The Labor Of Literature

Examines the aesthetics and politics of alternative literary models.

This book juxtaposes representations of labor in fictional texts with representations of labor in nonfictional texts in order to trace the intersections between aesthetic and economic discourse in nineteenth-century America. This intersection is particularly evident in the debates about symbol and allegory, and Cindy Weinstein contends that allegory during this period was critiqued on precisely the same grounds as mechanized labor. In the course of completing a historical investigation, Weinstein revolutionizes the notion of allegorical narrative, which is exposed as a literary medium of greater depth and consequence than has previously been implied.

In the three decades after 1885, a virtual explosion in the nation's print media—newspaper tabloids, inexpensive magazines, and best-selling books—vaulted the American writer to unprecedented heights of cultural and political influence. The Labor of Words traces the impact of this mass literary marketplace on Progressive era writers. Using the works and careers of Jack London, Upton Sinclair, David Graham Phillips, and Lincoln Steffens as case studies, Christopher P. Wilson measures the advantages and costs of the new professional literary role and captures the drama of this transformative epoch in American journalism and letters.

This spectacular novel established Thomas M. Disch as a major new force in science fiction. First published in 1965, it was immediately labeled a masterpiece reminiscent of the works of J.G. Ballard and H.G. Wells In this harrowing novel, the world's cities have been reduced to cinder and ash and alien plants have overtaken the earth. The plants, able to grow the size of maples in only a month and eventually reach six hundred feet, have commandeered the world's soil and are sucking even the Great Lakes dry. In northern Minnesota, Anderson, an aging farmer armed with a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other, desperately leads the reduced citizenry of a small town in a daily struggle for meager existence. Throw into this fray Jeremiah Orville, a marauding outsider bent on a bizarre and private revenge, and the fight to live becomes a daunting task.

"Hapke's book, remarkable in scope and inclusiveness, offers those concerned with American working people a mine of information about and analysis of the 'rich lived history of American laborers' as that has been represented in fictions of every kind. She provides an invaluable foundation for understanding the dirtiest of America's dirty big secrets: the pervasivness of class differences, class discrimination, indeed of class conflict in this, the wealthiest nation in history. Hers is an indispensable guided tour through more than a century and a half of literary representations of 'hands' at their looms, pikets on the line, agitators on their soapboxes, ordinary working women, men, and children in kitchens, parks, factories, and fields across America." --Paul Lauter, A.K. & G.M. Smith Professor of Literature, Trinity College "Labor's Text sets over 150 years of the multi-ethnic literature of work in the context of the history that informed it--the history of labor organizing, of industrial change, of social transformations, and of shifting political alignments. Any scholar of American literature or American history cannot help but be enlightened by this boldly ambitious and illuminating book." -- Shelly Fisher Fishkin, professor of American studies, University of Texas, Austin "Labor's Text traverses nearly two centuries of the U.S. literary response in fiction to workers and the work experience. Casting her net more broadly than any of her predecessors, Hapke's revision of the genre includes many recent writing not usually recognized as part of the tradition. Coming at a moment when there is a steady increase in interest about 'class' from color- and gender-inflected perspectives, this is a work of committed scholarship that may well prove to be a crucial compass to reorient the thinking and scholarship of a new generation." -- Alan Wald, author of Writing from the Left "A stunning work of scholarship. . . . It is an extraordinary achievement and an immense contribution to working-class studies." --Janet Zandy, author of Calling Home: Working-Class Women's Writings Laura Hapke is a professor of English at Pace University. The winner of two Choice magazine Outstanding Academic Book awards, she is the author of Daughters of the Great Depression: Women, Work, and Fiction in the American 1930s and other books on labor fiction and working-class studies.

In The Labor Question in America: Economic Democracy in the Gilded Age, Rosanne Currarino traces the struggle to define the nature of democratic life in an era of industrial strife. As Americans confronted the glaring disparity between democracy's promises of independence and prosperity and the grim realities of economic want and wage labor, they asked, "What should constitute full participation in American society? What standard of living should citizens expect and demand?" Currarino traces the diverse efforts to answer to these questions, from the fledgling trade union movement to contests over immigration, from economic theory to popular literature, from legal debates to social reform. The contradictory answers that emerged--one stressing economic participation in a consumer society, the other emphasizing property ownership and self-reliance--remain pressing today as contemporary scholars, journalists, and social critics grapple with the meaning of democracy in post-industrial America.

All-American Anarchist chronicles the life and work of Joseph A. Labadie (1850-1933), Detroit's prominent labor organizer and one of early labor's most influential activists. A dynamic participant in the major social reform movements of the Gilded Age, Labadie was a central figure in the pervasive struggle for a new social order as the American Midwest underwent rapid industrialization at the end of the nineteenth century. This engaging biography follows Labadie's colorful career from a childhood among a Pottawatomi tribe in the Michigan woods through his local and national involvement in a maze of late nineteenth-century labor and reform activities, including participation in the Socialist Labor party, Knights of Labor, Greenback movement, trades councils, typographical union, eight-hour-day campaigns, and the rise of the American Federation of Labor. Although he received almost no formal education, Labadie was a critical thinker and writer, contributing a column titled "Cranky Notions" to Benjamin Tucker's Liberty, the most important journal of American anarchism. He interacted with such influential rebels and reformers as Eugene V. Debs, Emma Goldman, Henry George, Samuel Gompers, and Terence V. Powderly, and was also a poet of both protest and sentiment, composing more than five hundred poems between 1900 and 1920. Affectionately known as Detroit's "Gentle Anarchist," Labadie's flamboyant and amiable personality counteracted his caustic writings, making him one of the city's most popular figures throughout his long life despite his dissident ideas. His individualist anarchist philosophy was also balanced by his conventional personal life—he was married to a devout Catholic and even worked for the city's water commission to make ends meet. In writing this biography of her grandfather, Carlotta R. Anderson consulted the renowned Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan, a unique collection of protest literature which extensively documents pivotal times in American labor history and radical history. She also had available a large collection of family scrapbooks, letters, photographs, and Labadie's personal account book. Including passages from Labadie's vast writings, poems, and letters, All-American Anarchist traces America's recurring anti-anarchist and anti-radical frenzy and repression, from the 1886 Haymarket bombing backlash to the Red Scares of the twentieth century.

This critical, historical, and theoretical study looks at a little-known group of novels written during the 1930s by women who were literary radicals. Arguing that class consciousness was figured through metaphors of gender, Paula Rabinowitz challenges th