Fiction’s Flagging Man of Commerce

This article is the first in a series of two on the businessman in American fiction. In this one, the author, an associate professor of English at Brown University, builds perspective for the subject by comparing William Dean Howells’ The Rise of Silas Lapham with John Marquand’s Point of No Return, finding the difference in the “fact of naturalism,” which peculiarly reflected actual events. The sequel will consider several recent well-known novels.