Joan Shelley Rubin

REPOSSESSING THE COZZENS–MACDONALD IMBROGLIO: MIDDLEBROW AUTHORSHIP, CRITICAL AUTHORITY, AND AUTONOMOUS READERS IN POSTWAR AMERICA

Dwight Macdonalds 1958 attack on James Gould Cozzenss novel By Love Possessed posited that the books popularity was an “episode” in “The Middlebrow Counter-Revolution” then under way among American critics. That conclusion neglected the strategies of publishing, advertising, and authorial stance that Cozzens and his wife, the agent Sylvia Baumgarten, wielded to create a best seller. Macdonald also did not see how he and Cozzens shared a high-culture aesthetic and competed for power over readers threatening to make criticism irrelevant. Each tried to consolidate that power by depicting his adversary as socially inferior: as Jew, queer, or feminized “middlebrow.” Although Macdonalds appropriation of Cozzenss own values succeeded in damaging Cozzenss reputation, the authority that Macdonald hoped to preserve was likewise about to collapse under pressure from mass culture and postmodern relativism. The Macdonald–Cozzens imbroglio thus provides a useful example of the provisional nature of cultural hierarchy at any given historical moment.

James M. Cain and the American authors' authority

In 1946 novelist and screenwriter Cain proposed that all professional writers should organize into a single cartel that would secure a fairer return on their work from publishers and producers. Though the AAA movement collapsed by the end of the year, Fines rich history of its failure reveals much