What made Hemingway great was that he saw the emptiness of America, without despairing. What brought him down was obviously Neptune. He is the one that gives the worst penalty for failure and the slimmest chance of success. Is not the ocean proof of this?
The emptiness of America. That which drives the analytics insane.
There are only two American novels that I know of. The Sun Also Rises and A Month Of Sundays. Hemingway sought to write truth, and Updike sought to write a novel. Neither was untalented enough to seek greatness.
All others were vain and untalented, or, as in Moby Dick, too provincial. Novels are only written by empires. That is why for a long time only Spain wrote novels, and the daughters of Spain, which were Spain, but Spain the empire and not Spain the nation. By comparing American authors to Garcia Marquez one can tell which novels existed. In Spain, many existed. At the very least five.