…the novel's emotional immediacy, moral gravity, and linguistic power remain undiminished after eighty years, all contributing to its enormous influence. The impact has rippled down through three generations, leaving marks on books as diverse as Gilead, Outer Dark, Invisible Man, and Beloved, proving, as Cormac McCarthy once said: "The ugly fact is books are made out of books. … The novel depends for its life on the novels that have been written." This long line of influence may, in fact, become the determining factor of a particular kind of greatness in American letters; a book like Light in August becomes so simultaneously reflective of and embedded in the American literary consciousness that the two begin to resemble each other and, indeed, become each other. Great American Novels become both an indispensable part of understanding aspects of the American experience and a part of the American experience itself. One reads Huck Finn to understand America, and when one strives to understand America, one reads Huck Finn. As with Huck Finn, so with Uncle Tom's Cabin, so with Invisible Man, and so with Light in August. (Source)