The dream of the great American novel

Title:

Author:

Buell, Lawrence.

ISBN:

9780674051157

Personal Author:

Buell, Lawrence.

Physical Description:

xii, 567 pages ; 25 cm

Contents:

Birth, heyday, and seeming decline -- Reborn from the critical ashes -- The reluctant master text : the making and remakings of Hawthorne's The scarlet letter -- "Success" stories from Benjamin Franklin to the dawn of modernism -- Belated ascendancy : Fitzgerald to Faulkner, Dreiser to Wright and Bellow -- Up-from stories in hyphenated America : Ellison, Roth, and beyond -- Uncle Tom's cabin and its aftermaths -- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and its others -- Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the wind, and literary interracialism North and South -- Toni Morrison's Beloved as culmination and augury -- Melville's Moby-Dick : from oblivion to great American novel -- The great American novel of early twentieth century breakdown : Dos Passos's U.S.A. or Steinbeck's The grapes of wrath? -- Late twentieth-century maximalism : Pynchon's Gravity's rainbow and its rainbow.

BISAC Subject:

Lit Crit

Subject Term:

American fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.

American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism.

National characteristics, American, in literature.

Literature and society -- United States -- History -- 19th century.

Literature and society -- United States -- History -- 20th century.

Geographic Term:

United States -- In literature.

Available:*

Format	Library	Call Number	Status
Book	Searching... South Regional Library	813.009 Bue	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

The idea of "the great American novel" continues to thrive almost as vigorously as in its nineteenth-century heyday, defying 150 years of attempts to dismiss it as amateurish or obsolete. In this landmark book, the first in many years to take in the whole sweep of national fiction, Lawrence Buell reanimates this supposedly antiquated idea, demonstrating that its history is a key to the dynamics of national literature and national identity itself.

The dream of the G.A.N., as Henry James nicknamed it, crystallized soon after the Civil War. In fresh, in-depth readings of selected contenders from the 1850s onward in conversation with hundreds of other novels, Buell delineates four "scripts" for G.A.N. candidates. One, illustrated by The Scarlet Letter , is the adaptation of the novel's story-line by later writers, often in ways that are contrary to the original author's own design. Other aspirants, including The Great Gatsby and Invisible Man, engage the American Dream of remarkable transformation from humble origins. A third script, seen in Uncle Tom's Cabin and Beloved , is the family saga that grapples with racial and other social divisions. Finally,mega-novels from Moby-Dick to Gravity's Rainbow feature assemblages of characters who dramatize in microcosm the promise and pitfalls of democracy.

The canvas of the great American novel is in constant motion, reflecting revolutions in fictional fashion, the changing face of authorship, and the inseparability of high culture from popular. As Buell reveals, the elusive G.A.N. showcases the myth of the United States as a nation perpetually under construction.

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Impressive in scope, erudition, and detail, this survey of U.S. literary and cultural history by Harvard professor Buell (Emerson) envisions the "distinctive and durable preoccupation" of identifying the Great American Novel (G.A.N.) as an endless quest to capture "the American soul" in "geographical scope" and "sociological comprehensiveness," and as a relevant set of criteria for evaluating works of significance or mass appeal. Nominally the history of an idea, Buell offers a series of seasoned and insightful analyses on the "defining works" grouped by four different "scripts": the "detailed ethnography of early colonial culture and institutions" (Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter); the "rags to riches" arc (Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and others); the history of slavery (Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Morrison's Beloved); and epic "megafictions" (Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow). Buell argues that the greatest novels cast a critical eye on "the gap between democratic promise and actuality" disguised by national myths. In addition, he decodes how these books shape political and social philosophies, accruing "cultural capital" if not icon status, as with Melville's Moby-Dick. Buell sees well beyond the canonical Great White Males and perceives American studies as a properly "transnational" and "transpacific" profession. Buell's engaging book should itself become a landmark of American studies, as it exemplifies precisely why great literature needs to be read and taught. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Review

