Elegy for Great American Novel

From today's London Independent.

John Walsh's theory that Norman Mailer's death is another nail in the coffin for the concept of the Great American Novel, which, in my humblest of opinions, is either Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby or Roth's American Pastoral.





"If any writer believed in the existence of the Great American Novel it was Norman Mailer. He believed in it utterly, called it the "big one" and dreamed of bagging it – like a hunter in search of game. Now, he and many of his fellow hunters are gone. Can anyone take their place?" Continue