Dime Store "I Can't Hear a Damn Word You're Saying" According to Denning (49), those who criticize the free distribution of fictional works that the public craves usually support banning sensational fiction altogether. However, this approach will inevitably drive away the very demographic that could benefit the most from the library's positive impact. It is evident that William Fletcher attributed more significance and importance to dime novels than most "serious intellectuals" did in the late 1800s. In fact, many people, particularly in the middle class, considered dime novels vulgar and believed that they caused young children to imitate the actions of characters such as Buffalo Bill and Deadwood Dick. However, both the production and popularity of dime novels, especially among the working class, suggest that something more profound than cheap entertainment compelled them to read these works of fiction. Contrary to the beliefs of many literary scholars and those in the middle class, and perhaps as indicated by the various reactions to them, these plotlines and characters appealed to the working class on more than one level. The rate at which dime novels were produced was astounding. According to Denning, "William Wallace Cook began by receiving a title and synopsis for a serial, and would then write, adapt and revise installments to meet the ever-changing specifications of the publisher. Almost all the accounts tell the story of novels written at exceptional speed in marathon sessions, and all emphasize the sheer quantity of writing" (21). It was not uncommon for authors to write entire pieces in one week or less, with some not bothering to edit their work. Many admitted that their motivation for writing stories at such a pace was money, but most maintained that the material contained in their stories was not immoral or vulgar, but rather useful. It is noteworthy that, while the negative reaction against dime novels eventually reflected the class that was supposedly reading them, the authors themselves were not from the working class. In fact, the dime novel "was a commercial product of a burgeoning industry employing relatively educated professionals--writers who also worked as journalists, teachers, or clerks" (45).
It has long been contested that works of great Literature have certain qualities and that they belong to an exclusive canon of works. Value is placed upon them for a number of reasons, including their reflection of cultural or social movements, the special meaning they possess, and even their use of specific narrative elements. Up until recently, scholars and intellectuals would never dream of examining works of lower caliber with any hopes of discovering value or merit. A new movement within intellectual circles, however, has shifted focus onto so-called low-brow novels like Chester Himes’ If He Hollers Let Him Go and God’s Little Acre by Erskine Caldwell. Surprisingly enough, the works of Himes and Caldwell can be held up to the same tests as more canonical works through their appeal to ideological remnants of Romanticism and the Enlightenment, their use of literary devices to create meaning, and the narratives’ use of these devises to enhance the elements of enjoyment and pleasure in reading.
Almost twenty years later, contemplating the contemporary American publishing scene, I feel a Bealean rage coming on (and with it a vague longing for one of his fits).While three percent of the American population in 1976 would have been a little over six million readers, recent surveys suggest that the consistent buyers of books in this country now total no more than half that number, and may even be as few as one million.[1]
In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, the author, Barbara Ehrenreich, takes on an experiment where she leaves her job as a highly acclaimed writer and decides to become part of the working class in order to better understand them and their continuous strains and worries. Throughout the novel, the author cleverly utilizes statistical data, her own personal experiences and the previously untold experiences of others to bring to light the harsh reality facing many Americans who, despite their daily hard work and effort, are shockingly close to poverty.
The laboring poor’s leisure activity was brief, casual, and non-commercial. Amusement was and had to be cheap. It mostly consisted of walks, visiting friends, and reading the penny press. The people of the Lower East Side entertained with sights of interest and penny pleasures such as organ grinders and buskers, acrobats performed tricks and vendors and soda dispensers competed for customers.
Perkins, Geroge, and Barbara Perkins. The American Tradition in Literature. 12th ed. Vol. 2. New York: McGraw Hill, 2009. Print
Dancing in the Dark examines some of the hidden anxiety of the era which ironically can be found through some of its most familiar productions at that time. The first section of his book focuses on the eras large scale poverty in realist fiction and poetry that portrays the people living paycheck to paycheck. These were
According to Raymond Williams, “In a class society, all beliefs are founded on class position, and the systems of belief of all classes …” (Rice and Waugh 122). His work titled, Marxism and Literature expounded on the conflict between social classes to bridge the political ideals of Marxism with the implicit comments rendered through the text of a novel. “For the practical links,” he states “between ‘ideas’ and ‘theories’ and the ‘production of real life’ are all in this material social process of signification itself” (133). Williams asserts that a Marxist approach to literature introduces a cross-cultural universality, ensuingly adding a timeless value to text by connecting creative and artistic processes with the material products that result. Like Williams, Don DeLillo calls attention to the economic and material relations behind universal abstractions such as aesthetics, love, and death. DeLillo’s White Noise brings modern-day capitalist societies’ incessant lifestyle disparity between active consumerists and those without the means to the forefront of the story’s plot. DeLillo’s setting uses a life altering man-made disaster in the suburban small-town of Blacksmith to shed light on the class conflict between the middle class (bourgeoisie) and the working poor (proletariat). After a tank car is punctured, an ominous cloud begins to loom over Jack Gladney and his family. No longer a feathery plume or a black billowing cloud, but the airborne toxic event—an event that even after its conclusion Jack cannot escape the prophecy of his encroaching death. Through a Marxist reading of the characterization of Jack Gladney, a middle-aged suburban college professor, it is clear that the overarching obsession with death operates as an...
