Reviews

The Dream of the Great American Novel by Lawrence Buell

sdbecque's review

3.0

Writing a review of this, much less admitting that I read it, seems in some ways incredibly pretentious, but I am interested by the concept of the Great American Novel and this seemed to good to pass up. I liked it, and it's well written. I have read very few of the novels he discusses here, but Buell does a great job summarizing them. I also thought he did a good job seeing around the Great American Novel as an excuse to write about great white men (though admittedly it is hard to do completely.) Anyway, it's long and dry but also interesting.

zachkuhn's review

4.0

Thoughtful and researched to within an ounce of its life-blood. Literary critics would do well if they knocked off the need to reference everything that has come before (I don't care if someone made the point before and you are making it but modifying it; very few writers who want their work to have any chance of being read can afford this luxury) and decided OH FINE I'LL GO TO HELL and just wrote about the damn books from their own perspective. As Jason Compson Jr said it best: Talking around whatever it was.

The chapter on Ellison was very helpful to my understanding of Invisible Man and Huck Finn.