我的祖国是一本书。大多数资格深厚的文学评论家视之为装腔作势、夸大其词而不屑一顾,而富有创造力的作家们又往往将其作为笑谈。但将近150年来,我们所有的人——作家、读者、文化潮流观察家——都对“伟大的美国小说”这一提法念念不忘,也就是期盼从某种角度描绘我们雄心 My motherland is a book. Most well-qualified literary critics dismissed as pretentious and exaggerated, and creative writers tended to use it as a joke. But for nearly 150 years, all of us - writers, readers, cultural-watchers - have all along remembered the notion of a “great American novel,” that is, looking forward to drawing our ambitions from a certain point of view