{"product_id":"the-financial-imaginary-economic-mystification-and-the-limits-of-realist-fiction-9781517901523","title":"The Financial Imaginary: Economic Mystification","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs the world has been reshaped since the 1970s by neoliberalism and globalization, increasing financial abstraction has presented a new political urgency for contemporary writers. Globalized finance, the return to Gilded Age levels of inequality, and the emergence of new technologies pose a similar challenge to the one faced by American social realists a century ago: making the virtualization of capitalism legible within the conventions of the realist novel. In \u003ci\u003eThe Financial Imaginary\u003c\/i\u003e, Alison Shonkwiler reads texts by Richard Powers, Don DeLillo, Jane Smiley, Teddy Wayne, and Mohsin Hamid to examine how fiction confronts the formal and representational mystifications of the economic. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs Shonkwiler shows, these contemporary writers navigate the social, moral, and class preoccupations of American “economic fiction” (as shaped by such writers as William Dean Howells, Henry James, Frank Norris, and Theodore Dreiser), even as they probe the novel’s inadequacies to tell the story of an increasingly abstract world system. Drawing a connection from historical and theoretical accounts of financialization to the formal contours of contemporary fiction, \u003ci\u003eThe Financial Imaginary \u003c\/i\u003eexamines the persistent yet vexed relationship between financial representation and the demands of literary realism. It argues that the novel is essential to understanding our relation to the mystifications of abstraction past and present.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"A brilliant intervention into several vital conversations about contemporary American literature and culture, \u003ci\u003eThe Financial Imaginary\u003c\/i\u003e offers a swift, compelling, and sharply analytic account of the processes characterizing finance capitalism. Alison Shonkwiler makes her case forcefully and advances many daringly original interpretations.\"—Caren Irr, Brandeis University\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eContents\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction: Representing Financial Abstraction in Fiction\u003cbr\u003e1. Virtue Unrewarded: Financial Character in the Economic Novel\u003cbr\u003e2. Reagonomic Realisms: Real Estate, Character, and Crisis in Jane Smiley’s \u003ci\u003eGood Faith\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e3. Epic Compensations: Corporate Totality in Frank Norris’s \u003ci\u003eThe Octopus\u003c\/i\u003e and Richard Powers’s \u003ci\u003eGain\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e4. Financial Sublime: Virtual Capitalism in Don DeLillo’s \u003ci\u003eCosmopolis\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e5. Liquid Realisms: Global Asymmetry and Mediation in Teddy Wayne’s \u003ci\u003eKapitoil\u003c\/i\u003e and Mohsin Hamid’s \u003ci\u003eHow to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eEpilogue: Literary Realism and Finance Capital\u003cbr\u003eNotes\u003cbr\u003eIndex\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Minnesota Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49409694335319,"sku":"9781517901523","price":21.59,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781517901523.jpg?v=1730507707","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/the-financial-imaginary-economic-mystification-and-the-limits-of-realist-fiction-9781517901523","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}