re: Greatest American Novel
I would have picked Moby Dick, but Huck Finn is right up there too.
When I was 7 years old, my aristocratic aunt from Cuba came to Miami for a vacation and I was invited to join her as a companion and translator. One morning after breakfast on Collins Avenue, she was paying at the register and she spied a paperback copy of Huckleberry Finn on the rack. She picked it up, had the clerk add it to the bill and handed it to me. "Read this," she said, "it's the only piece of literature your country has produced."