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Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America
Fables of Abundance ranges from the traveling peddlers of early modern Europe to the twentieth-century American corporation, exploring the ways that advertising collaborated with other cultural institutions to produce the dominant aspirations and anxieties in the modern United States.
512 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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About the author
T.J. Jackson Lears
19 books36 followersT. J. Jackson Lears (born 1947) is an American cultural and intellectual historian with interests in comparative religious history, literature and the visual arts, folklore and folk beliefs. He is the Board of Governors Professor of History at Rutgers University and Editor in Chief of the Raritan Quarterly Review.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 1, 2020
At the start of this I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d gotten myself into – this is a bit of Bakhtin, a bit of Marx, a bit of Baudrillard. Not that any of that is a bad thing in itself, it’s just I wasn’t sure where we were heading. I found the first part of this quite confusing – I should probably go back and read it again, but I don’t think that I’m going to. I enjoyed the second part more than the other two, or rather, much of the third part was okay too, but the end lost me again. If I start and end lost, that’s perhaps a bad sign, but it might have just been me.
The author sets up interesting dichotomies throughout this – puritanism and sensuality, rationalism and desire, science and emotion, sufficiency and abundance. Advertising is a complicated mix of all this too, but too often placed as ‘this worldly’ and therefore as potentially something that will lead us astray. There are parts of this where advertising is associated with Jews or the rampant sexuality and sexual seduction that was once strongly associated with Arabs and Turks in the Western mind. The exotic and the erotic – all symbolised by brightly coloured goods otherwise unavailable until brought to town by travelling salesmen. All of which were likely to overwhelm (debauch) the otherwise staid and trusting American housewife. This of course was the other central dichotomy, man as earner, woman as spender. There is a link made early in this between the salesmanship of pedlars, particularly patent medicine spruikers, and what was to become the less than truthful ad-copy of today’s magazines and television stations. In fact, I found the stuff said here about the connections between evangelical religion and the patter of those selling patent medicine ‘cures’ fascinating.
This was particularly clear when a pedlar would push some nostrum. The narrative structure used would mirror those of the benefits of being reborn in Christ. First the story of dissipation, the dark despair and loss brought by the inevitable sickness caused by a life separated from the health-giving properties of the redemptive product (Jesus or snake-oil). And then, of course, the conversion experience, the discovery of the truth, and the rebirth into health. And once this template is pointed out, you see it everywhere for the most bland of products.
It is easy to think of advertising people as being only manipulators and liars – linking back to the puritanical distinction made earlier – but what I found interesting in this was the number of times people in advertising push seek to separate themselves from ‘charlatans’. The idea that advertising should do little more than highlight the benefits of a product – provide straight and unadorned facts about it – and then let the product sell itself had a strong following among many advertising people. These people were particularly delighted with photography, seeing this as totally pure and objective – which, I guess, is something we are less likely to believe today. At one point someone basically says that promoting the unadorned features of the product is only possible if it has naturally distinctive properties. Otherwise, if it is something like milk or sugar – that is, indistinguishable from other milks and sugars – then you are probably going to need a sexy model and to imply that one glass of milk will have her jumping on your bones. That is, the more bland the product, the more you might need to exaggerate and appeal to emotions and desire to get it over the line. This was, after all, the strategy for selling Absolut Vodka, an alcoholic beverage with no real distinctive features from other vodkas.
I think I would have liked more in this to have been about how we use products to construct our identities and how these come into play with the image the product itself wishes to portray. All the same, he does discuss Marx’s notion of the fetish of the commodity at some length, and how capitalism seeks to use the way we try to assert our identity via consumption so as to overcome the alienation we experience in the production process.
The book is more successful, I felt, in discussing the way in which advertising has become the high art of capitalism. It provides readings of various novels – including Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, curiously enough – and the role of advertising or commodities in these. Novels or biographies are discussed and these often involve artists who were drawn into advertising due to the money they could make there and this then forced them to reappraise their artistic vision and so on. Pop Art is discussed in this context too. But not just Pop Art. The feeding of art and advertising off each other is very interesting here. The pathway from the socialist vision that montage as a reordering and therefore anti-capitalist assertion of the overthrow of hierarchies to a crass way to sell soft-drink is all part of advertisings ability to incorporate what might seem the greatest critique of itself into itself.
