The Aesthetics of Middlebrow Fiction : Popular US Novels, Modernism, and Form, 1945–75

During the Cold War, many popular American novels were labelled "middlebrow," leading to a general belief that these texts held less intellectual merit. Perrin debunks these unfair assumptions through works by James Michener, Harper Lee, and Leon Uris, arguing that such writers made a major contribution to the tradition of American literature. "The way Perrin locates the middlebrow novel - not as marginal, but firmly within the history and tradition of the American novel - is significant. For him, our literary tradition doesn't go from Sentimentalism to Realism to Modernism to Postmodernism in such neat order. Realism continued. It continues. The Aesthetics of Middlebrow Fiction offers convincing evidence of its aesthetic complexity and artistic significance."--Cecilia Konchar Farr, Associate Professor of English and Women's Studies, St. Catherine University, USA, author of Reading Oprah and The Ulysses Delusion"Beautifully written and carefully observed, The Aesthetics of Middlebrow Fiction is an important new contribution to debates about the significance of that large list of mid-century novels that were once both widely read and considered worthy of critical attention yet now tend to be considered less as works of art and more as sociological curiosities. Tom Perrin departs from earlier scholarship on the middlebrow by closely reading novels as diverse as To Kill a Mockingbird, The Price of Salt, and Exodus. In so doing, he demonstrates convincingly that middlebrow authors relied on a coherent set of aesthetic strategies in their efforts to make literature responsive to the pressing questions of twentieth century social life. Thus this book provides not only a major new account of the middlebrow but also of its vexed relation to literary modernism."--Jan Radway, Walter Dill Scott Professor of Communication Studies, Northwestern University, USA"The Aesthetics of Middlebrow Fiction only sounds oxymoronic until you read it. Tom Perrin persuades even the most skeptical reader that middlebrow fiction had an aesthetic philosophy, projected itself as a rival to modernism, and shaped early postmodern fiction as well. Perrin's book requires readers of 20th-century fiction to take the middlebrow seriously as an intervention in the tradition of the novel and the history of aesthetics." - Deborah Nelson, Associate Professor of English, University of Chicago, USA "The Aesthetics of Middlebrow Fiction examines the critically acclaimed, popular novels that were labeled "middlebrow" in the US during the Cold War. This period saw a vogue for the term 'middlebrow,' with articles on the topic in magazines like Harper's and Life; there was even a song about "Middle Brow" taste in Touch and Go, a 1949 Broadway revue. The project treats the middlebrow novel not as marginal but as central to the tradition of American literature. Bestselling novelists such as James Michener, Harper Lee, and Leon Uris were not, as critics often asserted, writing work outmoded by comparison with their modernist peers, but rather adapted the traditional conventions of the novel to represent the modern world"-- "Remake it New treats the "middlebrow" novel as not marginal but central to the tradition of American literature. Bestselling novelists such as James Michener, Harper Lee, and Leon Uris were not, as critics often asserted, writing work outmoded by comparison with their modernist peers, but rather adapted the traditional conventions of the novel to represent the modern world"-- "The Aesthetics of Middlebrow Fiction examines the critically acclaimed, popular novels that were labeled "middlebrow" in the US during the Cold War. This period saw a vogue for the term 'middlebrow, ' with articles on the topic in magazines like Harper's and Life; there was even a song about "Middle Brow" taste in Touch and Go, a 1949 Broadway revue. The project treats the middlebrow novel not as marginal but as central to the tradition of American literature. Bestselling novelists such as James Michener, Harper Lee, and Leon Uris were not, as critics often asserted, writing work outmoded by comparison with their modernist peers, but rather adapted the traditional conventions of the novel to represent the modern world"-- Provided by publisher Front Matter....Pages i-ix Introduction: Remake It New....Pages 1-17 The Old Men and the “Sea of Masscult”: T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and the Middlebrow Aesthetic....Pages 19-36 “It Offers No Solutions”: Ambivalence and Aesthetics in the Social Problem Novel....Pages 37-69 Rebuilding Bildung: The Novel of Aesthetic Education....Pages 71-89 The Second-Greatest Stories Ever Told: Middlebrow Epics of 1959 and the Aesthetics of Disavowal....Pages 91-108 Book Smarts: Masochism and Popular Postmodernism....Pages 109-134 Ending....Pages 135-138 Back Matter....Pages 139-197