“What really is the Great American Novel? It seemed elusive to me, considering the wealth of good novels in the last century and a half. There’s no such thing as The Great American Novel, only several good-great American novels, I’d declared, quibbling with the article ‘the.’ All we can do is trace the threads that run through these novels, isolate them as a scientist isolates germs in a petri dish, and see if that amounts to an American tradition, or an American canon, in the novel. Find what’s quintessentially American – if it’s there.”