France allies. We hear about skirmishes with the Prussians. There is talk about the far-off campaigns of the French army in Spain. We sense the resentment of Napoleon's Continental System, especially as the years pass after Tilsit. We are told of reforms in the Russian military, and of preparations to raise additional troops to supplement the standing army. We are witness to the quiet pleasure of military life during peacetime.

Project: War and Peace - Post 2

by Conroy

I've finished Volume 1 of War and Peace, and as promised in my first post on this reading project, I'd like to discuss my impressions, reactions, and the general features of the novel that interest me. I'm taking a liberal approach to what I will discuss, avoiding a set structure for each post. I don't know what lies ahead in Volumes 2 through 4 and the Epilogue, and I may very well want to focus on different elements (characters, plot points, themes, etc.) after each volume as I feel appropriate.

War and Peace is massive in scope, both peace and war are covered in Volume 1 (the first 294 pages of more than 1,200), and Tolstoy is a master writer, fully in command of his creation. As such there is a plethora of interesting features to discuss and I am going to feel at liberty to write at length for each of these posts.

Project: War and Peace - Post 1

by Conroy

Over the next few months I am embarking on my next major reading project, Leo Tolstoy's monumental War and Peace. I've done major reading projects before. I've read James Joyce's Ulysses twice, and was overawed and enriched by the experience both times (and I'm going to read it again in the coming years). The Man and I simultaneously read Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, a major disappointment.

I've been wanting to read War and Peace for a long time but been hesitant because, well, Tolstoy wrote in Russian, and I don't speak or read Russian. That means I have to read an English translation, which can be a dicey proposition. The power of a great literary work is a combination of character, plot, themes, style, and language. A good translator should be able to capture the first three, but the last two are far more difficult. A great writer is idiomatic, and his art cannot be separated from the particularities of his language. Only the most thoughtful and talented of translators can successfully convert style from one language to another. Moreover, the sound and flow of a work is inherently connected with the language in which it is written. I see no way that this aspect of a work can be fully realized in a translation.

That being said, there is a new (2007) translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky that has been highly praised. The translators have made a concerted effort to maintain the idiosyncrasies of Tolstoy's writing, staying as close as possible to his style, limiting the amount of interpretation, omissions, and substitutions (synonyms, colloquialisms, etc.). This new translation gives me hope that my reading experience in English will come close to reading in the original Russian.

Now my reading War and Peace is one thing, but why should I write about it? Well, I think many others are interested in Tolstoy's masterwork and perhaps my experience will be of interest. Few novels, maybe none, are as broad in scope and replete in developed, detailed characters. My goal in these posts will be to provide reactions to what I have read: story, character, themes, details, style. The book is divided into four volumes and an epilogue. I'll follow this structure and post after I've completed each volume and the entire work. As for now, I haven't read a page, so I have nothing more specific to say about the novel. However, a bit of background may be useful for me and my readers.

Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy was a genius, hopefully in my reading I will discover his supposed unmatched eye for insightful detail. His ability to master a wide tapestry of characters, plot lines, and themes; his broad vantage point and inimical eye for detail; and perhaps above all, his ability to imbue his book with true humanity. As I read I must also consider the artist. As Paul Johnson's biting biographical sketch reveals, Tolstoy knew of his genius. He thought himself better than men, an equal of God in his art. War and Peace includes many characters, including historical personages (Napoleon, Marshal Kutuzov). Tolstoy may attempt to be true to life (and mostly to history), but a careful reader must be aware that a man who thinks himself god in his art may feel that he can distort and interpret as his right. A man who is better than the rest of mankind could stray into didacticism and abandon what Joyce identified as the key to true art, stasis, genuine objectivity that presents without prejudice. Still, Tolstoy claimed that he was most at peace when deep in his writing, so the best of the man and artist may have been put down on the pages of War and Peace. I shall learn from the first word.