Washington Irving is often tarred with this well-meaning brush, despite the fact that he was by no means the first American fiction writer, nor did he ever publish in that consummate American form: the novel. This is a truism in legend and history alike: Who prefers the dutiful Abraham to his rebellious sons, or Joseph to Jesus? Who-aside from their biographers-remembers the progenitor of Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, or Marie Curie? There is no faster way to doom an author than to slap him with a patriotic paternity suit. To refer to a writer as the Father of American Literature is the quickest way to consign him to anthologies, and to popular oblivion.
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