Middlemen rewrites literary history from the perspective of one of its most important but least visible figures: the literary agent. Chronicling the story of agents in the United States from the 1950s to today, Laura McGrath uncovers their critical role in the making of American literature. From the famed three-martini lunch to the Frankfurt Book Fair, Middlemen takes readers behind the scenes to show how agents influence what we read. Along the way, it explains why many debut novelists never publish another book, why agents champion short story collections even though they sell poorly, how agents advocate for writers of color in a system that values whiteness, and why there are so many New York novels.
Weaving together original archival research, data analysis, and interviews with scores of agents and other publishing professionals, Middlemen demonstrates that agents鈥攅ighty percent of whom are in fact women鈥攁re much more than 鈥渕iddlemen.鈥� As intermediaries between author and publisher, agents act as advocates, matchmakers, negotiators, and tastemakers, and they must balance artistic values with the commercial imperatives of publishing conglomerates. The book describes the decisive role agents have played in celebrated novels鈥攆rom Jack Kerouac鈥檚 On the Road to Colson Whitehead鈥檚 The Intuitionist鈥攂ut also in the creation of entire literary categories like the debut novel, the story collection, postmodernism, multiethnic fiction, and world literature.
Featuring profiles of agents past and present such as Sterling Lord, Lynn Nesbit, Candida Donadio, Marie Brown, and Andrew Wylie, along with perspectives from agents at all stages of their careers, Middlemen is an entertaining and eye-opening account of how literary fiction鈥攁nd the literary canon鈥攊s made.
Laura B. McGrath is assistant professor of English at Temple University. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, and the Los Angeles Review of 快色直播.
"Drawing on archival sources, input from more than 75 agents (including several of the most influential in the field), trade and industry publications, biographies, and memoirs, McGrath offers insights into the strategies, values, and relationships that shape an agent’s work. . . . A fresh, well-researched debut."鈥�Kirkus Reviews
"Middlemen is a thorough, diverting investigation of the role literary agents play in the creation of book markets and reader tastes. . . . An invaluable work of literary analysis."鈥�Foreword Reviews
"An enlightening study of how agents have shaped the American literary landscape. . . . McGrath’s research is extremely thorough and presented in entertaining prose. Anyone curious about how their favorite books came to be will appreciate this peek behind the curtain."鈥�Publishers Weekly
“Laura McGrath’s Middlemen deserves a garland of adjectives, including cogent, readable, timely, inventive, comprehensively researched, and even definitive. That this overdue examination of the agenting world has been done so well, so intelligently, and with such a firm grasp of publishing’s folkways makes it a must-read for anyone involved in what Terry Southern once called ‘the Quality Lit Biz.’”—Gerald Howard, former book editor and author of The Insider: Malcolm Cowley and the Triumph of American Literature
“Middlemen is a critical performance of rare consequence, uncovering a whole new territory in the study of the modern literary field. At once highly sophisticated and deeply human, it will be a must-read for anyone who wants to know how the books they love come into being.”—Mark McGurl, author of Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon
“Every work of literature is the product of a collective enterprise—but not a democratic one. McGrath describes a tectonic shift in the distribution of power in American publishing, which has raised the literary agent to a position of unprecedented consequence and control. Written in a witty, accessible style, and full of illuminating anecdotes, Middlemen is a riveting read for anyone interested in the way literature actually gets made today.”—James F. English, author of The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural Value
“In Middlemen, McGrath has done original and important work in illuminating, finally, the art and the science of literary agenting. It’s a fun read, and an essential read, for anyone who wants to understand how trade publishing really works.”—Thad McIlroy, author of The AI Revolution in Book Publishing
