GOOD EXPECTATIONS Adaptation and Middlebrow Literacy Bart H. Beaty, Graduate Program in Communications McGill University, Montreal (Canada) August 1995 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements of the Degree ofMaster of Arts © Bart Beaty, 1995 "I do not think, by the way, from certain phrases, that Shakespeare liked middlebrows" - Virginia Woolf, 1922 ABSTRACT The goal ofthis thesis is to advance understanding ofthe ways in which discourses of reading, literacy and culture were used to reify class stratification in mid-twentieth-century America. This project uses the examples of The Reader's Digest magazine and Classics Illustrated comic books to assess the adaptation and the ideologies surrounding textual form. It examines the efforts of self-proclaimed cultural elites to identify and denigrate middlebrow reading habits through dismissive critiques of texts and audiences as one moment in an on-going historical process ofdomination and exclusion. These avenues of exploration will reveal the complexity and variance ofclass definition in a pluralist democracy which, it turns out, are still very much a part ofcontemporary culture. RESUME Le but de cette these est de faire progresser la connaissance des manieres dont les contexts discursifs de la lecture, de l'alphabetisation et de la culture etaient utilises en Arr·erique, au milieu du vingtieme siecle, afin de reifier la stratification sociale. Des exemples tels que la revue The Reader's Digest et la bande dessinee Classics Illustrated seront utilises, dans ce projet, pour illustrer l'adaptation et les ideologies autour de la forme textuelle. Cet ouvrage examine comment ceux qui proclames par eux-memes elites culturelles, ont tente d'identifier et de denigrer les habitudes de lecture du lecteur moyen par des critiques dedaigneuses des textes et du public, en un pro cede historique persistant de domination et d'exclusion. Ces voies d'exploration reveleront la complexite et la diversite des definitions du concept de classes it l'interieur d'une democratie pluraliste, lesquelles, somme toute, cotinuent de faire partie integrante de la culture contemporaine. II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The completion ofthis thesis would not have been possible without the support and encouragement ofmany people both inside and out ofMcGill University. For his guidance and enthusiasm, I would like to thank my supervisor, Prof George Szanto, whose prodding led me to ask many ofthese questions for the first time and inspired this project from the beginning. Prof. Will Straw first presented me with many of the problematics which this thesis addresses and I am grateful to him for that, as I am grateful for all the support he has given me over the years. Keir KeightIey and Dann Downes individually provided me with many useful and interesting texts as well as valuable insights. Extra thanks go to Gary Kennedy, Joe Jackson and Miyo Yamashita for tolerating comics­ related tangents at La Cabane throughout this past year. I would also like to thank the many members of the electronic mailing-list [email protected] who shaped this project in interesting ways with their provacative insights into the history ofthe comic book industry. Special thanks are due to Mark Nevins, Pete Coogan, Charles Hatfield, Arthur van Kruining, Glenn Camagey, Scott Gilbert, Rusty Witek and Gene Kanenberg for proving that there is in fact a community for comics scholars - provided you know where to look for it. There is little chance that this thesis would have been completed as painlessly as it was if it were not for Rebecca Sullivan, whose editing skills, care-taking abilities and unwavering support I may never be able to repay. Finally, I would like to thank my grandfather, Don Beaty, for his assistance when I first arrived in Montreal and, of course, my parents, Harry and Dianne Beaty. I hope I have warranted their faith in me. III TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT / RESUME. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. .. III TABLE OF CONTENTS . .. IV INTRODUCTION ...................................................... 1 FINDING THE MIDDLE GROUND . .. 10 ONCULTURE ................................................. 11 The Cultured Individual .................................... 12 Early HighILow Distinctions ................................ 13 The Bias ofCulture ....................................... 15 SNOBS AND BOORS: THE PROBLEM OF HIGHlLow .................... 17 Defining High and Low Cultures ............................. 18 The Neo-Aristocrats ...................................... 19 Raised Voices: Greenberg and MacDonald ...................... 21 Farewell to HighILow ..................................... 23 THE MESSY MIDDLE ........................................... 24 Condemning the Middlebrow .. 25 The Critiques ofMiddlebrow Culture ......................... 