Close Reading, Conglomerate Authorship, & Qween Danielle Steel with Dan Sinykin & Johanna Winant
Spotify
Apple Podcasts
In an episode which operates as both coda to “Criticism LTD” and herald of 2024, Matt Seybold is joined by two scholars working on the complex history and sometimes conflicting methods of close reading. They also discuss the reception of Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed The Publishing Industry (Columbia UP, 2023) [31:00] and a bevy of novels by Danielle Steel, including The Promise (1978), Happiness (2023), and Worthy Opponents (2023) [39:00].
Dan Sinykin is Assistant Professor of English at Emory University and the author of Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed The Publishing Industry & American Literature (Columbia UP, 2023), as well as “The Sublime Danielle Steel: For The Love of Supermarket Schlock” (LARB, 2022). He is also co-editor of Close Reading For The 21st-Century (Princeton UP, TBD).
Johanna Winant is Assistant Professor of English at West Virginia University. Her first book, Lyric Logic, is under contract with Columbia UP. She is also co-editor of Close Reading For The 21st-Century (Princeton UP, 2024) and editor of the “Interpretive Difficulty” cluster for Post45 Contemporaries.
Theme Song: “This Year” by The Steel Wheels (from Over The Trees)
This season, The American Vandal Podcast is very proud to feature a song by The Steel Wheels, a band originating from the Blue Ridge Mountains. The song, “The Year,” is part of their 2019 studio record, Over The Trees.
On February 9, The Steel Wheels will be releasing a new album, Sideways. Both albums are available to purchase or download at their website.
They will begin a new tour this month with three dates in West Virginia, including one in Morgantown. Check out their schedule.
Episode Bibliography:
Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Francke Verlag, 1946)
Erich Auerbach, “Vico & Aesthetic Historicism” Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism (December 1949)
Howard Becker, Art Worlds (1983) [2008 UC Press Edition]
Evan Brier, Novel Competition: American Fiction & The Cultural Economy, 1965-1999 (U. Iowa, 2024)
Sarah Brouillette, “Romance Work” Theory & Event (April 2019)
Sarah Brouillette, Literature & The Creative Economy (Stanford UP, 2014)
Rachel Sagner Buurma & Laura Heffernan, The Teaching Archive: A New History For Literary Study (U. Chicago, 2021)
Jerome Christensen, America’s Corporate Art: The Studio Authorship of Hollywood Motion Pictures (Stanford UP, 2011)
J. D. Connor, The Studios After The Studios: Neoclassical Hollywood (1970-2010) (Stanford UP, 2015)
James English, The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, & The Circulation of Cultural Value (Harvard UP, 2008)
Gloria Fisk, “What Are Feelings For?” Post45 Contemporaries (6.15.2020)
Eva Illouz, The End of Love: A Sociology of Negative Relations (Wiley, 2019)
Josh Lambert, “The Invisible Forces Behind The Books We Read” The Atlantic (12.18.2023)
Mark McGurl, Everything & Less: The Novel In The Age of Amazon (Verso, 2021)
Toni Morrison, Beloved with New Introduction (Longman, 1998)
Deesha Philyaw, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (WVU Press, 2020)
J.D. Porter et al, “Genre Juggernaut: Measuring ‘Romance'” Public Books (11.10.2023)
Janice Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, & Popular Literature (UNC Press, 1984)
Muriel Rukeyser, The Book Of The Dead (WVU Press, 2024)
Elizabeth Schambelan, “I’ll Take Manhattan: Judith Krantz, Donald Trump, & the Long, Long 1980s” Los Angeles Review of Books (7.26.2018)
Matt Seybold et al, “The Racist Interpretation Complex” The American Vandal Podcast (8.28.2023)
Matt Seybold et al, “Criticism In The Conglomerate Era” The American Vandal Podcast (10.17.2023)
Matt Seybold, Lisa Siraganian, & Michael Szalay, “Puzzles of Collective Intention, Corporate Authorship, Family Business Insurrection, & HBO’s Succession“ The American Vandal Podcast (9.12.2022)
Dan Sinykin, Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed The Publishing Industry & American Literature (Columbia UP, 2023)
Dan Sinykin, “The Sublime Danielle Steel: For The Love of Supermarket Schlock” Los Angeles Review of Books (8.3.2023)
Dan Sinykin, “The Naif Goes To The Everything Store: On Mark McGurl’s Everything & Less“ Los Angeles Review of Books (10.20.2021)
Lisa Siraganian, Modernism & The Meaning of Corporate Persons (Oxford UP, 2021)
Danielle Steel, The Promise (Dell, 1978)
Danielle Steel, Passion’s Promise (Dell, 1977)
Danielle Steel, Worthy Opponents (Delacorte, 2023)
Danielle Steel, Happiness (Delacorte, 2023)
Danielle Steel, The Klone & I (Delacorte, 1998)
Danielle Steel, Going Home (Nelson Doubleday, 1973)
Michael Szalay, Second Lives: Black-Market Melodramas & The Reinvention of Television (U. Chicago, 2023)
Michael Szalay, New Deal Modernism: American Literature & The Invention of The Welfare State (Duke UP, 2000)
Rene Wellek, “Auerbach & Vico” Lettere Italiane (Fall 1978)
Johanna Winant (Ed.) “Interpretive Difficulty” Post45 Contemporaries (5.26.2021)
Johanna Winant, “Muriel Rukeyser’s Memory, or, The Ends of Poetry” Booktamist (2.7.2018)
Johanna Winant, Rose Casey, & Jessica Wilkerson, “An Open Letter From Faculty At West Virginia University” Boston Review (9.7.2023)