1000 Great American Novels
No one can decide which is The Great American Novel? Why only one?
Note: I have created a new “section” of this newsletter so that I can group the letters which go into this project together, but it also allows you to opt out of them while not fully unsubscribing.
This project is not about rankings or canons. It's about publicly enjoying the plenitude of American literary accomplishment.
My self-imposed restrictions are all in the title: I will be reading novels, not short stories or poetry or dramas; they will either be set in the United States, written by a resident of the United States, or thickly connected to the United States in some overt fashion; and I will stop when (and only when) I get to 1000, a number that is more about bravado and aspiration than hard-edged accounting. It's a reason to keep reading, to keep stretching my reading.
Therefore, I will be mostly avoiding those novels which are super-canonical (e.g., Moby-Dick), unless for some reason I feel compelled to write about one. Because many of the novels I pick up for this project will be ones I have not read, on some occasions I may end up reading a novel and deciding that it does not really merit inclusion in the 1000. In those cases, I will do my best to explain my reasons for not counting it, just as I will for those books which I do include.
Enjoy!