27 CONCLUSIONS ................................................ 30 OF LASTING INTEREST ................................................ 32 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY .................... 33 The Classical University .................................... 34 The University and 'Real Life' ............................... 35 The Research University .................................... 36 A Liberal Education . 38 Education in the Twentieth-Century . 39 THE MAGAZINE IN AMERICA . .. .... 42 A Brief History ofthe American Magazine. 43 The Backlash Against the Magazine in America ................ 45 IV READER'S DIGESTAND THE MAGAZINE INDUSTRY .................... 46 A Condensed History ofThe Reader's Digest . 47 Producing the Digest . 48 The Reader's Digest as a Mass Magazine . 50 The Construction of The Reader's Digest . 51 READER'S DIGEST AS A MIDDLEBROW TEXT ......................... 53 Article Types in The Reader's Digest . 54 The Tone of The Reader's Digest . ............................ 56 The Politics of The Reader's Digest . .......................... 57 The Reader's Digest as a Problem ............................ 58 CONCLUSIONS ................................................ 62 FEATURING STORIES BY THE WORLD'S GREATEST AUTHORS ................. 64 LITERACY IN MID-CENTURY AMERICA ............................. 65 Hooked on Classics ....................................... 67 How To Read a Book. 69 The Uses ofLiteracy ...................................... 72 THE COMIC BOOK IN AMERICA ................................... 75 A Brief History ofthe Comics ............................... 75 Comics and Fascism . 78 Paging Dr. Wertham ....................................... 79 Spreading the Word ....................................... 82 CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED AND THE COMIC BOOK INDUSTRY .............. 85 A Brief History ofClassics Illustrated .......................... 86 Producing the Classics ..................................... 87 The Impact ofClassics Illustrated . 89 CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED AND THE MIDDLEBROW PROBLEM .............. 90 Writing in Classics Illustrated ............................... 90 The Visual Aesthetics ofClassics Illustrated .................... 91 Classics Illustrated as a Middlebrow Text ...................... 93 CONCLUSIONS . 97 How To WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE SHAKESPEARE ...................... 99 LEARNING TO ADAPT ... 99 Two Theories ofAdaptation ................................ 99 Adaptation Anxiety ...................................... 101 NOT-So-GREAT DANE: HAMLET AND CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED . .......... 103 Utilising Shakespeare . 104 A Brief History ofHamlet Criticism . .. 107 A Comic Book Hamlet ................................... 108 v WINNING FRIENDS, CHOPPING PARAGRAPHS ...................... 112 Help Yourself .......................................... 112 The Problem ofSelf-Help ................................. 114 Digesting Dale Carnegie .................................. 115 CONCLUSIONS ............................................... 118 CONCLUSION 121 NOTES 126 WORKS CITED 135 VI INTRODUCTION In his 1955 essay "The Middle Against Both Ends" Leslie Fiedler argued that the dominant quality ofthe culture ofthe American middle-class was the revulsion with which it regarded both highbrow and lowbrow cultures. In Fiedler's estimation, American middlebrow culture was actively engaged in a "two-front war"l born out ofa fear of difference; a difference made manifest in cultural commodities which specifically incorporated the "anti-bourgeois" elements ofcrime, sex, and violence. 2 The medium with which Fiedler chose to demonstrate this argument was the comic book, a form which he felt had been unjustifiably maligned by middlebrow critics who had, in a moment of irrational displacement, condemned them as a travesty of literature. To the middlebrow critic the comic book was a betrayal of the promise of mass literacy, a rejection of "the benefit for which they were presumed to have sighed in their long exclusion". 3 As a corrective to this misconception, Fiedler suggested a reinsertion of history into cultural analysis. Pointing out that the novel had, in the nineteenth-century, been regarded as an affront to literature, Fiedler insisted that these biases are culturally and historically specific and that they revealed "at least as much about the nature of a period as ... the forms to which they respond.,,4 Seeking to explicate the prejudices ofthe period in which he himself was located, Fiedler turned to an examination of culture as a social leveller, a contested area in which the political struggles ofthe times were played out. Class, therefore, assumed an important role in Fiedler's analysis ofthe