New Sincerity

Adam Kelly is Associate Professor of English, University College Dublin, Ireland.

• Introduction1. Achieving the Art of Sincerity2. New Economy, New Sincerity3. Gendered Histories and Novel Genres4. Freedom Struggle, Class Struggle, Sincerity Struggle5. Seeing Like a Neoliberal6. The Politics of Sincerity and the Sincerity of PoliticsConclusion: Sincerity in Common

"For well over a decade, my conversations with Adam Kelly have made a vibrant addition to my writing life, both strengthening my awareness of my literary context and helping me to define—and even understand—what I'm trying to do."—Jennifer Egan, author of The Candy House "Adam Kelly is one of the liveliest and most exciting thinkers around."—Paul Murray, author of The Bee Sting "Kelly is a major voice in the scholarly conversation on contemporary US fiction. This book is both a lucid summary and a brilliant further development of his important arguments about New Sincerity aesthetics."—Lee Konstantinou, University of Maryland, College Park "New Sincerity is a blockbuster, the deepest account we have of the complex ethical orientation of a whole generation of US writers to neoliberal capitalism. Kelly ably revivifies the literary period immediately preceding our own in all its conflicted glory."—Mark McGurl, Stanford University "New Sincerity provides a compelling framework for understanding millennial American literature. Kelly traces a generation's commitment to sincerity in its fiction and culture, while revealing its failures to wholly escape the market values and dictates it contests."—Ralph Clare, Boise State University "This groundbreaking book is riveting to read, philosophically sophisticated, and politically insightful. Equally sensitive to the historical and the aesthetic, the economic and the existential, Kelly sets a new standard for the expressive power of literary criticism."—Martin Hägglund, Yale University "Kelly... handles a big literary movement, complex political and economic ideas, and a dozen prominent authors in a conversational style that centers his love of reading in ways academic writing typically fails to do. His book is an exciting conversation that tempts the reader to drop everything and re-enroll as an undergrad."—Michael Maiello, Washington Independent Review of Books "As the first book-length survey of 'the new sincerity' in American literature, this study fills a significant gap between the peak of postmodernism and the later genre turn in the historicist consideration of early 21st-century American fiction. Kelly deftly embeds insightful and extended commentaries on works by an array of writers... within a rich and sprawling critical discourse about literary sincerity that hearkens back to Lionel Trilling (among others) as well as the potential roles that literary art can play in an age dominated by cultural and political neoliberalism.... Highly recommended."—D. C. Maus, CHOICE "Kelly is successful in drawing a 'generational portrait' of how American fiction developed between the end of the Reagan presidency and the 2008 financial crisis."—Zach Gibson, Los Angeles Review of Books