Great post Jess. It's something I've been thinking about recently too - the idea of a 'great Australian novel', or even of an 'Australian' novel, in an electronic transnational age. Especially after writing a book called 'Australian Classics', which purportedly included some 'great Australian novels' among poems and non-fiction. After immersing myself in Australian literature exclusively for a year I was reminded that broad themes do run through our literature, mostly concerned with dispossession and cultural division, articulated in various ways throughout our 200 year literary history and recently and most brilliantly in 'Dead Europe'. So I still think the term 'Australian novel' is useful - because while our heads and often our bodies are more and more located elsewhere, we're also uniquely shaped by living in a continent with an indigenous population with a rich ancient culture, overlaid by 200 years of migration from the four corners of the globe, each bringing its own rich ancient culture. I think 'Dead Europe' and 'The Slap' are perfect examples of great Australian novels. To me they could not have been written anywhere else and their portrayal of hybrid Australia - and of European culture in both Australia and Europe - is electrifying in its freshness and truthfulness. I agree that it would have been exciting if 'The Slap' had won the Miles Franklin this year, with its new generation of 'Aussie blokes' and sheilas' in an Australian landscape that extends no further than the suburban back yard.
But I've been thinking about the 'great Australian novel' because I wonder about the novel form itself in an electronic age. I always used to imagine reading or writing 'the great Australian novel', with some fairly clear idea of what that would mean. Yesterday I thought about it and for the first time ever the idea 'great Australian novel' had lost its force - it seemed too definitive and closed a thing for such a shifting multivalent world, more likely that a series of tweets would have something true to say about contemporary life than the sort of sustained fixed narrative writing usually associated with novels. But perhaps that is my own mental limitation and the novel will prove as resilient a cultural form as it's always been.

I don't want to sidetrack the conversation too much here, but I did just want to say that while I acknowledge The Slap as an important book, I don't think it counts as a Great Australian Novel. Or if it does, then the definition for a GAN needs to be changed.

I gave up reading The Slap halfway through (waits for the stones to be thrown). While I appreciated the style of writing, I could not relate to the characters, or the place, or that limited backyard power culture at all. More importantly, given the big gold sticker announcing its Miles Franklin eligibility, I couldn't believe that this book represented my Australia. However, I live on the west coast and so perhaps this geographical difference can account for my indifference. And then again, perhaps this is how people living in the regions written about in other country's Great Novels feel like, taken aback by the possibility that what they see isn't what is considered a true and accurate representation.

To my mind (and it should be noted that I'm totally unqualified to say any of this) the definition for a Great Novel that represents an entire country's lifestyle requires that that country be able to be written about so specifically. This is reflected in your quote from the Miles Franklin that the winning novel 'must present Australian life in all its phases'. Without knowing too much about its history, I think it can be broadly said that the typical Great American Novel, for example, represents a time and society and attitude that was common more-or-less throughout the entirety of America. Whether it is due to our geographic variety, or as you say the fact that we have such a huge influx of different cultures and ways of living through the various waves of immigration, I believe it to be impossible to completely encompass these same things with respect to Australia. The next best thing to hope for is a novel that honestly presents just one facet of Australian life honestly and accurately. If this is the definition that we accept, then there are clear front-runners for the category: The Slap with its suburban backyard drama, Breath with a reflective on surfing culture and growing up in coastal towns, and many others.

Anyway, I'll stop my uninformed rambling and let the pros continue. Thanks once again for the thought provoking topic!

Thanks again for these engaging responses! The more I seem to read, the more it seems I could go on about this topic for another 1000 words.

Jane – that’s a great point about the power of the ‘novel’ in the electronic age.

phill - I think your response to The Slap touches on one of my key issues with the concept of the GAN. You said that you didn't feel it represented your Australia and (quite rightly) that it was impossible for any novel to do so for everyone. To me, this flags the inherent contradiction in the very idea of the GAN. Again, as you say, the best we can hope are a handful of novels that show various aspects of our lives as truthfully as possible.

However, this too is tricky territory. For one, not everyone sees the GAN this way. I think the phrase itself can easily be interpreted as encompassing and absolute. Anyone saddled with it, including the winner of the Miles, can therefore be read as speaking for a ‘majority’. And again, there’s still the difficulty of choosing what aspects of ‘Australian life’ to award.

One of the things that struck me about the debate since is that in some ways the negative and the affirmative were arguing the same thing. One side argued explicitly that GAN (as books relating to jackaroos and the outback and gumtrees) was no longer relevant in today’s world. The other argued that the GAN could be widely interpreted to be many things, whether it be Cate Kennedy’s novel on the Tasmanian wild or Nam Le’s diasporic, The Boat. The point is that it could be any and either of these, which only goes to show difficult it is to come up with any definitive idea of the GAN nowadays.

Yes, I agree that your comments about 'The Slap', Phill, highlight the problems inherent in the idea of a Great Australian Novel. I was responding more to the idea of whether it was useful to think of literature in terms of nationality at all - and I do think it still can be.

But as for a 'Great' Australian novel - as you say, Jess, the the idea of a 'Great' Australian Novel begins to suggest all-encompassing or representative in a way that's probably not possible in any novel, not of Australia or the 21C any more than America and the 19C or 20C. (Although a novel like 'War and Peace' would aspire to it for 19C Russia.)

As for Great American Novels - eg that supposedly Great American Novel 'Moby-Dick', I don't think that tale of whalers and whales represents 19C US society and attitude any more or less comprehensively than 'The Slap' represents 21C Australian culture. Both are portray part of the whole but for me both are so vivid and rich they speak to broader issues, eg 'The Slap' touches generally on contemporary family life, parenting, discipline, generational change, teen experience, sex, marriage, drugs, alcohol, etc, and I think the fact so many people are reading and discussing it, a year after it was published, whether they 'like' it or not, attests to fact it's hit at nerve that goes beyond suburban Melbourne.

I think it's always been difficult to come up with a definitive idea of the GAN, except that for one moment in Bulletin driven 1890s Sydney a bush-centred national literary culture was enshrined, from which came 'My Brilliant Career' and Miles Franklin's legacy.