Exploring Capitalist Fiction: Business through Literature and Film.

AuthorMendenhall, Allen
PositionBook review

Exploring Capitalist Fiction: Business through Literature and Film

By Edward W. Younkins

Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield/Lexington Books, 2014.

Pp. 331. $100, hardcover.

"The underpinning premise of this book," submits Edward W. Younkins, who is professor of accountancy and director of graduate programs in the Department of Business at Wheeling Jesuit University, "is that fiction, including novels, plays, and films, can be a powerful force to educate students and employees in ways that lectures, textbooks, articles, case studies, and other traditional teaching approaches cannot" (p. ix). Academicians in the humanities ought to take note of this premise, which implies that, despite literary scholars' efforts over several decades to use creative works as pretexts for advancing progressive, socialist, neo-Marxist, and generally left-wing politics, the worth of literature is not in political appropriation, but in humane education; more fundamentally, the importance of literature is enjoyment. What follows from enjoyment--lessons learned, wisdom gained, knowledge tested--is conditional upon individual gratification.

That does not mean that economics and politics may not inform literary theory and criticism. Works of literature are commodities that reveal much about what cultures demand and that influence how political arguments become framed; therefore, capitalist and free-market literary theories, which are more humane and tenable than many literary theories currently circulating, ought to be as common as materialist criticism and neo-Marxist phenomenology or hermeneutics. For too long those hostile to capitalism have monopolized conversations about literature and literary studies and, in so doing, have undermined the credibility of humanities departments and curricula and even, I would argue, brought about the gradual decline in humanities enrollments, funding, and compensation.

Exploring Capitalist Fiction is a corrective, but one that is not likely to have a wide impact among humanities scholars. That Younkins is an "outsider," which is to say a member of a department not traditionally associated with the humanities, means that his book will not be taken seriously by the literary establishment, which, ironically, is inclined to deride the business professionals who subsidize humanities research and make possible endowed chairs, sponsored journals, and humanities programs, materials, and benefits.

Exploring Capitalist Fiction is not tendentious and does not advocate an overhaul of literary studies. It is, at essence...

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