The Great American Social Novel, which strives to capture the times, to document American history, has been revivified by Don DeLillo's Underworld, a novel of epic social power.
John Henry Days Colson Whitehead 389pp, 4th Estate, £12 The big, polyphonic novel that strives to capture the spirit of a nation or an age can be a hazardous enterprise.
The coming-of-age novel usually strives for sincerity; in setting herself thrillingly free from the rules of realism, Catton cuts to the heart of emotional truths behind the social facade, exploring issues of intimacy and power, innocence and experience, performance and authenticity.
Everything he learned from writing copy on Madison Avenue he applied to his novel: "He strove for greater precision, clarity, punch". Heller jotted down phrases and ideas and scenes on index cards.
I went to the university's writer-in-residence, a guy called Allan Massie, and said, "I seem to have accidentally written a crime novel, while striving to write literature".
The world of the books is not dissimilar from the real world and in all three novels McInerney strives to find a balance between his affection for his characters and his desire to satirize the woes of these affluent, liberal Manhattanites.
In The Octopus and other novels he strove to return American fiction, which was then dominated by historical romance, to more serious themes.
