Raintree County V 1-16-21

 I suppose, like John Dos Passos' USA Trilogy, Raintree County was too long, too complicated to teach in the schools. There is also a Dos Passos connection with how Lockridge uses imaginary news reports as a counter-voice to his narrator. Also like Dos Passos, I cannot imagine anyone following in Lockridge's footsteps. The Great American Novel died as a genre, or so I believe. Gore Vidal covered some of the same territory in Lincoln and in 1876, but to my recollection, those novels feel cramped in comparison to Raintree County. For a historical novel, the only historical characters given speaking parts are Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant - and they only appear in cameos. 

On the other hand, I think there might a Lockridge influence in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, but I cannot point to anything specific. Tonally, they are quite different.

Lockridge's achievement does not deserve to be forgotten.

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