What Makes The Great American Novel So Great

Nowadays we tend to judge a book by its sales. And perhaps that's how it should be. After all, we're trying to make a living, right?

But when I think about what makes a novel great, I think of two major elements:

1. the amazing combinations of words, and

2. the transcending capacity of the subject matter. 

As a writer, I sometimes struggle to take a thought, scene, or description and make it into something beautiful to read, something gorgeous in its layout and evocative in its power. Also as a writer, I write Big Concept fiction, meaning, for me, that I want to commit my writing to the betterment of the world somehow. 

Recently, I re-read a small book by John Knowles called A Separate Peace. More than anyone else, it's important for writers to read great works of art. It serves as a reminder when we're punching away at keys all day that we want to create something worth reading. 

Knowles is a craftsman of words, an icon of prose, and a sage. There are sentences both so profound and skillfully designed that one would have to be heartless not to want to read them again and again.  

Sentences like this one of setting: 

"Someone was coming toward me along the bent, broken lane which led to the dormitory, a lane out of Old London, ancient houses on either side leaning as though soon to tumble into it, cobblestones heaving underfoot like a bricked-over ocean squall - a figure of great height advanced down them toward me."

Or this one on feeling:

"I felt fear's echo, and along with that I felt the unhinged, uncontrollable joy which had been its accompaniment and opposite face, joy which had broken out sometimes in those days like Northern Lights across the black sky."

Or this one about inner demons:

"All of them, all except Phineas, constructed at infinite cost to themselves these Maginot Lines against this enemy they thought they saw across the frontier, this enemy who never attacked that way - if he ever attacked at all; if he was indeed the enemy."

A Separate Peace takes place at an exclusive boarding school for boys during WWII (1942/43). As the students prepare for their diplomas and break the rules and feel so deeply, the looming reality of the war out there is forever present, as is the one in here. It portrays masterfully what it is like to be adolescent (not just chronologically, but in mentality), and it speaks to us today just as it did to the reader in 1959. The novel is as relevant right now as it was then. And this quality is what I mean by transcending. 

I will always strive to bring the deepest truths to light in my work and to use the English language with reverence. My recommendations for writers of literature:

1) Read. Read the best there is, so you can raise the bar for yourself. 

2) Write poetry - not necessarily prize-winning or recital-ready, but poetry you generate for the sole reason of falling in love with the language. 

3) Edit. Read what you write aloud to yourself. Listen. Edit some more. Look words up. Read what you've written again. Listen to it. Edit and re-edit. 

4) Keep a notepad on you and jot down moments of inspiration as they occur. 

5) Live. Experience. Think. Talk with people. Ask them about themselves. Grow wise. And keep writing.