Great American Novel

About Great American Novel

Few literary terms are more hotly debated, discounted, or derided than the "Great American Novel." But while critics routinely dismiss the phrase as at best hype and as at worst exclusionary, the belief that a national literature commensurate with both the scope and the contradictions of being American persists. In this podcast Scott Yarbrough and Kirk Curnutt examine totemic works such as Herman Melville's Moby-Dick and Toni Morrison's Beloved that have been labeled GANs, exploring their themes, forms, and reception histories, asking why, when, and how they entered the literary canon. Readers beware: there be spoilers here, and other hijinks ensue...

Publisher

Scott Yarbrough and Kirk Curnutt

Category

arts

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

31 Mar 2021

Latest episode

5 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

47 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   5 Sept 2026

   Episode 43: Marching toward "True Womanhood" in Louisa May Alcott's LITTLE WOMEN

   Send us Fan Mail Published in two parts in 1868 and 1869 (with the second half originally titled Good Wives), Louisa May Alcott's Little Women for decades defined the goals and aspirations of the young-adult novel: written as the realism movement took hold after the Civil War, it eschewed the sappy sentimentalism of Harriet Beecher Stowe and the preachiness of Horatio Alger, creating a portrait of female adolescence that felt strikingly aspirational until the modern era. While the b...

2. 

   7 Aug 2026

   Episode 42: Fly Away with Toni Morrison's SONG OF SOLOMON

   Send us Fan Mail Episode 42 of the Great American Novel Podcast considers Toni Morrison’s 1977 novel and National Book Critics’ Circle award winner Song of Solomon. Song of Solomon tells of the coming age of Macon “Milkman” Dead between the Second World War and before the passage of the Civil Right Act. Other unique and complex characters such as Pilate, his aunt, Hagar, his lover (and cousin), and Guitar, his friend and nemesis help round out a complicated and intriguing story about how a yo...

3. 

   25 Jun 2026

   Episode 41: Feeling the Modern World Fracture in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night

   Send us Fan Mail F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night (1934) has always sparked great debate about whether it is a noble botch or a modernist classic because its non-chronological form, confounding character motivation, and intrusive narrative voice all seem so compellingly imperfect. In 1951 the literary critic Malcolm Cowley even published a "corrected" edition in which he reordered the novel so it unfolded in sequence---to no avail in critical estimantion. In this story of the talente...

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.9 / 5

109 ratings

Spotify

4.9 / 5

141 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 30 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

23

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

92

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Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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