even most of the Great American Novels (I’m thinking of Gatsby in particular) are about how Americans are selfish / greedy / petty
The Last Great American Novel will have been Coeliac McCarthy's The Road, about the fallout of a post nuclear/climate catastrophe america, and the struggle for there to be even just one half-decent american.
also there are too many books and genres for everyone to read the same book
I love that Menelaus calls Paris a cuckhold no less than a dozen times
It's inspired me to go back and finish the more uh poetic version. (I loved the Odyssey as an audiobook read by Ian McKellen but somehow keep stumbling over the Iliad :') )
i'm rereading Gravity's Rainbow now. still the jam of a lifetime
The next great American novel has already been written by Margaret Atwood, and no, I don't mean A Handmaids Tale.
