Description
Book SynopsisWriting Backwards explores what the dominance of historical fiction in the contemporary canon reveals about American literary culture.
Trade ReviewWriting Backwards offers us a surprising new history of the contemporary novel that no future critic will be able to ignore. Alexander Manshel’s book reads like a detective story, but the stakes of the mystery are very high. He explains how, when the literary canon has itself receded for many into a more remote past, history has come flooding back into serious fiction, especially fiction by minoritized writers. In a series of intricate readings, Manshel demonstrates that history is not done with the novel. -- John Guillory, author of
Professing Criticism: Essays on the Organization of Literary StudyWriting Backwards is a penetrating survey of contemporary U.S. literature and an original, revelatory account of how literary fiction has been reshaped by ideological shifts within elite cultural institutions in and since the 1980s. Learned and insightful, beautifully written and persuasively argued, this is a timely and indispensable book. -- Aida Levy-Hussen, author of
How to Read African American Literature: Post-Civil Rights Fiction and the Task of InterpretationAlexander Manshel's
Writing Backwards is essential reading for students and scholars of contemporary American literary studies. His insights into how institutions and market appetites establish "literary" value are provocative and profound. This book has changed how I think about the relationship between history and the critical acclaim accorded American novels. -- Stephanie Li, author of
Pan-African American Literature: Signifyin(g) Immigrants in the Twenty-First CenturyIn a brilliant stroke of analysis, Alexander Manshel shows that two of the most striking recent changes in the system of literary prestige—a tendency to value historical fiction over novels of contemporary life, and a weakening of the white monopoly on critical esteem—are in fact two sides of the same symbolic coin.
Writing Backwards is essential reading for anyone interested in the racial dynamics of value in contemporary American letters. -- James English, author of
The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural ValueWriting Backwards is at once a bold interpretation and a persuasive critique of contemporary literature’s investments in historical recovery. Drawing on close reading, institutional history, and sociological analysis, Alexander Manshel demonstrates how an earnest commitment to context has defined not only the shape of recent narrative fiction but the ethos of the critical establishment that shapes its reception. The book is a standout example of literary sociology’s capacity to write literary history anew by looking at the institutions and networks that produce symbolic prestige and guide cultural attention. -- Kinohi Nishikawa, author of
Street Players: Black Pulp Fiction and the Making of a Literary Underground[
Writing Backwards] make[s] major contributions to a post-McGurl sociology of literature . . . Manshel’s argument that historical fiction has achieved a new prestige in American literary culture over the course of the last four decades is ultimately convincing. -- Lee Konstantinou * The Chronicle of Higher Education *
A fascinating new book . . . Manshel's research exposes the inertia and unspoken rules that shape literary institutions. -- Craig Fehrman * Boston Globe *
One of the year’s most trenchant . . . literary studies. -- Sam Sacks * Wall Street Journal *
The trend Manshel observes is very real. Once you see how pervasive traumatic, historical fiction has become, you cannot unsee it.
Writing Backwards also convinced me that the overlapping aims of universities, prize committees and cultural institutions have produced this trend. But Manshel’s book raises broader questions: What is the so-called literary canon supposed to do? What has it done in the past? And does the canon matter in an era when literary education is crowded out by technical training and online distraction? -- Gordon Fraser * Times Literary Supplement *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
1. Contemporary Fiction in Reverse
2. The Making of the Greatest Generation
3. Colson Whitehead’s History of the United States
4. Reading the Family Tree
5. The Rise of the Recent Historical Novel
Coda: Excavating the Present
Notes
Works Cited
Index
