Hoping to learn more about the reading of fiction in the United States and the place of California fiction in the national context, I ordered a copy of The Columbia History of the American Novel (1991). The book, which runs more than 900 pages, contains 31 essays on a variety to topics and more than 200 short biographies of American authors. Nevertheless, it was not quite what I was looking for.
The most telling characteristic of the essayists in the book is that none of them is a historian by trade. They are instead professors of English or related fields. Typically, when non-historians write histories of their specialties, they focus on famous practitioners and illustrious works. More typically perhaps, histories of the arts (painting, music, architecture, etc.) follow the same strategy. So this discussion of the American novel focuses on the so-called canon and its authors. Although this collection goes beyond the canon in several of its essays, it largely ignores questions that historians might raise about the American novel:
• What sort of numbers are involved? How many novels were published each year? How many were what we would call literary fiction and how many genre novels? Which were the leading publishing houses and what was the output of each? Did they specialize in certain types of novels? How many novels appeared only in magazines? Which magazines published them?
• Who wrote novels? How were authors distributed by age, gender, class, ethnicity, and region? How many had careers primarily as novelists? How many had careers in other kinds of literary work? How many wrote only one novel? How many had an extensive oeuvre? How long was a typical career? What level of income was produced by book sales and magazine payments?
• What about readers? Who read novels? Who read specific kinds of novels? Why did they read them? Why did they think they read them? How were readers distributed by age, gender, class, ethnicity, and region? Did they usually buy books or borrow them from libraries?
• What characterized American novels? In what period were they set? Where were their settings, both generically and specifically? Who were the protagonists (again by age, gender, class, ethnicity, and region as well as by occupation and any other recurring characteristic)? What themes (primarily for literary fiction) were explored? Did novels usually have clear messages for their readers? To what extent did novels challenge or reinforce their readers’ preconceptions? What sorts of challenges were the most typical? What were the differences between book and magazine fiction?
• What was the nature of the public response to the appearance of a novel? How many copies did a commercially successful novel sell? Why did some novels become best sellers? Which novels were well received by critics and why did they like them? What sort of novels tended to win awards? How large was the gap between best-sellers and critical favorites? What connection exists between the critical reception of novels and their current reputations? Why do novels once in favor fall into obscurity?
• For those attracted to the really big picture: What is the function of novels in American society?
Most of these questions have flip-side queries. For example, what sort of people did not write novels? And to most a developmental follow-up can be asked: How did things change over the years?
Some books (and "The Book Marketplace II" in The Columbia History of the American Novel) do tackle some of these questions. What America Read is a notable recent example. But answers do not appear to have been compiled in one spot. And many of the questions seem to remain unasked as well as unanswered. I don’t think any academic discipline has staked a claim here. Maybe that’s necessary before information can flow forth.
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