If You Want to Know, Asch

What is Asch's "In Search of America"?  Is it a bildungsroman, a social commentary, or perhaps a migration narrative?  When viewing a text, I think it is important to maintain a broad understanding.  However, one should not only hold a broad understanding of a text, but also be engaged in deriving, and developing, as much meaning as desired.  That is to fully understand a text is impossible, but to view and explore the various facets involved, we are often forced to choose between the magnifying glass and the naked eye.  We should invest our time in both.  This brings me to my point concerning the labeling of Asch's "In Search of America".  Is it a bildungsroman?  Certainly, it explores the development of a nation and the growth of a narrator in his relation to the working class world.  The work is almost autobiographical, but not intended for that purpose.  However, it is also definitely a social commentary, as it discusses the battle between social classes, race, and nature.  The greatest issue in the piece is the effects of the Great Depression on the working families in America.  Is it a migrational narrative?  How could it not be?  The story follows the migration of the narrator at the surface, the migration of the working class in America in the middle, and the migration of society at the root.  It follows the dynamic of change across the plains and planes of time.  So, what is Asch's "In Search of America"?  I think it is whatever you decide to make it out to be.  The nature of a text is not in the words on the page or the mind of the author, but in your mind, in your unique generative process.  Certainly, many people see a work as bildungsroman, social commentary, or migration narrative, but no one sees it quite the way you do.  I think that is part of Asch's lesson for us, at least the way I see it, in the abruptness of the story's end.  It is what we learn from our journey that matters, and not where we end up at the end.