Synopses & Reviews
What is it about certain books that makes them bestsellers? Why do some of these books remain popular for centuries, and others fade gently into obscurity? And why is it that when scholars do turn their attention to bestsellers, they seem only to be interested in the same handful of blockbusters, when so many books that were once immensely popular remain under-examined?
Addressing those and other equally pressing questions about popular literature, Must Read is the first scholarly collection to offer both a survey of the evolution of American bestsellers as well as critical readings of some of the key texts that have shaped the American imagination since the nation's founding.
Focusing on a mix of enduring and forgotten bestsellers, the essays in this collection consider 18th and 19th century works, like Charlotte Temple or Ben-Hur, that were once considered epochal but are now virtually ignored; 20th century favorites such as The Sheik and Peyton Place; and 21st century blockbusters including the novels of Nicholas Sparks, The Kite Runner, and The Da Vinci Code.
Review
"The volume is particularly strong in its trans-Atlantic, global focus for all historical periods it covers. It is uniformly sophisticated in its attention to gender and sexuality, race, religion, and national identity, but also written in terms easily accessible to undergraduates...Must Read succeeds both in its parts and as a whole. The essays are generally of high quality, but Churchwell and Smith have also created an unusual degree of unity and coherence among the essays. Must Read's thorough, clear introduction and careful selection and framing make it feel more like a monograph. Together, these essays make a coherent argument about popular literature as a site of struggle over meaning across history, a space where controversies over religion, race, nation, gender/sexuality, social and cultural value are negotiated." - Erin A. Smith, American Book Review
Synopsis
A unique survey and interpretive history, spanning 200 years, of the American bestseller.
Table of Contents
1. Must Read: Rediscovering American Bestsellers
Sarah Churchwell and Thomas Ruys Smith2. Missing Numbers: The Partial History of the Bestseller
Sarah Garland3. The History of
Charlotte Temple (1791) as an American Bestseller
Gideon Mailer4. 'Like Beads Strung Together': E.D.E.N. Southworth and the Aesthetics of Popular Serial Fiction
Rachel Ihara5.
Ten Nights in a Bar-Room (1854) and the Visual Culture of Temperance
William Gleason6. 'The Man Without a Country' (1863): Treason, Expansionism, and the History of a 'Bestselling' Short Story
Hsuan Hsu7. Exhilaration and Enlightenment in the Biblical Bestseller: Lew Wallace's
Ben-Hur, A Tale of the Christ (1880)
James Russell 8. ‘Absolutely Punk': Queer Economies of Desire in
Tarzan of the Apes (1912)
J. Michelle Coghlan9. Ornamentalism: Desire, Disavowal and Displacement in E.M. Hull's
The Sheik (1919)
Sarah Garland10. Small Change? Emily Post's
Etiquette (1922-2011)
Grace Lees-Maffei11. Blockbuster Feminism:
Peyton Place (1956) and the Uses of Scandal
Ardis Cameron12. Crimes and Bestsellers: Mario Puzo Path to
The Godfather (1969)
Evan Brier12. Master of Sentiment: The Romances of Nicholas Sparks
Sarah Churchwell13.
The Kite Runner Transnational Allegory: Anatomy of an Afghan-American Bestseller
Georgiana Banita14. The Fiction of History:
The Da Vinci Code (2003) and the Virtual Public Sphere
Stephen Mexal Contributor BiographiesIndex