Organized around a comparison of György Lukács’s The Historical Novel (1937) and Mark Twain & Charles Dudley Warner’s The Gilded Age (1873), in this episode we take a detour from Jameson to Lukács, question what realism means [8:30], whether The Gilded Age is a historical novel [19:30], whether historical novels are intrinsically conservative [33:30}, whether novelists can live up to Lukács’s high expecations [41:00], what distinguishes historical novels from historical fictions [64:30], and who are the “spreasheet men” [85:00].
Cast (in order of Appearance):
Brandon Taylor is the author of The Late Americans (Riverhead, 2023), Filthy Animals (2021), and Real Life (2020). He is the co-founding editor of Smith & Taylor Classics imprint. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at New York University.
Eleanor Courtemanche is Associate Professor of English at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and the author of “Beyond Urgency” (2019)
Nathan Wolff is Associate Professor of English at Tufts University and the author of Not Quite Hope & Other Political Emotions in The Gilded Age (Oxford UP, 2019).
Jeffrey Insko is Professor of English & American Studies at Oakland University and the author of History, Abolition, & The Ever-Present Now in Antebellum American Writing (Oxford UP, 2019)
Anna Kornbluh is Professor of English at University of Illinois, Chicago and the author of Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism (Verso, 2024)
Alexander Manshel is Associate Professor of English at McGill University and the author of Writing Backwards (Columbia UP, 2023).
Matt Seybold is Associate Professor of American Literature & Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, as well as resident scholar at the Center For Mark Twain Studies and executive producer of The American Vandal Podcast.
All music for this season of The American Vandal Podcast comes from the Tennessee-based roots ensemble DownRiver Collective. Most of the tracks come from their most recent EP, Off The Shelf. You can purchase it direct from the band here. It’s also available on Spotify and Apple Music.
Tracks featured in this episode include “Wasted Time,” “As It Was,” “Dead To Me,” and “Walls.”
Excerpts from Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s The Gilded Age come from the audiobook edition produced by SNR Audio and narrated by Nathan Osgood. Available at Audible, as well as other audiobook retailers. SNR has an extensive catalog of professionally-narrated adaptations of 19th-century Anglophone fiction, including The Complete Mark Twain Collection.
Nathan Osgood is an actor and voice artist who has being appearing in films, scripted television, video games, podcasts, and audiobooks since the mid-’90s. In 2018, he played Mark Twain in the Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly vehicle, Holmes and Watson.
Excerpts in this episode come from chapters 23, 50, 19, 37, 34, and 51.
Episode Bibliography:
Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Duke UP, 2011)
Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letters (Harvard UP, 2007)
Eleanor Courtemanche, “Beyond Urgency: Shadow Presentisms, Hinge Points, & Victorian Historicisms” Criticism (Fall 2019)
Hernan Diaz, Trust (Riverhead Books, 2022)
Jeffrey Insko, History, Abolition, & The Ever-Present Now in Antebellum American Writing (Oxford UP, 2019)
Jeffrey Insko, “Prospects For The Present” American Literary History (Winter 2014)
Jeffrey Insko, “Historicism” in Time & Literature (Cambridge UP, 2018)
Jeffrey Insko, “The Prehistory of Posthistoricism” in The Limits of Literary Historicism (U Tennessee P, 2012)
Fredric Jameson, The Antinomies of Realism (Verso, 2013)
Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Cornell UP, 1982)
Agnes Kelemen, “The Destruction of Reason & The Semi-Destruction of an Archive” LeftEast (February 20, 2018)
Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism (Verso, 2024)
Anna Kornbluh, “Present Tense Futures of The Past” Victorian Studies (Autumn 2016)
György Lukács, The Historical Novel (1937) [1983 University of Nebraska Edition]
György Lukács, Studies in European Realism (Merlin Press, 1950)
György Lukács, The Meaning of Contemporary Realism (Merlin Press, 1958)
György Lukács, Writer & Critic, & Other Essays (Merlin Press, 1970)
György Lukács, Theory of The Novel (1916) [MIT Press Edition]
György Lukács, History & Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (1923) [MIT Press Edition]
Alexander Manshel, Writing Backwards: Historical Fiction & The Reshaping of The American Canon (Columbia UP, 2023)
Alexander Manshel, “How Historical Fiction Redefined The Literary Canon” The Nation (September 11, 2024)
Alexander Manshel, “The Rise of the Recent Historical Novel” Post45 (September 29, 2017)
Alexander Manshel & Melanie Walsh, "What 35 Years of Data Can Tell Us About Who Will Win The National Book Award" Public Books (November 6, 2023)
Sarah Maza, “A Tale of Two Novels: How Uncle Tom’s Cabin & Les Miserables Crossed The Atlantic, 1852-1920″ [Work In Progress]
Walter Scott, Waverley (1914)
Matt Seybold, “The Twain Doctrine” Mark Twain Annual (2023)
Matt Seybold, “Mark Twain, Gore Vidal, & The Nadirs of U.S. Electoral History” Center For Mark Twain Studies (November 7, 2016)
Dan Sinykin, Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed The Publishing Industry & American Literature (Columbia UP, 2023)
G. M. Tamas, “The Never-Ending Lukacs Debate” Los Angeles Review of Books (March 6, 2017)
Brandon Taylor, “Is it even good?” London Review of Books (April 4, 2024)
Brandon Taylor, “bobos in ikea” Sweater Weather (August 17, 2021)
Brandon Taylor, “i read your little internet novels” Sweater Weather (March 23, 2021)
Brandon Taylor, “zola was kind of a zaddy, no?” Sweater Weather (March 16, 2021)
Brandon Taylor & Keziah White, “On Sowing Chaos & Overcoming Doubt” Vanity Fair (May 22, 2023)
Mark Twain & Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) [2006 Modern Library Edition]
Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Webster & Co., 1885)
Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson (Webster & Co., 1893)
Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (Webster & Co., 1889)
Mark Twain, Life On The Mississippi (Osgood & Co., 1883)
Mark Twain, The Prince & The Pauper (Osgood, & Co., 1882)
Gore Vidal, 1876 (Vintage, 1976)
Raymond Williams, Marxism & Literature (Oxford UP, 1977)
Nathan Wolff, Not Quite Hope & Other Political Emotions In The Gilded Age (Oxford UP, 2019)
The Historical Novel (A Tale of Today, Episode #5)