I was left feeling that perhaps this was too ambitious a book and that it might have been better if it didn’t try to be quite so comprehensive. That said, there is certainly more than enough in this to think about.
The author sets up interesting dichotomies throughout this – puritanism and sensuality, rationalism and desire, science and emotion, sufficiency and abundance. Advertising is a complicated mix of all this too, but too often placed as ‘this worldly’ and therefore as potentially something that will lead us astray. There are parts of this where advertising is associated with Jews or the rampant sexuality and sexual seduction that was once strongly associated with Arabs and Turks in the Western mind. The exotic and the erotic – all symbolised by brightly coloured goods otherwise unavailable until brought to town by travelling salesmen. All of which were likely to overwhelm (debauch) the otherwise staid and trusting American housewife. This of course was the other central dichotomy, man as earner, woman as spender. There is a link made early in this between the salesmanship of pedlars, particularly patent medicine spruikers, and what was to become the less than truthful ad-copy of today’s magazines and television stations. In fact, I found the stuff said here about the connections between evangelical religion and the patter of those selling patent medicine ‘cures’ fascinating.
This was particularly clear when a pedlar would push some nostrum. The narrative structure used would mirror those of the benefits of being reborn in Christ. First the story of dissipation, the dark despair and loss brought by the inevitable sickness caused by a life separated from the health-giving properties of the redemptive product (Jesus or snake-oil). And then, of course, the conversion experience, the discovery of the truth, and the rebirth into health. And once this template is pointed out, you see it everywhere for the most bland of products.
It is easy to think of advertising people as being only manipulators and liars – linking back to the puritanical distinction made earlier – but what I found interesting in this was the number of times people in advertising push seek to separate themselves from ‘charlatans’. The idea that advertising should do little more than highlight the benefits of a product – provide straight and unadorned facts about it – and then let the product sell itself had a strong following among many advertising people. These people were particularly delighted with photography, seeing this as totally pure and objective – which, I guess, is something we are less likely to believe today. At one point someone basically says that promoting the unadorned features of the product is only possible if it has naturally distinctive properties. Otherwise, if it is something like milk or sugar – that is, indistinguishable from other milks and sugars – then you are probably going to need a sexy model and to imply that one glass of milk will have her jumping on your bones. That is, the more bland the product, the more you might need to exaggerate and appeal to emotions and desire to get it over the line. This was, after all, the strategy for selling Absolut Vodka, an alcoholic beverage with no real distinctive features from other vodkas.
I think I would have liked more in this to have been about how we use products to construct our identities and how these come into play with the image the product itself wishes to portray. All the same, he does discuss Marx’s notion of the fetish of the commodity at some length, and how capitalism seeks to use the way we try to assert our identity via consumption so as to overcome the alienation we experience in the production process.
The book is more successful, I felt, in discussing the way in which advertising has become the high art of capitalism. It provides readings of various novels – including Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, curiously enough – and the role of advertising or commodities in these. Novels or biographies are discussed and these often involve artists who were drawn into advertising due to the money they could make there and this then forced them to reappraise their artistic vision and so on. Pop Art is discussed in this context too. But not just Pop Art. The feeding of art and advertising off each other is very interesting here. The pathway from the socialist vision that montage as a reordering and therefore anti-capitalist assertion of the overthrow of hierarchies to a crass way to sell soft-drink is all part of advertisings ability to incorporate what might seem the greatest critique of itself into itself.
I was left feeling that perhaps this was too ambitious a book and that it might have been better if it didn’t try to be quite so comprehensive. That said, there is certainly more than enough in this to think about.
June 29, 2013
'About' advertising of course, but mainly of interest to me is that advertising is the cultural form through which Lears mediates interpretations of cultural signification and the control of imagery. He gets down quickly to suggesting that the superficial glitter and phantasmogoria of high-speed modern (1993) iconography barely conceals dominant ideology. Seems to me to chime well with Adorno's 'The Stars Come Down to Earth'.
It is an absolute joy to read. One of those books that get me so excited I have to go an burn off physical energy.
It is an absolute joy to read. One of those books that get me so excited I have to go an burn off physical energy.
