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Cover of People's Choice Literature

People's Choice Literature

by Tom Comitta

Book Details

Publisher:Columbia University Press
Published:2025-06-03
Pages:476
Format:BOOK
Language:en

Reading Info

About This Book

What do Americans truly want in a novel? What would it look like if their preferences and aversions materialized in book form? In People’s Choice Literature, Tom Comitta has taken up this challenge, writing two groundbreaking novels based on a nationwide poll about literary taste—one featuring the story elements Americans most desire and another containing everything Americans despise. The Most Wanted Novel is a fast-paced thriller evoking page-turners by Dan Brown, David Baldacci, and Janet Eva

Our Review

This experimental work delivers exactly what its premise promises: two complete novels crafted from direct survey data about American reading preferences. The first book, built from elements readers most desire, reads like a high-octane thriller in the tradition of Dan Brown and David Baldacci, packed with relentless pacing and familiar genre tropes. The second novel, assembled from everything survey respondents claimed to despise, serves as its conceptual opposite and critical counterpart. Together, they form a provocative diptych exploring the relationship between artistic creation and audience demand.

What makes this project compelling isn't just the execution but the underlying commentary about literary taste and market forces. Readers interested in conceptual literature, book industry analysis, or experimental fiction will find rich material in seeing popular preferences manifested so literally. The juxtaposition raises thoughtful questions about whether we truly want what we say we want in storytelling, making this more than just a writing experiment—it's a mirror reflecting our complicated relationship with narrative itself.

Themes

Literary Criticism

Subjects

Literary Criticism