ABSTRACT
The bestsellers published in the period 1956-68 show a dramatic thematic shift: a rupture in the connection between individual success, personal happiness and social progress. In earlier period, success was in a sense self-justifying, because it was assumed to be both personally and socially rewarding. Now bestselling novelists critically examine its content and costs and justify success itself by other standards, primarily that of self-fulfillment. This chapter focuses on the understanding of success, and then describes the social and internal landscape that emerges in the wake of affluence and the trivialization of success. One of the most striking developments of this period is the almost complete disappearance of traditional stories of individual entrepreneurial success. Novels with historical settings add heterogeneity to the social universe of bestsellers. For example, in his novel The Source, James Michener traces the history of a Middle Eastern tel, eschewing a religious Darwinism that assumes Christianity's truth in triumph, and refusing to equate history with progress.
