Photograph: Butch Martin/Alamy
The critics have never quite called off the search for the great American novel; meanwhile, the hunt goes on for the only slightly less prized great American article. It’s a piece of journalism that captures the spirit and meaning of the republic. Hardboiled but with a soft centre, in the US feature-writing tradition, it might be set in New York, the most American of places.
Indeed, you can still catch staffers at the New Yorker magazine having a crack at it, though they’d never admit it. Their copy might include a zigzagging fire escape, or a genie of steam escaping from a sidewalk, or perhaps a yellow cab hopscotching over potholes. But never all these motifs together! That would risk unfavourable comparison with the cherished chroniclers of the city’s past: EB White, AJ Liebling, Dorothy Parker and others.
