Discussing the "Great" Books

                                                                                 

Is there such a thing as a "great" book, like greater than a '57 Chevy?

                                                                                  
     I got to thinking about a discussion I was having with two friends in a low-end restaurant, oh, sometime back in early ‘80s, when students still frequented the Westwood Village. 

     Both were Chicano grad students studying at UCLA, one finishing a Ph. D. in Latin American History, the other a Ph. D., also in history, focusing on the Southwest, the closest, he said, he could get to a doctorate in Chicano Studies. I was finishing an M.A. in English, at a local state university. I was listening more than talking. 

     Anyone who has ever watched two grad students argue over any given academic topic understands their passion, which was fueled as much by a few downed pitchers of beer than the heady topic under the microscope, so to speak. 

     The one studying history of the Southwest said he was pissed because he’d wanted a doctorate in Chicano Studies, but no university was offering it. The other argued, of course no university offered it. There wasn’t enough documented information to warrant a Ph. D. “What’s there to study?” 

     The future Southwest historian offered, “How can there be enough documentation if no universities offer advanced degrees for students to search the archives, personal letters, records,” etc., etc. Well, that opened the way for the Latin Americanist to argue, “What is Chicano studies, anyway? Chicanos can’t even agree about who is Chicano and who isn’t.” 

     The other said, “What about the documentation going back to the sixteen and seventeen-hundreds, the first explorations into Aztlan? That’s a lot of history,” to which the other responded, “That’s not Chicano history. That’s Mexican American history, not even, it's Hispanic history. Chicanos didn’t even start using the word “Chicano,” until the 1900s, probably the 1940s, the Pachuco era. How much documentation do you think pachucos left behind?” 

     And so it went, for at least an hour, getting louder and louder, nearly unruly, and students at other tables gawking at us, three Aztecas going at it in Westwood. My two friends finally calmed down, looked over at me, and said, something like, “And you, what?” They knew I was studying for one reason, because I wanted to write, not to research or teach, like them. “So," one said to me, "when you going to write the great Chicano novel?” 

     I told them I’d be happy if I could write a few good short stories. Funny, how ideas and past events come into our heads, with no warning, like this discussion I had with my two friends over thirty years ago. It must mean something or why would it stay locked in my memory? 

     After I recalled this discussion, I got to thinking about what we didn’t talk about -- this great “Chicano” novel I was supposed to write. What is it? Has it been written, yet? Maybe, maybe not. What is a “great” anything? Who is to judge? 

     Is the idea of writing the great Chicano novel a noble enough effort, or is it limiting? Why can’t a male or female Chicano, Mejico-Americano, Hispano del norte, set out to write the “great” American novel, up there with the big boys and girls, Hawthorne, Alcott, Hemingway, Harper Lee, Melville, Twain, Dos Passos, Faulkner, Mailer, Morrison, and all the others? What is this "great" novel that is supposed to be written, anyway? Is it finished or are readers still waiting for it? 

     As for the "greatest" novel, some might give the nod to Cervantes’ Don Quijote, even though many readers couldn’t hang with an old man and his hefty sidekick fighting illusions for 780 pages. Others say Tolstoy’s War and Peace is a might effort, even if it is, at times, confusing and too long, another rambling war story. How about Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, the study of a psychopath’s mind? Naw, when all is said and done, it's just another who-dun-it, a moping killer suffering an existential crisis. Maybe Dickens' the Tale of Two Cities, Bronte's Wuthering Heights, or Orwell's 1984?

      Moby Dick took the world by storm, yet some critics said Melville was just passing off a boy’s adventure sea story as a classic, not enough adventure and way too much working-class moralizing and philosophizing. How about Victor Hugo, les miserables, a hit not only in print but in cinema and, most recently, on Broadway? Some beautiful writing, solid visions of France’s penal system, but also bewildering and meandering; easier to watch the Fugitive, with Tommy Lee Jones. 

     Recently, I read Norman Mailer’s WWII classic, what some claim the Great American War novel, the Naked and the Dead. Coming in at 700+ pages, a true epic but also, with that many pages, how can any writer develop the “great” novel, some say a little too sentimental and wandering? A pleasant surprise, to me, was Mailer's portrayal of a Chicano recon infantryman, Julio Martinez, of San Antonio, who had a significant role in the book, even if Mailer got the accent wrong, more native American than Mexican, but his courage and exploits, in the narrative, showed how Chicanos were important to the war effort. 

     Many consider Gabriel Garcia-Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, a “great” novel, and a beautiful work, poetic, line by line, but overall, for many readers, overwhelming, a long narrative having trouble sticking to one of its hundred characters and storylines. 

     I am not a Mexican/Latin American literature expert, not even close, but I do know writers from south of the U.S. border can write some of the best, short novels, in the spirit of an epic and “great” novels, from Mexicans Mariano Azuela, Juan Rulfo, Elena Poiniatowska, Carlos Fuentes, Rosario Castellanos to Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio Cortazar, Jorge Luis Borges, Isabel Allende, and so many others. To even think of a “great” novel is mind-boggling. 

     In the U.S., Ana Castillo, Oscar Hijuelos, Sandra Cisneros, Arturo Islas, Victor Villasenor, Luis Alberto Urea, Rodolfo Anaya, Americans of Latino descent, to name but a few, have written some powerful novels, but is any one of them considered the “great” Latino (or Chicano) novel? Some say Victor Villasenor’s Rain of Gold came close, one of the longer Chicano epics. 

     Then, we always get back to what is a “great” novel, or for that matter, what is a "great" anything? Do writers set out to write “great” novels? Many writers, some of the best and most beloved, have said they had no idea if their book would be “great” or “best”. That wasn’t on their minds as they wrote. What took up most of their brain power was simply -- writing a good story, for whatever reason, like John Steinbeck exposing the plight of Okie farmworkers in the 1930s, or Heminway telling a love story, between an American and a British nurse, in Italy, during some of the worst fighting during WWI. 

     Alfredo Vea’s novel, God’s Go Begging, something of murder mystery, touched on so many other issues, like the Vietnam War, and it kept the reader glued to the page. Mark Twain set out to write a simple story about the great Mississippi River, from a child’s perspective, and he hit upon the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and the complexity of slavery. 

     I believe writers sit down at a desk, or wherever they write, to tell a story, the best story they can. They spin a yarn that will entertain, and maybe even teach. They don't think their writing is representing a nation or an ethnicity. They write one word then another, sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph, entertaining themselves as they write, and maybe, just maybe, somebody might pick up the book once it’s written and tell a friend, “Hey, this is a great novel. You should read it.” 

Daniel Cano's most recent novel, Death and the American Dream, was presented first place, historical fiction at the 2010, International Latino Literary Book Awards