A History of the Great American Novel, Part I: In Which It Has Not Yet Been Written.

The earliest example of the phrase "the Great American Novel" available in any of the databases I can access online occurs in T.S. Perry's 1873 review of "American Novels" in The North American Review.  Of course, given the context of the occurance, I'm not entirely sure it's the first:

We have often wondered that the people who raise the outcry for the "Great American Novel" did not see that, so far from being of any assistance to our fellow-countryman who is trying to win fame by writing fiction, they have rather stood in his way by setting up before him a false aim for his art, and by giving the critical reader a defective standard by which to judge his work. (366)

Who are "the people who raise the outcry for the 'Great American Novel'"?  According to an anonymous critic writing in The Aldine (also in 1873), they are

Those who, since the days of Cooper, Irving, Hawthorne, the lamented Theodore Winthrop, and the publication of Mrs. Stowe's famous story, have been impatiently waiting for "the great American novel," without knowing exactly what they want or expect. (188)

This anonymous reviewer assures "them" that "they may indulge in fresh hope since there are indications that, in the fullness of time, it will be forthcoming" (ibid.).  So "they" have waited well-nigh 70 years for a novel whose defining characteristics "they" can't fathom.  But it will, "they" declaim, be American.  "There is an American nature," Perry insisted, but "then there is human nature underlying it, and to that the novel must be true before anything else" (366).  So the great American novel must first be "great" before it should even worry about it being "American."  That sounds like a reasonable enough proposition, unless there's something about being an American that precludes one from writing "great" literature.  (More on that in a moment.)  What it manifestly could not be, all the critics writing in 1873 concurred, is an English or French ship sailing under American colors. 

But these critics also concur on the problem with writing a "great" novel about Americans: American life.  As Perry says, "the very uniformity of our social life would offer nothing tempting to the writer, unless, indeed, to the satirist" (374). American English is so comically artless, Perry argues, that any attempt to depict it would sound satirical to educated readers even if it were not intended as such.  So Americans can't be allowed to speak like Americans in the Great American Novel, but neither are they to speak like the British; American authors, it seems, are too unfamiliar with British locution to ape it successfully.  When they try it sounds satirical.  An example from Sylvester Judd's Margaret will prove this point:

"This is a fine mineralogical region," said he, as they entered the spot.  "I wish I had a hammer!"

"I will get one!" she said.  "Let me go for it now!"

"You are not in health, you told me, and you do not look very strong.  I must go by all means!  I will be back in a trice."

[...]

"See this," said he, exposing a hollow stone filled with rare crystals.

"I thank you, I thank you!" she replied.  "The master has given me an inkling of geology, but I never imagined such beauty was hidden here!"

"With definite forms and brilliant textures these gems vegetate in the centre of this rough rusty stone!"

"Incomparable mystery!  New anagogics!  I begin to be in love with what I understand not!"

Satire indeed.  So what is an American author writing in 1873 who wants to write the Great American Novel to do?  Best to sit out until the next Presidential election.  Maybe then the American people will elect someone able to fulfill Perry's prophecy: "possibly with good Presidents and a proper tariff," he propounds, migth come "an American Shakespeare" (369).  (Don't look for direct causality: it isn't there.)  But instead of a good President, the Americans elected Grant. 

No one talked about the Great American Novel from 1873 until 1883.  Apparently Rutherford B. Hayes lacked whatever quality compels people to talk about the Great American Novel.  Not that writers stopped trying.  Henry Adams' subtitled his anonymously published novel, Democracy, with the subtle An American Novel.  It may've been American, and it may've been a Novel, but alas! it was not Great.

In 1883, James Garfield, er, Chester Arthur had the country a-buzz with talk of writing the Great American Novel.  Perhaps the American people felt liberated by the death of that quintessential American, Ralph Waldo Emerson.  No longer would their characters, by dint of Emerson's awesome Americanness, be stalked by the gigantic eyeballs which imparted to all American literature a disturbing gothic flair.  (Imagine how much better Isabel Archer would have fared with her suitors were it not for the enormous floating eye behind her!) 

But then it was discovered that the Great American Novel had already been written.  Only it was a romance.  Three romances, actually: The Blithedale Romance,  The Scarlet Letter, and The House of Seven Gables.  That all these romances are Hawthorne's is incidental: one critic "take[s] leave to say, that if I draw illustrations from this particular writer, it is for no other reason than that he presents, more forcibly than most, a method of dealing with the special problem [America] we are considering" (174).  At the news of this discovery, throngs of problematic Americans filled streets devoid of History to celebrate the young critical genius: "Julian!" the young ladies cried uncouthly, "Juuuuuuulian!" 

Then Julian Hawthorne awoke to the realization that no one in his right mind would consider him an impartial source on the matter.  So the search for the Great American Novel continued, and despite Julian Hawthorne's best efforts, most eyes were turned to the future.  At least they did once they recovered from whatever struck them.  Struck them with what?  I don't know, but whatever it was, it was such that no one would really mention the Great American Novel until 1889.  Why these gaps? 

That will be the subject of tomorrow's essay.  To whet your appetite: young Master Julian may have been correct: the Great American Novel may still vegetate like a gem in the rough rusty rock of American life.  Also, there will be a wedding. 

And a murder. 

And a birth. 

A terrible, terrible birth.

Comments

[eb]

Some of the gaps may have to do with how the search phrases work. For example, during the gap from 1873-1883 there was an article in The Atlantic Monthly of April 1876 that began:

The problem of writing American novels, about which it has of late years become the fashion to talk with a great deal of artificial profundity and useless intricacy, is not a new one. Some of the prevalent theories about it are fort- unately new; but the attempt to solve the difficulty began more than three quarters of a century ago.

but it does not seem to use the actual phrase "great american novel."

And the Blithedale Romance is great, by the way, although most of my students didn't seem to like it.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

eb, first, refering to you as "E.B." makes me feel like I'm on Deadwood, and that if I don't spout a string of language most vile and sincere, that I'll somehow upset the order of the universal. Second, there's a lot of chatter about what constitutes an American novel, but from what I can tell, there are these strange bursts when people start talking, almost exclusively, about the Great American novel. This is a sketch of some initial research--with some absurd commentary on my part--of what may become a larger research project. I can't quite figure the cause of these sporadic demands for greatness of some monolithic American sort, but I aim to.

I didn't mind Blithedale, but what I didn't quote is Julian's discussion of how The Marble Faun may be the Great Italian Novel. Nor will I, as it will entail me thinking about The Marble Faun again, and I've already done that far, far too much today. (Yes, the time it took me to type this constitutes far, far too much.)

[eb]

Well, there is the whole issue of whether anything truly great, in European terms, can be produced in a democratic society. De Tocqueville (aside: after years of seeing people cite him now I know what it feels like to be one of those people who quotes de Tocqueville) comes back to this theme a lot: true greatness requires lofty ambition, and lofty ambitions seem to be created more in highly stratified societies than in democratic/egalitarian ones. So if America embodies democracy itself then it's going to have a problem producing high culture. The creation of Great American Novels would go a long way towards disproving the ideas of those elitist naysayers across the Atlantic.

This actually comes up in the context of slavery too; I think one of Fitzhugh's defences of slave societies like ancient greece is that they produced the kind of greatness in thought (and possibly in art, too - I don't remember) that America should strive to emulate.

Also, not having watched any of Deadwood I appreciate your restraint.