{"product_id":"scandals-and-abstraction-financial-fiction-of-the-long-1980s-paperback","title":"Scandals and Abstraction: Financial Fiction of the Long 1980s - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eLeigh Claire La Berge\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Long 1980s could be summed up handily in the annals of U.S. cultural history with the enduring markers of Ronald Reagan's presidency, Oliver Stone's film\u003cem\u003e Wall Street\u003c\/em\u003e, and Dire Straits's hit single \"Money for Nothing.\" Despite their vast differences, each serves to underscore the confidence, jingoism, and optimism that powered the U.S. economy throughout the decade. Mining a wide range of literature, film, and financial print journalism, \u003cem\u003eScandals and Abstraction\u003c\/em\u003e chronicles how American society's increasing concern with finance found expression in a large array of cultural materials that ultimately became synonymous with postmodernism. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe ever-present credit cards, monetary transactions, and ATMs in Don De Lillo's \u003cem\u003eWhite Noise \u003c\/em\u003eopen this study as they serve as touchstones for its protagonist's sense of white masculinity and ground the novel's narrative form. Tom Wolfe's \u003cem\u003eThe Bonfire of the Vanities\u003c\/em\u003e and Oliver Stone's \u003cem\u003eWall Street \u003c\/em\u003eanimate a subsequent chapter, as each is considered in light of the 1987 stock market crash and held up as a harbinger of a radical new realism that claimed a narrative monopoly on representing an emergent financial era. These works give way to the pornographic excess and violence of Bret Easton Ellis's epochal \u003cem\u003eAmerican Psycho\u003c\/em\u003e, which is read alongside the popular 1980s genre of the financial autobiography. With a series of trenchant readings, La Berge argues that Ellis's novel can be best understood when examined alongside Ivan Boesky's \u003cem\u003eMerger Mania\u003c\/em\u003e, Donald Trump's\u003cem\u003e The Art of the Deal\u003c\/em\u003e, and T. Boone Pickens's \u003cem\u003eBoone\u003c\/em\u003e. A look at Jane Smiley's \u003cem\u003eGood Faith\u003c\/em\u003e and its plot surrounding the savings and lo\u003cbr\u003ecrisis of the 1980s and 1990s, concludes the study, and considers how financial reportage became a template for much of our current writing about of finance. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eDrawing on a diverse archive of novels, films, autobiographies, and journalism, \u003cem\u003eScandals and Abstraction\u003c\/em\u003e provides a timely study of the economy's influence on fiction, and outlines a feedback loop whereby postmodernism became more canonical, realism became more postmodern, and finance became a distinct cultural object.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLeigh Claire La Berge\u003c\/strong\u003e is Assistant Professor of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York and the coeditor, with Alison Shonkwiler, of \u003cem\u003eReading Capitalist Realism\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 242\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.6 x 9.1 x 6.1 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e May 07, 2020\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Books by splitShops","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42729408790591,"sku":"9780190845988","price":78.64,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0105\/8226\/1823\/files\/e222f3eaff61e96e0ecebc577e6ec635.webp?v=1765122088","url":"https:\/\/dhl-adrianne.myshopify.com\/products\/scandals-and-abstraction-financial-fiction-of-the-long-1980s-paperback","provider":"BBB","version":"1.0","type":"link"}