Ursula K. Le Guin: Who Cares About the Great American Novel?

A question from the New York Times’ Bookends, “Where is the great American novel by a woman?,” got an interesting answer from the Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid.

. . . Bear with me as I advocate the death of the Great American Novel.

The problem is in the phrase itself. “Great” and “Novel” are fine enough. But “the” is needlessly exclusionary, and “American” is unfortunately parochial. The whole, capitalized, seems to speak to a deep and abiding insecurity, perhaps a colonial legacy. How odd it would be to call Homer’s “Iliad” or Rumi’s “Masnavi” “the Great Eastern Mediterranean Poem.”

I like this very much. ... [mehr] http://lithub.com/ursula-k-le-guin-who-cares-about-the-great-american-novel/