Books by Mark McGurl

Once upon a time there were good American novels and bad ones, but none was thought of as a work of art. This title tells the story of how, beginning with Henry James, this began to change. It examines the late-nineteenth century movement to elevate the status of the novel, its sources, paradoxes, and reverberations into the twentieth century.

McGurl offers a fundamental reinterpretation of postwar American fiction, asserting that it can be properly understood only in relation to the rise of mass higher education and the creative writing program. The Program Era will be at the center of debates about postwar literature and culture for years to come.