SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue 1 - Journal - Page 48
which allows competing stakes in older texts to be in perennial refreshment so that it may
be read anew. The texts’ interpretations are not what makes it new. The lens discourse of
Blackness’ interminability reveals new and unaccounted-for stakes beyond the taken-forgranted stakes assigned to Blackness within aesthetic regimes. Thus, radial suspense through
Ellison casts the irresolvable discourse of Blackness as the story’s node, where the node’s
ripples invert captor-captive dynamics to seize the captor (agents of the aesthetic regime)
with its net (well-executed craft) – a skill Ellison wields masterfully, most evidently apparent
in its canonization as a GAN.
The Protest Novel versus The Great American Novel
I regard the Great American Novel as a text that reflects the United States’ accepted
successes and failures in a way that masterfully wields literary craft, intuited through an
authorial talent earned through mediating the complex mundane, which provides originality.
The nation is in constant flux. It creates suspense that unsettles and fosters hope, while
structuring and decomposing expectations of how that structure materializes. The nation
cultivates and fulfills cultivated desires but does not fulfill them for all. This perpetual state
of sway is suspense, and its suspense encapsulates every anxiety about the country’s status and
what the nation is willing to do to maintain it, regardless of how its constituents are affected
and, as such, how its constituents are eager to struggle to uphold a life they have believed
they are to maintain to remain in-step with the nation. The element of suspense is central to
the Great American Novel for this reason, in its ability to channel the very dilatory area on
which the country has operated: states of evasion, truthful traps and entrapping truths, partial
accountability, and suspended disclosures.
Patricia Highsmith, a literary figure widely regarded as a gold standard in suspense
writing tradecraft, provides insight into how literary craft and talent determine suspense
narration. Known for her novel Deep Water (1957)–celebrated as a GAN for its high-burn
suspense and psychological immersion steeped in crime and the individualistic internalism of
nuclear familial bonds in the United States–Highsmith posits that these elements of literary
craft stem from “the germ of an idea,”12 everyday inspirations. She states that plotting,
character development, setting and atmosphere, point of view, dialogue, description, and
revision choices constitute craft. Talent, then, is the lens through which an author assembles
these components. When smart decisions and unique orientations about the United States’
achievements and failures come together, they produce a GAN. According to The Atlantic, the
GAN consists of texts that “made America think,” echoing John William DeForest’s notion
of “a work of fiction that accomplished the task of painting the American soul.”14 In The
Atlantic’s collection of such works, Highsmith stands alongside Ralph Ellison, who, in his
own right, is heralded as a literary luminary for his most famous work, Invisible Man. And
yet, Deep Water and Invisible Man could not be more different.
In Deep Water, Highsmith follows a loveless small-town marriage between Vic
and Melinda Meller. Rather than opt for divorce, Melinda openly pursues extramarital
relationships that keep her tied to the family. Vic, meanwhile, attempts to win her back.
Patricia Highsmith, Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), 4.
Highsmith, Plotting 53, 37, 87, 103.
14
The Atlantic, “The Great American Novels,” The Atlantic (blog), March 14, 2024, https://www.theatlantic.
com/books/archive/2024/03/best-books-american-昀椀ction/677479/.
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