Fictions of Capital situates manners and writing about manners in the contextof American capitalism between 1880 and 1960, a period that runs from the onset of the sales culture to its war-prompted crisis point in the 1960s. The work of various economic theorists and historians is used to establish two of capitalism’s deeper narratives: the plot to accumulate and expand resources (1880to the First World War), and the plot to ensure reproduction of the expanded resources (preoccupying late capitalism, but already an issue for market leaders in the 1920s). James and Fitzgerald are read as the key novelists of bourgeois affluence, their juxtaposition covers the scope of Incorporation, from theinitial accumulation to the problems of how accumulations are to be reproduced. The relation between Fitzgerald and Mailer is explored as a way into new tensions in the growth imperative, resolved though the linking of Destruction, or the permanent arms economy, to Desire, or the ubiquitous shop-window, as a capitalist incentive. INDICE: Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Some slight shifts in the manner of the novel of manners; 2. ‘You’ve got to see it, feel it, smell it, hear it’, buy it: Hemingway’s commercial forms; 3. The Great Gatsby, glamour on the turn; 4. Money makes manners make man make woman: Tender is the Night, a familiar romance? 5. Iconic narratives: or, how three Southerners fought the secondCivil War; 6. Fordism: from desire to destruction (an historical interlude); 7. Why are we in Vietnam?: because the buck mustn’t stop; 8. Fordism, voiced and unvoiced: Mailer’s vocalism and Armies of the Night; 9. Armies of the Night: a familiar romance? Conclusion; Notes; Index.
- ISBN: 978-0-521-06403-3
- Editorial: Cambridge University
- Encuadernacion: Rústica
- Páginas: 304
- Fecha Publicación: 05/06/2008
- Nº Volúmenes: 1
- Idioma: Inglés