THE GREAT
AMERICAN NOVEL
BY
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
PARIS
Three Mountains Press
1923
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
The Great
American Novel
CHAPTER I
The Fog
If there is progress then there is a novel. Without progress there isnothing. Everything exists from the beginning. I existed in thebeginning. I was a slobbering infant. Today I saw nameless grasses—Itapped the earth with my knuckle. It sounded hollow. It was dry asrubber. Eons of drought. No rain for fifteen days. No rain. It has neverrained. It will never rain. Heat and no wind all day long better say hotSeptember. The year has progressed. Up one street down another. It isstill September. Down one street, up another. Still September. Yesterdaywas the twenty second. Today is the twenty first. Impossible. Not if itwas last year. But then it wouldn't be yesterday. A year is not asyesterday in his eyes. Besides last year it rained in the early part ofthe month. That makes a difference. It rained on the white goldenrod.Today being misplaced as against last year makes it seem better to havewhite—Such is progress. Yet if there is to be a novel one must beginsomewhere.
Words are not permanent unless the graphite be scraped up and put in atube or the ink lifted. Words progress into the ground. One must beginwith words if one is to write. But what then of smell? What then of thehair on the trees or the golden brown cherries under the black cliffs.What of the weakness of smiles that leave dimples as much as to say:forgive me—I am slipping, slipping, slipping into nothing at all. NowI am not what I was when the word was forming to say what I am. I sit soon my bicycle and look at you greyly, dimpling because it is Septemberand I am older than I was. I have nothing to say this minute. I shallnever have anything to do unless there is progress, unless you write anovel. But if you take me in your arms—why the bicycle will fall andit will not be what it is now to smile greyly