Dogland and the Great American Novel
May. 27th, 2008 10:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pameladlloydBefore I begin this post, I feel it's important to acknowledge that I am not an expert on the Great American Novel and would be hard-pressed to define the concept, aside from a general impression that such an novel must address multiple aspects of what it is to be American, as well as being a book of extremely high caliber.
Last November, at TusCon, the local science fiction convention, one of the topics discussed on a panel was whether a fantasy novel could ever be a Great American Novel. (Note that this may not have been the official panel topic. Also, it's possible that the discussion also included science fiction as a category unable to be included under the GAN heading, but I don't remember whether this was so.) During the course of the discussion, one of the panelists very insistently made the claim that it was not possible for a fantasy (or science fiction?) novel to be a Great American Novel. Now, categorical statements of this nature tend to irk me, so this claim, which I believe to be not just fallacious, but silly, has been niggling at me ever since.
Plus, as I was listening to the discussion, Will Shetterly's novel, Dogland
, came to mind. Now, I didn't speak up and propose that this novel might be a Great American Novel, even though I believe it to be an excellent American novel. And I was tactless enough to mention this to Will and his wife, Emma Bull (another fine novelist). So that is something else that has niggled at me. Why didn't I mention the book during the discussion?
Ultimately, I think I realized that as much as I love the novel, with its wonderful quirky setting in a roadside attraction in Florida, it has elements that aren't sufficiently mainstream-American enough for me to classify it as a Great American Novel. And, yes, those elements are very much tied up in the fantastic elements of the story. Yet, I don't think it is their fantastic nature that prevents the story from GANness, but the fact that these elements are based on a mythos that is not tied sufficiently closely to the American psyche as I feel they should be in order to accept the GAN classification.
Even so, I really wish I'd mentioned the novel during the panel, not so much as an example of a Great American novel, but as an example of just how close at least one fantasy novel has come to being a Great American novel. This novel hit just the right notes time and time again. Dogland, the attraction, is so quintessentially American that just about anyone who has ever taken a road trip in America will respond to it. (I have to admit that the time and place were particularly poignant for me, because of the many road trips my family took to Florida, starting just a few years after 1959, the year the novel is set.) Luke Nix's wild stories reminded me very much of my own father, who loved to tell tall tales to his children and still brags about having fooled us into believing he had fought in the French and Indian War. Grandma Bette's adamant rejection of any claims that the family is not of pure European extraction has been played out in many American families and the conflict around the hiring of Ethorne Hawkins, a black man, in the rural South is another classic American theme. This book is complex and goes far beyond its genre classification. Which is brings me back to my original pet peeve.
Why is it that people treat genre classification as if it defines all aspects of the novels so branded? For that's all it really is, a marketing tool, a label, created by publishers and book sellers to help sell books. How sad that genre has also become an albatross around the neck of many truly fine writers whose works are dismissed as somehow inferior on the basis of how they're sold in a book store or shelved in a library. Genre is subject, but not substance, the cover, but not the book itself. And it is the book—the story and how its told, the evocation of mood, ambiance, and spirit, the ability to inspire thought and dreams—that is truly of the greatest importance when we are attempting to evaluate the quality of a novel.
Last November, at TusCon, the local science fiction convention, one of the topics discussed on a panel was whether a fantasy novel could ever be a Great American Novel. (Note that this may not have been the official panel topic. Also, it's possible that the discussion also included science fiction as a category unable to be included under the GAN heading, but I don't remember whether this was so.) During the course of the discussion, one of the panelists very insistently made the claim that it was not possible for a fantasy (or science fiction?) novel to be a Great American Novel. Now, categorical statements of this nature tend to irk me, so this claim, which I believe to be not just fallacious, but silly, has been niggling at me ever since.
Plus, as I was listening to the discussion, Will Shetterly's novel, Dogland
, came to mind. Now, I didn't speak up and propose that this novel might be a Great American Novel, even though I believe it to be an excellent American novel. And I was tactless enough to mention this to Will and his wife, Emma Bull (another fine novelist). So that is something else that has niggled at me. Why didn't I mention the book during the discussion?Ultimately, I think I realized that as much as I love the novel, with its wonderful quirky setting in a roadside attraction in Florida, it has elements that aren't sufficiently mainstream-American enough for me to classify it as a Great American Novel. And, yes, those elements are very much tied up in the fantastic elements of the story. Yet, I don't think it is their fantastic nature that prevents the story from GANness, but the fact that these elements are based on a mythos that is not tied sufficiently closely to the American psyche as I feel they should be in order to accept the GAN classification.
Even so, I really wish I'd mentioned the novel during the panel, not so much as an example of a Great American novel, but as an example of just how close at least one fantasy novel has come to being a Great American novel. This novel hit just the right notes time and time again. Dogland, the attraction, is so quintessentially American that just about anyone who has ever taken a road trip in America will respond to it. (I have to admit that the time and place were particularly poignant for me, because of the many road trips my family took to Florida, starting just a few years after 1959, the year the novel is set.) Luke Nix's wild stories reminded me very much of my own father, who loved to tell tall tales to his children and still brags about having fooled us into believing he had fought in the French and Indian War. Grandma Bette's adamant rejection of any claims that the family is not of pure European extraction has been played out in many American families and the conflict around the hiring of Ethorne Hawkins, a black man, in the rural South is another classic American theme. This book is complex and goes far beyond its genre classification. Which is brings me back to my original pet peeve.
Why is it that people treat genre classification as if it defines all aspects of the novels so branded? For that's all it really is, a marketing tool, a label, created by publishers and book sellers to help sell books. How sad that genre has also become an albatross around the neck of many truly fine writers whose works are dismissed as somehow inferior on the basis of how they're sold in a book store or shelved in a library. Genre is subject, but not substance, the cover, but not the book itself. And it is the book—the story and how its told, the evocation of mood, ambiance, and spirit, the ability to inspire thought and dreams—that is truly of the greatest importance when we are attempting to evaluate the quality of a novel.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-03 05:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-03 08:02 pm (UTC)Have you been tracking Emma (& co.)'s Shadow Unit (http://shadowunit.org/index.html) series? Powerful stuff. The season finale was wrenching.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-03 09:13 pm (UTC)