A history and investigation of a literary concept that has "refused to die." The idea of the Great American Novel (nicknamed GAN by Henry James) as a writer's golden quest seemed to Buell (American Literature/Harvard Univ.; The Future of Environmental Criticism, 2005, etc.) to have devolved from its 19th-century origins to become a media clich not worth more consideration than "a brisk, short narrative." However, the author became intrigued as he looked at some of the works proposed for the honorific. Could any novel, as novelist John W. De Forest asked in 1868, capture "the American soul"? That question reflected anxieties about "national cultural legitimacy" when expansionism and postCivil War reunification raised nettling concerns about the nation's identity. These questions, Buell contends, are still worth asking, even though the country's "fractious heterogeneity" has led to the idea of plural GANs. What, he asks, can thinking about GANs reveal "about how the novels in question work, about national culture generally, about novels as carriers or definers of cultural nationality, and about what value to set on all that--whether it's cultural asset or cultural baggage"? He responds by proposing that a GAN needs to meet one of four criteria: to be reimagined by later authors (e.g., The Scarlet Letter); to trace the life of a typically American type (e.g., The Great Gatsby); to consider the impact of social, ethnic or racial divisions (e.g., Uncle Tom's Cabin; Beloved); or to reflect on the complications of democracy and "the imperiled social collective" (e.g, Dos Passos' U.S.A.). Buell, whose major scholarship has focused on transcendentalism and, more recently, environmentalism, takes a conversational and sometimes-humorous tone as he offers perceptive analyses of novels and their receptions, especially by those who championed their choices as GANs. Although readers will encounter many usually canonized suspects, Buell's scope is wide enough to encompass the varieties of novelists' imaginations and to consider the implications of multiculturalism and globalism in redefining the future of American fiction.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* In 1868, novelist John De Forest plucked the phrase Great American Novel from advertising chaff and made it an artistic challenge. Almost 150 years later, Buell assesses the entire trajectory of American fiction against the GAN aspiration. Cutting through the quixotic pretensions it has incubated, Buell discerns four substantive GAN templates. Hawthorne's singular masterpiece of individual passion repressed yet intensified by communal morality, The Scarlet Letter defines the first template, exploited by Howells, Updike, and Mukherjee. The second GAN template emerges in novels of social ascent and self-invention, including Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby, Cather's Song of the Lark, and James' Portrait of a Lady. Typifying a third template, Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Twain's Huckleberry Finn, and Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! probe fissures regional, racial, economic, and sexual in the American fabric. Buell's fourth template finds illustrations in Melville's Moby Dick, Dos Passos' U.S.A., and Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, works reflecting the often-unstable collective that is American democracy. Rich in critical insight, Buell's analysis locates scores of novels in its interpretive mosaic. And even in a conclusion suggesting that America's global decline dims the prospects for its realization, Buell wonders if the GAN isn't stirring again in surprising new developments in science fiction. An impressively ambitious literary survey.--Christensen, Bryce Copyright 2010 Booklist

Choice Review

In this fascinating study, Buell (Harvard) charts the "great American novel" (GAN) idea from its birth in the 19th century to the turn of the 21st century. The book offers the sweep of comprehensive synthetic criticism without assuming an existing definition of Americanness. In other words, the author argues that it is the "constructedness" of nationality that in part offers the impetus for the book. If nations are contested and constructed, certainly national fictions contribute to this ongoing construction. The structure of this book is simple: in the first part, "The Unkillable Dream," Buell tracks the history of the GAN as an idea. What writers and critics have discussed it? Who has pursued or framed it? In the remaining four parts ("scripts"), he aligns a number of GANs with the themes of retelling, aspiration, race, and democracy. The authors discussed are too numerous to mention; suffice it to say Buell relies on the American canon more than he redefines it. He writes in brisk, clear prose and considers his subject thoughtfully and systematically. This book will introduce American fiction to less experienced readers while also satisfying specialists with its sophistication and verve. Summing Up: Essential. All readers. J. W. Miller Gonzaga University