I am offended you call it a 'distant' desert. Why must it be referenced by where you are from? Why does your place of residence take precedence to those in the desert? Why can't your home be the 'distant' one? Huh?
I'm offended you didn't give that person the liberty to call it whatever they wanted. This is some peoples training ground for writing that great American epic.
I am offended that you would label someone's writing 'great' and 'American'. What about reading something on that person's subjective views of its merit? One person's great novel is another's trash. Further, isn't literature supposed to be universal? What ridiculous nationalism and Jingoism to declare it an 'American' epic.
offended that above poster ^ acts like they know more on a subject than the previous person thus attempting to make previous poster feel "less than" which isn't very Christian