Unspeakable Conventionality: The Perversity of the Kindle

Abstract

Abstract What has the rise of Amazon meant for the novel? This essay argues that in shifting the scene of innovation from the novel’s form to the ways and means of its distribution, the company has redefined authorship as the entrepreneurial provision of good service to readers and reading itself as a repeatable experience of erotic self-care. Conceived in this way, all fiction is “genre fiction,” including so-called literary fiction, which for Amazon is simply one modality of the perverse pursuit of customer satisfaction among others. As an occasion for felicitous repetition, genre fiction takes the lead in defining the situation of the novel now, suggesting a new set of emphases in the critical analysis of the contemporary literary field.

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