The Great American Novel

Is it conceivable that you could write a novel in which blacks arenot center stage?
Bill Moyers to Toni Morrison, March 1990

Imagine you are a boy in the Midwest with a slingshot in your pocket.
Your dad’s under the Chevy, and oil like blood slides across sleek cement
to stain your white sneakers. Then you’re thirty. Built like a caveman.
Doing E or Molly or Ortho-Cyclen—you know, for kicks. Because you’re
fucking thirty and it’s almost over. So you’re thinking about sleeping with
this girl, this girlfriend of a friend, and you’re imagining what your life
would look like when you finally do. And you despair. Despair! Then you
fuck her anyway. Life is meaningless. Fuck her. And then you are old.
Your job is shit and the kids, no longer kids, are still brats. Maybe one’s
pregnant. Another’s definitely gay, no question. And you’re Methodist or
something like it. Your whore of a wife hasn’t given it up for weeks. And
all you want to do is write down every single thought in your head. Like,
exactly. Exactly, exactly. Then your car magically meets a tree. Your wife
wears a red dress to your funeral. And your son’s not gay and your
daughter has a girl she names after you. And you? The omniscient
narrator? Godlike and dead, you’re looking back at your life and saying,
What a life, Jesus Christ! What a life. Something like that, original and
deep. Can you do that for us, Toni? For America?