The Great American Novel Nomination 7-25-21

 From Laila Lalami’s Great American Novel: ‘Song of Solomon’ by Toni Morrison:

To ask about The Great American Novel is to invite a debate about every portion of the phrase. Why use the definite article, which suggests that only one book can lay claim to the title? What parameters do we use to define greatness? In this era of global migration, some of which is documented and some undocumented, who counts as American? And finally, with the lines between fiction and nonfiction becoming ever blurrier, what is a novel? Such questions can lead to a semantic knot that may be nearly impossible to untangle..

One way to examine this knot is to place it under the strobe light of American history. And when I do this, one novel stands out to me as truly great: Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon.” This is the story of a black man who grows up sheltered from his community, and thus from his past, by his parents. But the past is present, right there in his name — Milkman Dead. “Milkman” is the nickname he is saddled with after it is discovered that his mother nursed him well beyond an appropriate age. And “Dead” comes to him from his father and grandfather, heirs to a clerical mistake made by a Union Army officer.

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The great achievement of “Song of Solomon” is that it asks readers to rethink American history, to have an argument with it, and to wrest its unsavory details from the comfortable erasure that makes American life what it is today. “Song of Solomon” is, quite simply, a masterpiece. And if I ever write a book this good, you can bury me. Because my life’s work will be done.