William Carlos Williams 
The Great American Novel 

First published in 1923 in Paris in an edition of three hundred copies, this satiric novel by the great American poet is 'a satire on the novel form in which a little -(female) Ford car falls more or less in love with a Mack truck.’ For the most part, however, this work is a serious attempt to write a novel with the recognition that such a work is impossible to write within established conventions. 

The Great American Novel ends up being a scathing critique of colonialism, Americanism, manifest destiny, and the creative process. Beautiful wordplay and hilarity and theft of various texts and brilliant phrasing abounds.