ABSTRACT
The American novelist Jonathan Lethem (b. 1964) has expressed scepticism about literary canons. He argues that the American novel resembles a Mount Rushmore on which only three or four heads are carved, and those belong to white males. Lethem admits that he himself has occasionally been carved on the latest version of the figurative Rushmore, alongside a selection of contemporaries. But he thinks that we should beware declarations about ‘America’s three or four greatest living novelists’, and instead be open to the unmasterable and still growing abundance of books (Lethem 2011: 367–372).
