The Market Logics of Contemporary Fiction

Contemporary British and American fiction is defined by financial markets' power over the global publishing industry and the global economy.

Paul Crosthwaite (Author)

9781108499569, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 18 July 2019

316 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.1 cm, 0.59 kg

'The most striking aspect of Crosthwaite's latest monograph is the delicate balancing of complex interpretations of the relationship between fiction and the market … The result of Crosthwaite's success in negotiating this balance is that Market Logics is an attractive and engaging read for both newcomers to the economic humanities and experts alike … As a whole, Market Logics appeals to both ends of the academic spectrum, and excels in providing rigorous criticism … without excluding newer scholars from its argumentative process.' Amy Bride, U.S. Studies Online

In the twenty-first century, leading publishers are under intense pressure from their conglomerate owners and shareholders to generate growth and profits. This book shows how these pressures have transformed the contemporary novel. Paul Crosthwaite argues that recent British and American authors have internalized the market logics of the financial sector and book trade, resulting in the production of works of 'market metafiction' in which authors reflect obsessively on their writing's positioning in the literary marketplace. The Market Logics of Contemporary Fiction reveals the entanglement of fictional narrative and market dynamics to be the central phenomenon of contemporary literary culture. It engages with work by key authors including Iain Sinclair, Don DeLillo, Kathy Acker, Bret Easton Ellis, Chris Kraus, Percival Everett, David Foster Wallace, Colson Whitehead, Anne Billson, Hari Kunzru, Barbara Browning, Teju Cole, Ben Lerner, Tao Lin, Nell Zink, Joshua Cohen, Sheila Heti, and Garth Risk Hallberg.

Introduction: neoliberalism, financialization, and the contemporary literary marketplace
Part I. The Emergence of Market Metafiction: 1. Market metafiction and the varieties of postmodernism
Part II. The Phantasmagorias of Contemporary Finance: 2. Trading in the as if: fiduciary exchangeability and supernatural financial fiction
3. 'The occult logic of 'market forces'': Iain Sinclair's post-Big Bang London
Part III. The Market Knows: 4. The price is right: market epistemology, narrative totality, and the 'big novel'
5. Fully reflecting: knowing the mind of the market in DeLillo and Kunzru
6. Putting everything on the table: markets and material conditions in twenty-first-century fiction
7. Between autonomy and heteronomy: exchanging capital in Zink, Cohen, and Heti
Coda: basic income, or, why Barbara Browning's The Gift is not a gift.

Subject Areas: Economics, finance, business & management [K], Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literary theory [DSA]