THE CULTURE AND COMMERCE OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY :: essays papers

THE CULTURE AND COMMERCE OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY The author is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a throng age.Boris Pasternak No man but a blockhead ever wrote however for money.Samuel Johnson Andrew charges book is an immensely enjoyable read, one which presents the reader with an exhaustive historic treatment of that particularly American literary invention, the mass-marketed misfortunate twaddle cartridge holder.However, your last(a) reaction to this book is likely to depend on who you agree with, Pasternak or Johnson, and thus whether you substantiate writers as alienated individualists or clubby entrepreneurs. Levy begins at the same place everything ab step forward the American short account begins, with Edgar Allan Poe.While it is generally accepted that Poes review of Hawthornes Twice-Told Tales (1842) established both a comment of and an attitude toward the American short story, Levy believes that Poe might better be considered the inventor of the American short story magazine.Levy quotes Poes letters and journals at length, demonstrating that Poes last aim was to found a magazine of my own.Poe dreamed of creating a magazine which would offer high culture to an expanding middle class, a population gaunt to the magazine precisely because it represented their social aspirations rather than their social realities.Levy points out that the truly lasting American magazines have in fact followed Poes plan, The unused Yorker being perhaps the near obvious example. Levy describes his book as primarily a study of the commerce of the short story, of ...what Poe thought somewhat his checkbook, and how his checkbook became the short story.Yet his most interesting assertion has slight to do with sales than national character.He argues (in The Land of Definition) that the American magazine stands in a metonymic relationship to the American story, in that the preposterous assertion to both disposability and lastin g value of the magazine represents perfectly the most persistent criticism and praise made of the short story.One would like to see an entire book devoted to a study of this relationship. Furthermore, if the economic foundations for the short storys development is the heart of his book, then we cannot dismiss what Levy thinks of the modern composing workshop, which has in effect created todays Writing Industry The most striking horizon of the modern workshop system, for instance, is the extent to which its ensures the continued health of the short story ... The workshop system .