The Great British Novel

[shemthepenman]

why don’t british writers or australian writers or french writers or german writers (serious german writers) or russian writers harbor similar desires?

Ego.  The cult of the individual.  The desperate need to be thought of as the best.  I don't think any of us have that, as nations -- the British were the best at one point, arguably, but have long since abandoned that concept of supremacy.  Additionally, pinning a national identity upon a single static point in history is backwards-looking -- do American writers truly want to write the Great American Novel, or do they merely want to have written it?

i agree, americans do seem to have a vulgar inferiority complex sublimated in grand hyperbolic gestures. i would, however, argue that british people haven’t abandoned the idea of supremacy, at all. in fact, on the contrary, our arrogance, unlike the american’s, is simply so ingrained after centuries of dominance that our supremacy is not even subconsciously questioned. this actually might explain why there is no such idea as The Great British Novel.

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if there were such an appellation, what would be The Great British Novel? Brighton Rock? Trainspotting? Pride and Prejudice? something more contemporary that i’ve never heard of?

Peter Pan

never read it. 

what novel would you say expresses what it means to be quintessentially australian?