American Rust is a novel written by the American writer Philipp Meyer

Philipp Meyer

Philipp Meyer is an American fiction writer, born in 1974, and is the author of the novel American Rust, as well as short stories published in McSweeney’s Quarterly, The Iowa Review, and Esquire UK. Meyer is the recipient of a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship. He grew up in Hampden, a blue-collar...

 and published in 2009 in the United States, Great Britain, Australia, and The Netherlands (in Dutch); in 2010 it will be published (in translation) in France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Israel, Greece, and Serbia. It was an Economist

Economist

An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...

 Book of the Year for 2009, a Washington Post Top Ten Book of 2009, a New York Times Notable Book of 2009 , Amazon's Best Books of the Year

Amazon's Best Books of the Year

Amazon's Best Books of the Year is a list of best books created yearly by Amazon.com. It is a list of best books picked by Amazon editors and customers. It began in 2000. Customer favorites are ranked according to the number of sales made through October, for books published in that calender year...

 (2009), a Kansas City Star Top 100 Book of 2009, a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, also known simply as the "PG," is the largest daily newspaper serving metropolitan Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.-Early history:...

 Best Book of 2009, an Idaho Statesman

Idaho Statesman

The Idaho Statesman is a U.S. daily newspaper serving the Boise, Idaho metropolitan area. The paper has a circulation of 61,000 daily, 83,038 Sunday, and employs about 300 people. It is owned by The McClatchy Company....

 Top Book of 2009, a Daily Beast Favorite Book of 2009, as well as being named one of Newsweek

Newsweek

Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...

's "Best. Books. Ever." in July 2009. Universal Studios

Universal Studios

Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....

 has planned a film adaptation with Walter Salles

Walter Salles

Walter Moreira Salles, Jr. is a Brazilian filmmaker and film producer of international prominence.-Life and career:Salles was born in Rio de Janeiro. He is the son of Elizinha Goncalves and Walter Moreira Salles, a Brazilian banker and ambassador, and the brother of João Moreira Salles, also a...

 directing. Reviewers in the UK's Telegraph , The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) , and Dayton Daily News

Dayton Daily News

The Dayton Daily News is a daily newspaper published in Dayton, Ohio. It is owned by Cox Enterprises. In the 2010 Associated Press Society of Ohio newspaper competition that takes place every year, DaytonDailyNews.com was named "the best large-newspaper web site in Ohio".-History:On August 15,...

  have suggested it may fit the category of "Great American Novel

Great American Novel

The "Great American Novel" is the concept of a novel that is distinguished in both craft and theme as being the most accurate representative of the zeitgeist in the United States at the time of its writing. It is presumed to be written by an American author who is knowledgeable about the state,...

."

The structure of American Rust is that of a third person, stream-of-consciousness work influenced, according to Meyer , by writers such as James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

, William Faulkner

William Faulkner

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...

, Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf

Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....

, and James Kelman

James Kelman

James Kelman is an influential writer of novels, short stories, plays and political essays. His novel A Disaffection was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 1989...

. Comparisons to other books vary somewhat, but mostly include works by modernist writers. The Baltimore Sun compared the novel to the works of Faulkner. Roger Perkins of the UK Telegraph, Michiko Kakutani

Michiko Kakutani

is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for The New York Times and is considered by many to be a leading literary critic in the United States.-Life and career:...

 of The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, and Ron Charles

Ron Charles

Ron Charles is deputy editor and a weekly fiction critic of The Washington Post "Book World", the book review section of the Post...

 of The Washington Post

The Washington Post

The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...

 compared it to the works of Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy is an American novelist and playwright. He has written ten novels, spanning the Southern Gothic, Western, and modernist genres. He received the Pulitzer Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction for The Road...

, Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

, John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck

John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...

, and J.D. Salinger. Geordie Williamson, head literary critic of The Australian

The Australian

The Australian is a broadsheet newspaper published in Australia from Monday to Saturday each week since 14 July 1964. The editor in chief is Chris Mitchell, the editor is Clive Mathieson and the 'editor-at-large' is Paul Kelly....

, compared the Meyer to Steinbeck in a radio interview, saying "John Steinbeck is alive and well, and his name is Philipp Meyer." Williamson also compared Meyer to Sinclair Lewis

Sinclair Lewis

Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...

 and Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...

 in his printed review of American Rust in The Australian.

A winner of the 2009 Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

 Book Prize