The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism discusses ways of creating value in turn-of-the-century American capitalism. Focusing on such topics as the alienation of property, the invention of masochism, and the battle over free silver, it examines the participation of cultural forms in these phenomena. It imagines a literary history that must at the same time be social, economic, and legal; and it imagines a literature that, to be understood at all, must be understood both as a producer and a product of market capitalism.
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"Michaels has written a book that will be essential reading for all those interested in American fiction and American culture. . . . This is a daring, brash work of the best kind--it will be much discussed."--Philip Fisher, Brandeis University
"Like Michel Foucault, Michaels locates the 'political' in the relations between individuals, in consciousness, and in language. His work represents a far more subtle, internalized, and unschematic conception of the convergence of literature and power than we have had in American studies. He is one of the most gifted practitioners of cultural criticism today."--Leo Marx, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"Like Michel Foucault, Michaels locates the 'political' in the relations between individuals, in consciousness, and in language. His work represents a far more subtle, internalized, and unschematic conception of the convergence of literature and power than we have had in American studies. He is one of the most gifted practitioners of cultural criticism today."--Leo Marx, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
From the Back Cover
"Michaels has written a book that will be essential reading for all those interested in American fiction and American culture. . . . This is a daring, brash work of the best kind (it will be much discussed." (Philip Fisher, Brandeis University)
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
critical tour de force,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism: American Literature at the Turn of the Century (New Historicism: Studies in Cultural Poetics) (Paperback)
Brillant and acute, if not somewhat idiosyncratic, close-readings of U.S. literary naturalistic texts. Michaels's buoyant prose and the oblique angles he takes in historicizing the texts make for a provoking, worthwhile read. His arguments concerning the masochistic contract (revision of the more conventional deleuzean understanding) and his exploration of the question 'why does the miser save?' are among the most compelling and thrilling close-reads--rather than 'applying theory' to the texts at hand, he offers ways in which the texts themselves produce critical theory. Fabulous work.
14 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The Gold Standard has certainly depreciated,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism: American Literature at the Turn of the Century (New Historicism: Studies in Cultural Poetics) (Paperback)
This book, by far, goes on my list of one of the worst books I have ever had the displeasure of reading. Pseudo-clever theoretical jumps about texts that oversimplify and completely decontextualize what the texts say. For example, "The Yellow Wallpaper," commonly thought to present a woman who is confined by her husband/doctor in the attic to lead to her eventual madness. According to Michaels, the short story is not about confinement and restriction, but about over-production of hysteria that the unnamed narrator is forced to engage in because of the ideology of her society. Interesting? maybe. Insightful about the Yellow Wallpaper? Not at all. If you are into post-structural theory masturbating over itself 244 pages, please buy this book.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
There is remarkable passage in Dreiser's Sister Carrie just after the famous scene in which Carrie first accepts money, "two soft, green, handsome ten-dollar bills," from the drummer Drouet. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
five white mice, masochistic contract, photographic act, corporate fiction, money controversies, popular economy, grain rates, poker dice, five aces, five dice, corporate person Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Sister Carrie, The House of the Seven Gables, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, Donald Pizer, Lily Bart, Oakfield Creek, Josiah Royce, Edith Wharton, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Leo Bersani, Alice Pyncheon, The Rise of Silas Lapham, William James, Adam Smith, Alonzo Eldon, Andrew Jackson, Henry James, Judge Pyncheon, Matthew Maule, Mussel Slough, Robinson Crusoe's Money, Stephen Crane, After the Hunt New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
There is remarkable passage in Dreiser's Sister Carrie just after the famous scene in which Carrie first accepts money, "two soft, green, handsome ten-dollar bills," from the drummer Drouet. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
five white mice, masochistic contract, photographic act, corporate fiction, money controversies, popular economy, grain rates, poker dice, five aces, five dice, corporate person Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Sister Carrie, The House of the Seven Gables, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, Donald Pizer, Lily Bart, Oakfield Creek, Josiah Royce, Edith Wharton, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Leo Bersani, Alice Pyncheon, The Rise of Silas Lapham, William James, Adam Smith, Alonzo Eldon, Andrew Jackson, Henry James, Judge Pyncheon, Matthew Maule, Mussel Slough, Robinson Crusoe's Money, Stephen Crane, After the Hunt New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 100
books:
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119
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- Sister Carrie (Signet Classics) by Theodore Dreiser on 17 pages
- The Yellow Wall-Paper and Other Writings (Modern Library Classics) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman on 11 pages
- The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories (Dover Thrift Editions) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman on 11 pages
- The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories (Classic, 60s) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman on 11 pages
- House of the Seven Gables (Great Illustrated Classics (Abdo)) by Nathaniel Hawthorne on 10 pages
See all 100 books this book cites
- New Essays on Sister Carrie (The American Novel) by Donald Pizer on 7 pages
- The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism: From Howells to London (Cambridge Companions to Literature) by Donald Pizer on 7 pages
- The Cambridge Companion to Theodore Dreiser (Cambridge Companions to Literature) by Leonard Cassuto on 5 pages
- Literature, Money and the Market: From Trollope to Amis by Paul Delany on 4 pages
- The Merchant of Modernism: The Economic Jew in Anglo-American Literature, 1864-1939 (Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory) by Gary Levine on 4 pages
See all 119 books citing this book
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