February 9, 2013
Lears' book on 'the making of modern America' was very disappointing, whereas this was fabulous. As a caveat, I think it's fabulous because it was not only exactly what I wanted (a history of advertising tied to the culture of early to mid twentieth century America told from a vaguely Frankfurt Schoolish perspective), but also suggested something to me that I'd never considered, which was utterly engaging (the relationship between advertising and literary/artistic modernism--whether they were at war or at peace). Lears shows, pretty convincingly, how advertising played off and created distinctions between authenticity and deception, tradition and progress, objects and lifestyles and so on. And his forays into literary criticism are surprisingly good. It helps that he devotes a few pages to William Gaddis' 'The Recognitions,' which I think is probably my favorite novel of the twentieth century.
That said, there are a few problems. His very self-consciously 'bricolage' approach is often frustrating, because there's no way to get a sense of historical change. But this helps explain why this book was so engaging, whereas 'Rebirth of a Nation' was such a dud. You can be a bricoleur when writing about modernism & advertising, because the field is so restricted. A bricoleur's history of America, on the other hand, is a pretty sure-fire disaster.
As a side note, I just discovered that there's a 'Bricoleur Capital Management' company. Weird.
That said, there are a few problems. His very self-consciously 'bricolage' approach is often frustrating, because there's no way to get a sense of historical change. But this helps explain why this book was so engaging, whereas 'Rebirth of a Nation' was such a dud. You can be a bricoleur when writing about modernism & advertising, because the field is so restricted. A bricoleur's history of America, on the other hand, is a pretty sure-fire disaster.
As a side note, I just discovered that there's a 'Bricoleur Capital Management' company. Weird.
January 15, 2018
Notes on the Typescript of "The Stabilization of Sorcery," a chapter from the book in manuscript form:
Lears begins with an introduction tot he American Middle Period which is quite intelligible. The period between 1800 and 1860 was one in which the household economy was effectively replaced by the market economy. Indeed, this was a frenetic period in which the emergent middle class was developing strategies of coping with the great uncertainty of Jacksonian laissez-faire. But we've hear that before.
What Lears adds to this picture is the equation of market forces with magic. The sorcery to which Lears refers is the sorcery of the market. This is productive of many illuminating connection which explain certain aspects of the ambiguous reaction displayed during this period toward the advance of the market. Sorcery has its fascination, but ultimately it must be contained least it become destructive.
First, Lears demonstrates that the speculative boom we saw in Rogan being set off by Jackson's appropriation of Indian land was viewed by many as a magical way of becoming rich. When the speculative boom went bust, the depression "revealed the childlike magical thinking of the typical investor" (p. 32).
Second, the magical qualities of money help explain the idea of the myth of the self-made man. Somehow if you will just apply yourself, counseled the era's success manuals, you will be a wealthy man. The obverse of the potential for wonderful success is that the ambiguity of the age results from the indeterminacy of money (p. 34). Who knew how much a given note was really worth? Success was often illusory, even magical.
Third, the magical qualities of the market are deeply rooted in the image of the peddler as purveyor of exotic goods. This leads to lingering suspicion of the market on the "frontier", with the peddler being associated in the folklore as perhaps a Yankee of especially a Jew. "The peddler was a wandering Jew with a pack on his back, promising a brief deliverance through the magical power of purchase" (pp. 42-3). The image of the peddler as a commercial seducer, particularly of women, helps explain why men often viewed the market as subversive of their authority. Keeping women inside a domestic sphere protected them from seduction, and perhaps preserved a last shred of the rapidly deteriorating paternalistic fabric of society (p. 47).
Fourth, the disorientation produced by the magical qualities of the marketplace gave rise to a suspicion of artifice, This suspicion helps explain the cult of mimesis which arose during the 1850s (p. 53). Everything from daguerreotypes to Victorian was permeated by a virtual obsession with getting the "Real McCoy". this helps explain the pictures of the enemy which developed during the years of immigration. Mimetic thinking leads to Nativism (p. 54).
Fifth, Lears helps in understanding Kerber. The idea of an alternate women's culture embodied in the discourse of domesticity is understandable is understandable as an attempt to contain the destabilizing magic of the marketplace. The sentimental idiom is understandable as a critique of the dominant culture (p. 59). Lears breathes life into the discussion of the issue of gender as a category of analysis.
Lears begins with an introduction tot he American Middle Period which is quite intelligible. The period between 1800 and 1860 was one in which the household economy was effectively replaced by the market economy. Indeed, this was a frenetic period in which the emergent middle class was developing strategies of coping with the great uncertainty of Jacksonian laissez-faire. But we've hear that before.
