Designing fictions : literature confronts advertising / Michael L. Ross.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ross, Michael L., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Advertising in literature.

Advertising in popular culture.

Physical Description:

xxi, 204 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Montreal & Kingston ; London ; Ithaca : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2015.

Summary:

Advertising, long a controlling force in industrial society, has provoked, an important body of imaginative work by English-language wirters. Michael Ross's Designing Fictions is the first study to investigate this symbiotic relationship on a broad scale. In view of the appreciable overlap between literary and promotional writing. Ross asks whether imaginative fiction has the latitude to critique advertising as an industry and as a literary form, and finds that intended critiques, time and again, turn out to be shot through with ambivalence. The texts considered include a wide range of books by British, American, and Canadian authors, from H. G. Wells's pioneering fictional treatment of mass marketing in Tono Bungay (1909) to Joshua Ferris's depietion of a faltering Chicago agency in Then We come to the End (2007). Along the way, among other examples, Ross discusses George Orwell's seriocomic study of the stand-off between poetry and advertising in his novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) and Margaret Atwood's probing of the impact of promotion on perception in The Edible Woman (1969). The final chapter of the book considers the popular television series Mad Men, where the tension between artistic and commercial pressures is especially acute. Written in a straightforward style for a wide audience of readers, Designing Fictions argues that the impact of advertising is universal and discussions of its significance should not be restricted to a narrow group of specialists. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Introduction: Baudrillard's Dream 3

2 Henry James and H.G. Wells: The Seductions of Advertising 28

3 Battles of the Bookshops: Christopher Morley and George Orwell 56

4 Radio Days: Wakeman's The Hucksters and Wouk's Aurora Dawn 80

5 Doors of (Mis)Perception: Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman 104

6 Creative Creatives: Blake Morrison's South of the River and Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End 129

7 Enjoy the Best America Has to Offer: Mad Men as National Brand 149.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Ross, Michael L., 1936-, author. Designing fictions.

ISBN:

9780773545359

0773545352

9780773545366

0773545360

OCLC:

895338540