The Great American Novel

I'm new, said she, I don't think you'll find my card here. You're new; how interesting. Can you read the letters on that chart? Open your mouth. Breathe. Do you have headaches?...

That cat is funny. I think she'd be a good one for the circus. When she's hungry she bites your legs. Then she jumps at you as much as to say: _Carramba_, give me something.

Nuevo Mundo! shouted the sailors. The sea was rippling like the bottom of a woven grassrope chair. A new world! Taking out their finest satins and putting on new armor the comma...

Particles of falling stars, coming to nothing. The air pits them, eating out the softer parts. Sometimes one strikes the earth or falls flaming into Lake Michigan with a great h...

No man can tell the truth and survive--save through prestige. And no child either. Aristocracy is license to tell the truth. And to hear it. Witness the man William in Henry Fif...

It was a shock to discover that she, that most well built girl, so discrete, so comely, so able a thing in appearance, should be so stupid. There are things that she cannot lear...

If there is progress then there is a novel. Without progress there is nothing. Everything exists from the beginning. I existed in the beginning. I was a slobbering infant. Today...

As the Southern mountains are not like other mountains, so the mountaineers are not like others. For all their beauty these mountains are treacherous and alien, and the people w...

Calang-glang! Calang-glang! went the bells of the little Episcopal Church at Allandale. It was eight o'clock in the evening. A row of cars stood along the curb, each with its he...

In spite of the moon in mid sky and the plaster of dully shining leaves on the macadam and all the other signs of the approach of fine weather there rang in his head: Such a cud...

The American background is America. If there is to be a new world Europe must not invade us. It is not a matter of changing the y to i as in Chile. They are bound.

What then is a novel? _Un Novello_, pretty, pretty Baby. It is a thing of fixed form. It is pure English. Yes, she is of Massachusetts stock. Her great grandfather was thrown ou...

It is Joyce with a difference. The difference being greater opacity, less erudition, reduced power of perception--Si la sol fa mi re do. Aside from that simple, rather stupid de...

I miss it often. At nine they let me drive the hay-hoist with one horse and later with two. One morning I had the young team out. It was Allie's team of greys, they was only jus...

I had five cents in my pocket and a piece of apple pie in my hand, said Prof. M. I. Pupin, of Columbia University describing the circumstances of his arrival in America in the s...

Arnold, this wind is, the wise and sagacious captain. Henchman of the wind. The wind is a lion with hooked teeth. The saber-toothed tiger inhabited the region west of the Allega...

That's all very fine about _le mot juste_ but first the word must be free.--But is there not some other way? It must come about gradually. Why go down into hell when--Because wo...

It was another day ended. Another day added to the days that had gone before. Merest superstition. The eternal moment remained twining in its hair the flowers of yesterday and t...

Another day, going evening foremost this time. Leaning above her baby in the carriage was Nettie Vogelman, grown heavier since we knew her in the sixth grade twenty-five years b...