Synopses & Reviews
Deftly melding ethnography, cultural history, literary criticism, and autobiographical reflection,
A Feeling for Books is at once an engaging study of the Book-of-the-Month Club's influential role as a cultural institution and a profoundly personal meditation about the experience of reading. Janice Radway traces the history of the famous mail-order book club from its controversial founding in 1926 through its evolution into an enterprise uniquely successful in blending commerce and culture.
Framing her historical narrative with writing of a more personal sort, Radway reflects on the contemporary role of the Book-of-the-Month Club in American cultural history and in her own life. Her detailed account of the standards and practices employed by the club's in-house editors is also an absorbing story of her interactions with those editors. Examining her experiences as a fourteen-year-old reader of the club's selections and, later, as a professor of literature, she offers a series of rigorously analytical yet deeply personal readings of such beloved novels as Marjorie Morningstar and To Kill a Mockingbird.
Rich and rewarding, this book will captivate and delight anyone who is interested in the history of books and in the personal and transformative experience of reading.
Review
It is the best book I know on the mind altering powers of reading for pleasure.
American Quarterly
Review
Not only lays bare the forces that produced middlebrow reading but also explains a good deal of what is going on in the world of books today.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times
Review
Radway has written one of the most important books in this decade.
Libraries and Culture
Review
Ambitious and engrossing, and it leaves us with much to ponder.
Washington Post Book World
Review
Essential reading for scholars interested in the history of the book and popular culture.
American Literature
Synopsis
For anyone who is interested in the history of books and in the personal and transformative experience of reading. Radway offers both an engaging look at the Book-of the-Month Club•s role as a cultural institution and a profound meditation on the love of books.
Synopsis
It is the best book I know on the mind altering powers of reading for pleasure.
American Quarterly Essential reading for scholars interested in the history of the book and popular culture.
American Literature Radway has written one of the most important books in this decade.
Libraries and Culture Ambitious and engrossing, and it leaves us with much to ponder.
Washington Post Book World Not only lays bare the forces that produced middlebrow reading but also explains a good deal of what is going on in the world of books today.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times
About the Author
Janice A. Radway is Francis Fox Professor of Literature at Duke University and author of Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature.
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART I. In the Service of the General Reader
Chapter 1. A Certain Book Club Culture
Chapter 2. A Business with a Mission
Chapter 3. The Intelligent Generalist and the Uses of Reading
PART II. On the History of the Middlebrow
Chapter 4. The Struggle over the Book, 1870-1920
Chapter 5. A Modern Selling Machine for Books: Harry Scherman and the Origins of the Book-of-the-Month Club
Chapter 6. Automated Book Distribution and the Negative Option: Agency and Choice in a Standardized World
Chapter 7. The Scandal of the Middlebrow: The Professional-Managerial Class and the Exercise of Authority in the Literary Field
Chapter 8. Reading for a New Class: The Judges, the Practical Logic of Book Selection, and the Question of Middlebrow Style
PART III. Books for Professionals
Chapter 9. A Library of Books for the Aspiring Professional: Some Effects of Middlebrow Reading
Afterword
Notes
Sources Cited
Index
A section of illustrations follows.