Novel Competition: American Fiction and the Cultural Economy, 1965-1999

Novel Competition describes the literary and institutional struggle to make American novels matter between 1965 and 1999. As corporations took over the book business, Hollywood movies, popular music, and other forms of mass-produced culture competed with novels as never before for a form of prestige that had mostly been attached to novels in previous decades. In the context of this competition, developments like the emergence of Rolling Stone magazine, regional publishers, Black studies programs, and New Hollywood became key events in the life of the American novel. Novels by Truman Capote, Ann Beattie, Toni Cade Bambara, Cynthia Ozick, and Larry McMurtryamong many othersare recast as prescient reports on, and formal responses to, a world suddenly less hospitable to old claims about the novels value. This book brings to light the story of the novels perceived decline and the surprising ways American fiction transformed in its wake. See more