In 1868, the writer John William De Forest coined the term “The Great American Novel” to describe an epic in prose that would “paint the American soul”, capture national ideals and manners, and help unify the United States after the Civil War. He hoped such a thing could be written soon, since the country seemed too immature yet for a real epic, in verse. But can there be such a thing as a prose epic?
Prose is a written simulation of someone’s speech. A character from a novel may enter folklore, such as Uriah Heep in Dickens’ David Copperfield; yet he always remains the author’s property. Prose fiction has evolved into a solitary, private pleasure that is the creation of a single writer’s imagination. But if a national myth is to hold people together, then it must transcend the author’s individual experience no less than that of the audience.
Walt Whitman almost had the right idea. The prose introduction to his 1855 collection Leaves of Grass was intended as a blueprint for poetic literature that would celebrate his nation and its virtues. This introduction inspires awe; but Leaves of Grass is itself a mess. Like his compatriot Ezra Pound, Whitman was a great poet who never composed any great poems.
He had brilliant ideas, lovely phrases, piercing insights, and all the material for great poetry; but he had no idea how to communicate any of this in
