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The "Great American Novel" is the concept of a novel
Novel

File:2009 stapelweise Neuerscheinungen im Buchladen.JPGA novel is today a long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern Romance and in the tradition of the novella....
 that most perfectly represents the spirit of life in the United States
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
 at the time of its writing. It is presumed to be written by an American author who is knowledgeable about the state, culture, and perspective of the common American citizen. It is often considered as the American response to the tradition of the national epic
National epic

A national epic is an epic poetry or a literary work of epic scope which seeks or is believed to capture and express the essence or spirit of a particular nation; not necessarily a nation-state, but at least an ethnic or linguistic group with aspirations to independence or Wiktionary:autonomy....
.

The phrase derives from the title of an essay by American Civil War
American Civil War

The American Civil War , also known as the War Between the States and several Naming the American Civil War, was a civil war in the United States....
 novelist John William DeForest, published in The Nation on January 9, 1868.






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The "Great American Novel" is the concept of a novel
Novel

File:2009 stapelweise Neuerscheinungen im Buchladen.JPGA novel is today a long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern Romance and in the tradition of the novella....
 that most perfectly represents the spirit of life in the United States
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
 at the time of its writing. It is presumed to be written by an American author who is knowledgeable about the state, culture, and perspective of the common American citizen. It is often considered as the American response to the tradition of the national epic
National epic

A national epic is an epic poetry or a literary work of epic scope which seeks or is believed to capture and express the essence or spirit of a particular nation; not necessarily a nation-state, but at least an ethnic or linguistic group with aspirations to independence or Wiktionary:autonomy....
.

The phrase derives from the title of an essay by American Civil War
American Civil War

The American Civil War , also known as the War Between the States and several Naming the American Civil War, was a civil war in the United States....
 novelist John William DeForest, published in The Nation on January 9, 1868. More broadly, however, it has its origins in American nationalism
Nationalism in the United States

The society of the United States in spite of being Multiethnic society and multiculturalism still has a sense of national identity and history; those who live in or are from the United States refer to an 'American people', and patriotism is prominent in public life....
 and the call for American counterparts to the "Great English Writers." It is an ideological call for American cultural distinctness, and identity.

In modern usage, the term is often figurative and represents a Holy Grail
Holy Grail

According to Christian mythology, the Holy Grail was the dish, plate, or cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper, said to possess miraculous powers....
 of writing, an ideal to strive towards, and is a source of inspiration. It is, presumably, the greatest American book ever written, or which could ever be written. Thus, "Great American Novel" is a metaphor for identity, a Platonic ideal that is not achieved in any specific texts, but whose aim writers strive to mirror in their work.

An alternate usage is in reference to actual novels. Although the title is not a formal award, it is considered to be a prestigious title for a novel, and is thus seen as a worthwhile goal for writers to attempt to achieve.

Though the term is singular, many novels have been given this title over time. In fact, few will claim there is one single Great American Novel. The earliest contenders for this title are Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hathorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and Elizabeth Clarke Manning Hathorne....
's The Scarlet Letter
The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter is a novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is considered his magnum opus. Set in 17th-century Puritan Boston, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who gives birth after committing adultery and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity....
, Herman Melville
Herman Melville

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet. His first three books gained much attention, the first becoming a bestseller, but after a fast-blooming literary success in the late 1840s, his popularity declined precipitously in the mid-1850s and never recovered during his lifetime....
's Moby-Dick
Moby-Dick

Moby-Dick is an 1851 novel by Herman Melville. The story tells the adventures of the wandering sailor Ishmael and his voyage on the whaling Pequod , commanded by Captain Ahab....
, and Mark Twain
Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an United Statesmerican author and humorist. Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has since been called the Great American Novel, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer....
's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel written by Mark Twain and published in 1884. It is commonly regarded one of the Great American Novels, and is one of the first major American novels written in the vernacular, characterized by regionalism ....
. Other important and often cited novels include F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an United States writer of novels and short stories, whose works are evocative of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself....
's The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is a novel by the United States author F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published on April 10, 1925, it is set in Long Island's North Shore and New York City during the summer of 1922....
, Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow , was an acclaimed Canada-United States writer born in Canada of Russian-Jewish origin. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976 and the National Medal of Arts in 1988....
's The Adventures of Augie March, John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck

John Ernst Steinbeck III was an American literature. He wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939 and the novella Of Mice and Men, published in 1937....
's The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath is a novel published in 1939 and written by John Steinbeck, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature....
, William Faulkner
William Faulkner

William Faulkner was a Nobel Prize in Literature-winning United States author. One of the most influential writers of the 20th century, his reputation is based on his novels, novellas and short story....
's The Sound and the Fury
The Sound and the Fury

The Sound and the Fury is one of the most celebrated novels of the twentieth century, written by American author William Faulkner, which makes use of the Stream of consciousness writing narrative technique pioneered by European authors such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf....
, John Dos Passos
John Dos Passos

John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist....
 U.S.A.
U.S.A. trilogy

The U.S.A. Trilogy is the major work of American writer John Dos Passos, comprising the novels The 42nd Parallel , 1919, also known as Nineteen Nineteen , and The Big Money ....
 trilogy, Ralph Ellison
Ralph Ellison

Ralph Waldo Ellison was a scholar and writer. He was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, named by his father after Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ellison was best known for his novel Invisible Man , which won the National Book Award in 1953 in literature....
's Invisible Man
Invisible Man

Invisible Man, a novel written by Ralph Ellison. It was the only novel that Ellison published during his lifetime, and it won him the National Book Award in 1953 in literature....
, Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac was an American author, poet and Painting. Alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, he is considered a pioneer of the Beat Generation....
's On the Road
On the Road

On the Road is a novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, written in April 1951, and published by Viking Press in 1957 in literature. It is a largely Autobiography work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America....
, Harper Lee
Harper Lee

Nelle Harper Lee is an United States author known for her 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom of the United States for her contribution to literature in 2007....
's To Kill a Mockingbird
To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee published in 1960 in literature. It was instantly successful and has become a classic of modern American literature fiction....
, Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a prolific and genre-bending American novelist known for works blending satire, black comedy and science fiction, such as Slaughterhouse-Five , Cat's Cradle , and Breakfast of Champions .He was also known for his Humanism beliefs and being honorary president of the American Humanist Association....
's Slaughterhouse-Five
Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance With Death , by Kurt Vonnegut, is a post-modern anti-war science fiction novel dealing with a soldier's experiences during World War II and his journeys with time travel....
, J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye
The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye is a 1951 in literature novel by J. D. Salinger. Originally published for adults, the novel has become a common part of high school and college curricula throughout the English-speaking world; it has also been translated into almost all of the world's major languages....
, and Ken Kesey
Ken Kesey

Kenneth Elton Kesey was an United States author, best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , and as a counter-cultural figure who, some consider , was a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s....
's Sometimes a Great Notion
Sometimes a Great Notion

Sometimes a Great Notion is a 1964 novel by the American author Ken Kesey.Sometimes a Great Notion may also refer to:* Sometimes a Great Notion , a 1971 film adaptation of the novel...
.

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