Introduction

Summary

The introduction posits a crucial hypothetical question: If the basic trajectory of the postwar literary field saw highbrow fiction become increasingly associated with progressive liberal politics, even though the simultaneous trajectory of postwar American politics saw the fall of New Deal liberalism and the rise of a historically unique form of modern conservativism, then what insights about literary taste and perceptions of aesthetic value could a book-length reconstruction of these dual literary-historiographic narratives produce? After reviewing the germane existing scholarship, this chapter explains that the aim of Postwar American Fiction and the Rise of Modern Conservatism is not just to unravel the perception that highbrow literature is a natural, virtually inexorable, ally of post-sixties progressive liberalism, but also to show how that connection is a historically contingent development shaped in part by deeper arguments within movement conservatism about the purpose and acquisition of literary cultural capital.