Customer Reviews

Mechanic Accents: Dime Novels and Working Class Culture in America (Haymarket)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Mechanic Accents is an ambitious attempt to examine urban working class America at a pivotal moment in its industrial transformation, through the commercial and literary lenses of the nineteenth century dime novel, or cheap serialized fiction. Denning begins by describing the economics of dime novel production -- the 'culture industry' of pulp fiction -- and the experiences of dime novel authors, churning out thousands of words a week on salacious and exciting themes lifted from the news of 'real life'. This analysis demonstrates the difficulties of capturing and understanding the audience for these novels even for the contemporary writers producing them: essentially, the only way these writers had of understanding the values and experiences of the people they were writing for was the feedback of the marketplace -- what sold. Examining the evolution of narratives and characters, not just over the course of successive serial installments or sequels, but in the recollections and re-tellings of these stories by the readers themselves, Denning is able to discern changing attitudes towards work and the emerging working class, as well as aspects of class and national socialization -- both from within the emerging working classes as well as among the capitalist middle classes.

Denning's analysis draws heavily on Marxist literary and cultural theory, and from a historiographical perspective it's a very interesting product of the tail end of the republicanist revival of the early 1980s -- but the reader doesn't need to be acquainted with this meta-history to appreciate the book! Excellent insights for anyone interested in the history of print or print culture in America, the culture of the American working classes, or the censorial campaigns of middle-class moralists in whatever era.