The Rise and 'Fall' of the Great American Novel.

Traces the history of the slogan "the great American novel" since the years following the Civil War. John W. DeForest coined the phrase in an 1868 essay, and it became a staple of literary journalism and almost a cliché. Through the years intellectuals have debated the appropriate characteristics of the great American novel, but efforts to be proscriptive failed as the process of determining what qualified as a great American novel was constantly reformulated.