First published in 1923 in Paris in an edition of three hundred copies, this satiric novel by the great American poet is "a satire on the novel form in which a little -(female) Ford car falls more or less in love with a Mack truck." For the most part, however, this work is a serious attempt to write a novel with the recognition that such a work is impossible to write within established conventions.
The Great American Novel ends up being a scathing critique of colonialism, Americanism, manifest destiny, and the creative process. Beautiful wordplay and hilarity and theft of various texts and brilliant phrasing abounds.