Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #448919 in Books
• Published on: 1988-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 257 pages

From the Inside Flap
"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

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)

About the Author
Walter Benn Michaels teaches English at Johns Hopkins University.

Customer Reviews

critical tour de force
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.

The Gold Standard has certainly depreciated
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.