DiYanni, Robert. "Literature, Reading Fiction, Poetry and Drama." Walker, Alice. Everyday Use. Boston: McGraw Hill, 1973. 743-749.
Horatio Alger's “Ragged Dick” is a story which expresses the morals found within a fourteen year old homeless boy. This young boy is quite different because of the morals and actions he showcases to others. Unlike other homeless individuals, Ragged Dick is a boy who puts forth honesty while acting in courteous ways which represent a true level of dignity. Although Ragged Dick is such a prideful and respectful young boy, he is also known as a “spendthrift.” Spendthrifts are individuals who are careless with their actions in terms of their spending as they have little no regard for their money. One example of this can be seen as we read, “Dick's appearance as he stood beside the box was rather peculiar. His pants were torn in several places, and had apparently belonged in the first instance to a boy two sizes larger than himself. He wore a vest, all the buttons of which were gone except two, out of which peeped a shirt which looked as if it had been worn a month. To complete his costume he wore a coat too long for him, dating back, if one might judge from its general appearance, to a remote antiquity” (Alger).
America is a popular image in literature and films. Dozens of writers sought to expose America’s vices and evaluate the consistency of its values, morality, and ethical norms. The pursuit for material wealth and the American dream were the topics most frequently discussed in American literature during the 1920s. The effects of World War I on individual beliefs and ideals, the ongoing decay of morality, the hollowness of dreams and convictions, and the failure to materialize one’s life goals together created a complicated situation, which often resembled a journey for nothing.
During the 19th and 20th century, America became a massive super power of cultural abundance and productivity. As William Leach states in his work The Land of Desire and the Culture of Consumer Capitalism, “the cardinal features of this culture were acquisition and consumption as the means of achieving happiness; the cult of the new; the democratization of desire; and money value as the predominant measure of all value in society” (Leach page 3). With the rise of consumption, Americans would begin to spend their few open hours entering dream worlds of fantasy and enchantment to suppress the bland monotonous confines and shackles of the new modern society. One work of unimaginable enticement that catapulted Americans deep into the realm of imagination and wonder was the Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. The Wizard of Oz appears to be a magnificent tale about the quest for one’s identity and purpose in a world of ideological liberation and self-expression. However, if one unveils the ubiquitous layer of fantasy ornamented in the story, the mechanisms of capitalism reveal themselves. Furth...
George Saunders, a writer with a particular inclination in modern America, carefully depicts the newly-emerged working class of America and its poor living condition in his literary works. By blending fact with fiction, Saunders intentionally chooses to expose the working class’s hardship, which greatly caused by poverty and illiteracy, through a satirical approach to criticize realistic contemporary situations. In his short story “Sea Oak,” the narrator Thomas who works at a strip club and his elder aunt Bernie who works at Drugtown for minimum are the only two contributors to their impoverished family. Thus, this family of six, including two babies, is only capable to afford a ragged house at Sea Oak,
In the early 1900s, the American South had very distinctive social classes: African Americans, poor white farmers, townspeople, and wealthy aristocrats. This class system is reflected in William Faulkner’s novel, As I Lay Dying, where the Bundrens a poor, white family, are on a quest to bury their now deceased wife and mother, Addie in the town of Jefferson. Taking a Marxist criticism approach to As I Lay Dying, readers notice how Faulkner’s use of characterization reveals how country folk are looked down upon by the wealthy, upper class townspeople.
Disliking Books By Gerald Graff is about the authors own aversions, starting as a young boy, who grew up simply disliking reading books, for both academic and leisure purposes. Growing up in his neighborhood, it was highly disregarded for a boy to enjoy reading; they were looked at as “sissies” and had the potential to have been beaten up. He maintained this ideology all the way into his college career, where ironically, he majored in English. Although by this point he replaced his fear of being beaten up with the fear of failing his college courses, he was able to squeak by with doing his homework at the mare minimum. He felt as though he wasn’t able to quite relate, much less, enjoy the text. It wasn’t until his junior year he was finally able to find the spark he had been lacking all these years. It was over the controversial ending of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Some of the critics believe the story really ended when the boys basically stole Jim away and other believed it was actually when they learned that Jim had already been freed. Finally realizing that “reading and intellectual discussion might actually have something to do with my real life, I became less embarrassed about using the intellectual formulas” (Graff, Para 12). He then turned to more and more literary works to understand further of what reading critically can help you appreciate, even turning his lesson into his future profession as an English Professor.
Tucker, Martin. Moulton’s Library of Literary Criticism. Volume 4. Frederick Ungar Publishing Company. New York. 1967.