Great Expectations

A profane commentary on the hoopla surrounding the summer's biggest book, Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon.

Nick Gillespie | July 28, 1997

"Lord have mercy on us, we want a

'great' writer," wrote the

literary critic Leslie Fiedler

back in 1951. "It is at once the

comedy and tragedy of

20th-century American letters

that we simply cannot keep a

full stock of contemporary

'great novelists.' ... From

moment to moment we have the

feeling that certain claims ...

are secure, but even as we name

them they shudder and fall."

Fiedler's irony was directed at

F. Scott Fitzgerald, but his