The Disappearing of a Great American Novel

What if I told you that one of the most beautifully written, sexy, emotionally intelligent, thoroughly alive, and greatly American novels written in at least the last 10 years had passed practically unnoticed by the culture at large? No prizes, no splashy author profiles or interviews, only a few tone-deaf, half-hearted, hair-splitting reviews. The novel isn’t avant-garde or “experimental” in its form, the author doesn’t belong to an officially sanctioned oppressed identity group, and the prose isn’t particularly challenging unless you choke on the word “cock.” It features New York City, the best 9/11 scenes that anyone has written since Ken Kalfus’ equally invisibilized A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, while also dealing with putatively important social themes like globalization of supply chains, gentrification, mortgage-backed securities, and the rise of a multibillion-dollar corporation that sounds a lot like Starbucks coffee.