What Lears adds to this picture is the equation of market forces with magic. The sorcery to which Lears refers is the sorcery of the market. This is productive of many illuminating connection which explain certain aspects of the ambiguous reaction displayed during this period toward the advance of the market. Sorcery has its fascination, but ultimately it must be contained least it become destructive.
First, Lears demonstrates that the speculative boom we saw in Rogan being set off by Jackson's appropriation of Indian land was viewed by many as a magical way of becoming rich. When the speculative boom went bust, the depression "revealed the childlike magical thinking of the typical investor" (p. 32).
Second, the magical qualities of money help explain the idea of the myth of the self-made man. Somehow if you will just apply yourself, counseled the era's success manuals, you will be a wealthy man. The obverse of the potential for wonderful success is that the ambiguity of the age results from the indeterminacy of money (p. 34). Who knew how much a given note was really worth? Success was often illusory, even magical.
Third, the magical qualities of the market are deeply rooted in the image of the peddler as purveyor of exotic goods. This leads to lingering suspicion of the market on the "frontier", with the peddler being associated in the folklore as perhaps a Yankee of especially a Jew. "The peddler was a wandering Jew with a pack on his back, promising a brief deliverance through the magical power of purchase" (pp. 42-3). The image of the peddler as a commercial seducer, particularly of women, helps explain why men often viewed the market as subversive of their authority. Keeping women inside a domestic sphere protected them from seduction, and perhaps preserved a last shred of the rapidly deteriorating paternalistic fabric of society (p. 47).
Fourth, the disorientation produced by the magical qualities of the marketplace gave rise to a suspicion of artifice, This suspicion helps explain the cult of mimesis which arose during the 1850s (p. 53). Everything from daguerreotypes to Victorian was permeated by a virtual obsession with getting the "Real McCoy". this helps explain the pictures of the enemy which developed during the years of immigration. Mimetic thinking leads to Nativism (p. 54).
Fifth, Lears helps in understanding Kerber. The idea of an alternate women's culture embodied in the discourse of domesticity is understandable is understandable as an attempt to contain the destabilizing magic of the marketplace. The sentimental idiom is understandable as a critique of the dominant culture (p. 59). Lears breathes life into the discussion of the issue of gender as a category of analysis.
June 9, 2025
The true fable here is believing that Jackson Lears (an apparent buddy of Sontag) had a coherent enough mind to put together a legitimate advertising history. But this is not a work of history. It is more of a rambling academic randomly stitching together a bunch of heady riffs that don't really connect to the actual theme, much less the previous points. Lears just isn't a very clear thinker. He's a decent literary critic, particularly his interesting take on Gaddis's THE RECOGNITIONS. But he's the kind of muddled stuffed shirt who gives books like this a bad name. I've ordered other books on the history of advertising. I'm studying its history so i can better destroy it in my own way. Lears is hardly the kind of companion one needs on such a journey. He's too lost in the woods.
December 13, 2025
The topic of this book was interesting, and there are a lot of good things about it, but sometimes it went too deep into literary criticism and strayed too far from what the main focus of the book should have been. This is not a typical history of advertising, though it does use advertisements as primary sources, it also uses advertisements to explore other ideas and is sort of disorganized. A lot of the book could have been edited out. If you are interested in the history of capitalism and mass consumption, this is an interesting read, albeit a long and rambling one.
October 9, 2023
a careful history of advertising that falls short of being "masterful" only because it's overwhelmed by how much analysis lears crams into every chapter heading. it's not enough to merely present the material; oh no, it's always being contrasted, with this standing for this trend, this for a countervailing trend, etc. which is fine, but exhausting, and partly why this book took me three years to finish. great stuff, though, and many of the points will linger with me for years as i ruthlessly ransack it for my own work. it was also nice to see a fan's notes and the recognitions (two actual masterworks) getting thoroughly analyzed toward the end of fables of abundance (even if it seems like lears is just throwing stuff together by that point, given that he doesn't even wrap the entire affair with a formal conclusion); i'd be hard-pressed to think of two mid-century novels more advertising/marketing-themed than those two.
December 9, 2020
I read this for a grad school class I'm taking. I love this book. I learned so much about the roots of advertising and marketing. Most of it was news to me. It's extremely readable in its discussions on these weighty topics.
November 30, 2019
unclear but kind of interesting
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews