More than 100,000 new books were published in the UK last year - and, perhaps surprisingly given its size, a similar number were published in the United States. Well every time another one comes out, many critics, academics and readers wonder whether this time, this one could be THE Great American novel - the one definitive book that captures the American character as its subject. But does the Great American Novel really exist?
"That's not writing, that's typing". The novelist, essayist and commentator Gore Vidal does not suffer fools gladly.
So his views on one past literary foe's books should come as no surprise. He is pretty unflattering about most American writers working today too.
He reserves his praise for American writers of the past, like Henry James and Edith Wharton. But he does not think they, or anyone else, has ever written the definitive, Great American Novel.
What is the Great American Novel? It is the one book that captures the American character as its subject. Has it been written? Will it ever be written? Or will it remain an elusive aspiration, like the pursuit of happiness?
The American writer James Ellroy, famous for his crime novels like LA Confidential, is in Britain at the moment promoting his new novel, The Cold Six Thousand.
It is the second part of a trilogy in which Ellroy aims to re-write American history between 1958 and 1972. He says he is determined to write great books. But like Gore Vidal, he doesn't believe the Great American novel exists.
In contrast, the British writer Martin Amis thinks it does. He believes The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow, which was published in 1953, is the Great American Novel.
In his new book of collected essays and reviews, The War Against Cliche, which will be published on the 26th of April, Amis urges readers to stop their search for the Great American Novel. He thinks the quest has ended. Perhaps it has. But perhaps it has not.
