The crisis of American liberalism has reached a fever pitch. The term “liberal” that I use here is not synonymous with “progressive.” Broadly speaking, liberals support individual autonomy and limited state intervention. For ardent supporters of liberalism, the inauguration of Donald Trump in 2017 signals a society in disarray. For its vociferous critics, the election serves as a prime opportunity to engage in radical reform. These reports of the death of liberalism may prove to be hyperbolic. Yet the relative consensus of the post-World War II era does lie in tatters. Angry voices cry out for dramatic overhaul. Has the long, strange journey of American liberalism reached its terminal point?
Over the course of the twentieth century, liberalism in the United States is relentlessly Balkanized—neoconservatism, neoliberalism, New Democrats, the Tea Party, and so forth. As of 2017, what does liberalism mean? Where do traditional tenets remain and where are they transformed? Mass-Market Fiction and the Crisis of American Liberalism, 1972–2017 explores crucial concerns of a liberalism in crisis: the idea of love and the rise of the financial sector (Danielle Steel); science and the role of centralized planning (Michael Crichton); entangled political alliances in the aftermath of the 1960s (Tom Clancy); the anxiety and promise of corporate re-structuring (John Grisham); the line between government and personal empowerment (Dean Koontz). At a global level, this book explores how mass-market fiction informs—and is informed by—the re-shaping as well as dismantlement of liberal institutions. At a local level, this book examines the ways in which these large-scale metamorphoses manifest in private spheres.
With an unofficial tally of over 1.2 billion copies sold and counting, the works considered herein consistently perch atop all-time bestselling lists. One might reasonably assume that readers choose these specific texts due to their clarity, accessibility, and coherence. These traits remain useful indices of cultural intelligibility. The novels that I analyze serve as ideal sites for tracking the readability (or incongruity) of political sentiments in the contemporary United States.
The sustained popularity of the authors in question over the last fifty years parallels what literary critics Mitchell Huehls and Rachel Greenwald Smith designate as the four phases of recent liberal development. The success of these authors generally begins in the economic phase of the 1970s—at the end of the gold standard and the eruption of speculative finance. It endures through the second stage of the 1980s, in which economic changes extend in a granular fashion into nonmarket domains. These authors remain highly relevant into the third stage of the 1990s in which literature is infiltrated by market rationality (a perspective that conceives of every encounter through the lens of economic exchange while upholding the premise that an unregulated marketplace is always both rational and beneficial). Finally, the celebrity of these figures lingers into the latest stage, in which literature increasingly correlates with “a mode of existence defined by individual self-responsibility, entrepreneurial action, and the maximization of human capital” (Huehls and Smith, 6–10). To analyze the respective canons of these popular writers is to glimpse how an enormous number of readers are encouraged to make sense of a new-look liberalism.
In one sense, the form as well as the content of these popular novels retain shadows of homogeneity from mid-century American life. Mass-production elicits memories of mighty technocracies that churn out hegemonic wares. Many critics of these novels subsequently slide into a critical mold established by the Frankfurt School. While this mode of interpretation continues to yield valuable insights, it risks missing the fact that capital is no longer restrained by mid-century regulations. The first half of the book addresses this turn.
The contradictory character of mass-market fiction reflects a reformation. Cheap paperbacks are sold alongside sundry baubles in the checkout aisle. Their increased volatility (based upon weekly bestseller lists and online metrics, a book must survive or be usurped by competitors) as well as their hyper-standardization (a byproduct of policies that force small publishers to compete on unequal ground with behemoths) suggests an altered relationship between readers and their favorite books. They remain in these ways—and a host of others, as we shall see—visibly imbricated within a turbulent late twentieth- and early twenty-first century marketplace. Mass-market fiction can no longer be classified as simply another predictable part of a monolithic culture industry because, in the years following 1972, notions of “culture” and “industry” dramatically change.
