The Dream of the Great American Novel

“Magisterial . . . make[s] you suddenly see new things in familiar books . . . brilliant analyses of a dozen or so front-runners in the Great American Novel sweepstakes.” —Michael Dirda,  Virginia Quarterly Review The idea of “the great American novel” continues to thrive almost as vigorously as in its nineteenth-century heyday, defying more than 150 years of attempts to dismiss it as amateurish or obsolete. In this landmark book, the first in many years to tak