Selling the Story: Transaction and Narrative Value in Balzac, Dostoevsky, and Zola

Does the need to write for money affect what is written? Selling the Story addresses the issue of how the business of literature influences its very composition. Authors participate in a marketplace in which the reader is the target of a literary "sell." Using as examples Balzac, Dostoevsky, and Zola, Jonathan Paine shows how major works reflect their authors' differing "point of sale" perspectives on reader response and the market for literature. Uncovering this process opens a new role for economic criticism and offers new and original readings of canonical texts. Paine contends that "selling the story" to the reader, both literally and figuratively, is a genuine transaction which can be analyzed in economic terms. An author's choice of transaction type - prospectus, auction or speculation - can reveal much about his approach to the creation of literary value. Even an author's fictional representation of transactions in novels can show distinct and differentiated approaches to the business of literature. This "point-of-sale" analysis represents a distinctive new departure in economic criticism.--