In another sense, although the ascent of Homo economicus remains the authoritative story of this period, the ascent does not occur without considerable dubiety. Mass-market texts are reactionary appeals to recognizable regulation in tension with strategies to privilege market rationality over “political effort” (Streeck, 26). The second half attends to these conjunctural crises.
This book does not presume a unilateral manipulation of gullible audiences. The re-making of American liberalism is neither smooth nor uniform. Detractors regularly lambast mass-market fiction for its one-dimensionality. Admittedly, these novels regularly uphold the dominant narratives of the ruling class. Nonetheless, I believe that it remains constructive to consider moments in which liberal chronicles are unevenly presented or outright impeded. The legacy of liberalism is cherished and challenged, caricatured and confused. In few places can readers study its current state more appropriately than in the period’s most widely worn pages.
A Very Brief History of Liberalism’s Changing Spirit
When they encounter the term “liberalism,” contemporary readers wrestle with an obtuse signifier. This introduction offers a loose sketch to be colored and refined by the chapters to follow. According to commentator Edmund Fawcett, liberalism begins by accepting the inevitability of change. The best way to handle change is to channel it into productive ends. Since conflict and competition are unavoidable, these forces must be harnessed through meaningful debate as well as economic exchange. A liberal order discourages citizens from swearing fealty to any single interest in order to remove obstacles and induce fertile conflict. Then, to guarantee that participants will be allowed to adapt without impediment, legal and governmental institutions ensure a satisfactory degree of equal opportunity (Fawcett, 9–19).
But liberalism never offers a fully coherent program. For example, liberals do not always trust the so-called will of the people. When they speak of “freedom,” they might advocate on behalf of a quite narrow segment of the population (white males with inherited wealth and power). 1 The “liberty” to possess private property is not automatically synonymous with political “liberty.” Some liberals view liberalism as a natural complement to democracy (see Benjamin Constant). Other liberals petition for steadfast guidance by a small group of elites (see Wilhelm von Humboldt or Walter Lippmann). Sociologists Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello have successfully scrutinized the mutable “spirit of capitalism.” Readers might similarly track the kaleidoscopic spirit of liberalism. 2
To complicate matters further, around 1972 the once-popular term liberalism gradually falls into disrepute. “Liberal” is strategically associated with a host of pejorative characteristics—despite the fact that liberalism arguably remains the defining feature of American culture. Few figures would openly label themselves liberal in 2017 without a good deal of qualification. Yet many diverse figures subscribe to the tenets delineated by Fawcett. The precarious standing of liberalism may be relatively heightened, but it is not entirely new.
For the majority of citizens in mid-century America, however, this muddled term raises few objections. American liberalism enjoys consensus across a significant segment of the population. Liberal values are on the surface fortified against encroachment from the twin evils of communism and fascism through an expansion of the welfare state . From “a set of ideas that [descend] from the New Deal,” the United States appears to achieve an accord that provides “a source of at least modest comfort” (Brinkley, ix–x). 3 American-style capitalism survives through a shift into modern liberalism: comprehensive institutions (private/public) offer general stability; incremental reform compensates for inexorable volatility; politically as well as economically, the state defends liberal principles against challengers at home and abroad. 4
The immediate decades after World War II are vaunted in public discourse as the high-water mark of modern liberalism (routinely cited today as America’s era of “greatness”). Historian Louis Hartz argues that the spread of modern liberalism “insures the universality of the liberal idea” (Hartz, 6–8). Fellow historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. seconds Hartz’s toast to the halcyon days: “In a sense all of America is liberalism.” These complementary perspectives are buttressed by economic growth experienced during the early years of the Cold War (Schlesinger, Jr., 83).
During and immediately after the war, capital enjoys a period of relative centralization. U.S. corporations are forced by national borders and interstate conflict to make concessions to workers. They remain eager “to prevent American workers from viewing the now globally influential socialist system as an appealing model” (Kotz, 61). For security as well as stability, corporate America brokers a temporary peace with the rest of the demos. Modern liberalism strengthens its hold.
But mode...