Read Online Hit Lit: Cracking the Code of the Twentieth Century's Biggest Bestsellers by James W. Hall - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: James W. Hall
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explosive, so supersensitive, it was easy to believe the actual reason the POTUS summoned Clancy to the White House was to have him debriefed by the CIA.
Published in that Orwellian year of 1984, the novel rode the last crests of cold war paranoia. Perestroika and glasnost were just up ahead, but our periscopes couldn’t yet make them out. So the country was armed and dangerous and nervous as hell, and a book like this submarine novel that reflected well on our native resourcefulness, our blue-collar ingenuity, our military hardware, and our grace under a hundred fathoms was the right story at the right time with the right ingredients that appealed to the right wing of the American reading public.
HOT BUTTON #10
Greed Is Good
Sellouts like Mitch McDeere were all the rage in the decade of greed known as the eighties, when he and his fellow yuppies made down payments on their luxury cars and minimansions from their first week’s paychecks and started looking for a better class of cocaine dealer. With his fresh law degree and his glamorous young wife, he was a perfect model for the latest incarnation of the me generation.
Grisham takes both sides of the “greed is bad vs. greed is good” debate that seethed back then just as it has off and on for most of the nation’s history. The novel starkly portrays the Reaganomics of the era. It was a time when supply-side trickle-down voodoo economic arguments could ignite furious passions. MBAs and law degrees were being minted asfast as new tax laws cut marginal rates. Corporate deregulation and union busting were in the air. Go to it, boys. Make a fortune. Wallow in a little luxury, don’t be shy.
One of the key theoretical arguments supporting Reaganomics was something suitably named the Laffer curve, which supported the idea that cutting taxes led to a rise in total revenues. Enter Mitch McDeere, a highly educated lawyer whose specialty is tax cheating. He heads south to work for a WASPy firm whose clients turn out to be not some legitimate struggling small-business CEOs overburdened by taxes and regulations, but mobsters who want to launder their money and not let any of it trickle down to law-abiding citizens. The huge tectonic plates of dissension grinding beneath Mitch’s story give the novel a shuddering larger significance. When Mitch and Abby sail away on their schooner as winners in this sweepstakes of greed, both sides of this American hot-button issue have further fuel for their arguments.
HOT BUTTON #11
Nuclear Family
In 1992, when Robert Kincaid came striding into bookstores across the land, “family values” was the hot-button issue on the lips of many, including Vice President Dan Quayle, who that same year notoriously derided the prime-time TV show
Murphy Brown
for its “poverty of values.” Mr. Quayle’s complaint, which was supported by a great many voters, was that the show positively portrayed a single professional woman who had decided to bear a child alone, and thus the show was helping to undermine the sanctity of the nuclear family.
The nuclear family and its sacredness was smack dab inthe foreground of
The Bridges of Madison County
, which opens with a don’t-think-about-it-too-hard explanation of why the two Johnson siblings allowed their mother’s private journal to be published for all to see.
Yet in a world where personal commitment in all of its forms seems to be shattering and love has become a matter of convenience, they both felt this remarkable tale was worth telling.
Bridges
heated up the passions of a few million readers and divided them along party lines, stimulating fond memories and regrets over loves lost and paths not taken in one group while irritating the self-righteous sensibilities of others who’d held firm against such adulterous temptations.
HOT BUTTON #12
Holy Mother
There’s a type of novel that courts controversy and scandal, like
The Da Vinci Code
, that might be categorized as speculative history. Such
Published in that Orwellian year of 1984, the novel rode the last crests of cold war paranoia. Perestroika and glasnost were just up ahead, but our periscopes couldn’t yet make them out. So the country was armed and dangerous and nervous as hell, and a book like this submarine novel that reflected well on our native resourcefulness, our blue-collar ingenuity, our military hardware, and our grace under a hundred fathoms was the right story at the right time with the right ingredients that appealed to the right wing of the American reading public.
HOT BUTTON #10
Greed Is Good
Sellouts like Mitch McDeere were all the rage in the decade of greed known as the eighties, when he and his fellow yuppies made down payments on their luxury cars and minimansions from their first week’s paychecks and started looking for a better class of cocaine dealer. With his fresh law degree and his glamorous young wife, he was a perfect model for the latest incarnation of the me generation.
Grisham takes both sides of the “greed is bad vs. greed is good” debate that seethed back then just as it has off and on for most of the nation’s history. The novel starkly portrays the Reaganomics of the era. It was a time when supply-side trickle-down voodoo economic arguments could ignite furious passions. MBAs and law degrees were being minted asfast as new tax laws cut marginal rates. Corporate deregulation and union busting were in the air. Go to it, boys. Make a fortune. Wallow in a little luxury, don’t be shy.
One of the key theoretical arguments supporting Reaganomics was something suitably named the Laffer curve, which supported the idea that cutting taxes led to a rise in total revenues. Enter Mitch McDeere, a highly educated lawyer whose specialty is tax cheating. He heads south to work for a WASPy firm whose clients turn out to be not some legitimate struggling small-business CEOs overburdened by taxes and regulations, but mobsters who want to launder their money and not let any of it trickle down to law-abiding citizens. The huge tectonic plates of dissension grinding beneath Mitch’s story give the novel a shuddering larger significance. When Mitch and Abby sail away on their schooner as winners in this sweepstakes of greed, both sides of this American hot-button issue have further fuel for their arguments.
HOT BUTTON #11
Nuclear Family
In 1992, when Robert Kincaid came striding into bookstores across the land, “family values” was the hot-button issue on the lips of many, including Vice President Dan Quayle, who that same year notoriously derided the prime-time TV show
Murphy Brown
for its “poverty of values.” Mr. Quayle’s complaint, which was supported by a great many voters, was that the show positively portrayed a single professional woman who had decided to bear a child alone, and thus the show was helping to undermine the sanctity of the nuclear family.
The nuclear family and its sacredness was smack dab inthe foreground of
The Bridges of Madison County
, which opens with a don’t-think-about-it-too-hard explanation of why the two Johnson siblings allowed their mother’s private journal to be published for all to see.
Yet in a world where personal commitment in all of its forms seems to be shattering and love has become a matter of convenience, they both felt this remarkable tale was worth telling.
Bridges
heated up the passions of a few million readers and divided them along party lines, stimulating fond memories and regrets over loves lost and paths not taken in one group while irritating the self-righteous sensibilities of others who’d held firm against such adulterous temptations.
HOT BUTTON #12
Holy Mother
There’s a type of novel that courts controversy and scandal, like
The Da Vinci Code
, that might be categorized as speculative history. Such
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