What makes a great American novel? Or rather the Great American Novel, for the article in that familiar phrase is important, suggesting that there can be just one, a particular book that fills a particular need. Everybody has their candidate—Moby Dick, Gatsby, Absalom, Absalom—and it’s long been clear not only that there are many great American novels, but also that they come in all shapes and sizes and flavors. Yet that idea of singularity remains, an idea hardwired into the language ever since the Civil War novelist John W. DeForest first used the term in an 1868 essay in The Nation.
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