In the 1950s in the West, literacy was near universal and more books were published than at any time in history up to that point. In the United States and elsewhere, there were more college graduates than ever before. At universities, the formal study of modern literature grew rapidly; Nabokov taught modernist fiction at Cornell; many other colleges would hire professors in this field as modern literature became a legitimate object of academic study. Outside the academy, well-funded and well-stocked libraries were present in every community; bookstores were widespread. Paperback publishing was no longer a limited, rather tawdry aspect of book production, responsible for the type of reading material “whose covers bear either pictures of young women in underclothes or pictures of men in the act of shooting one another with pistols,” as Faulkner expressed it in Light in August (Novels 1930–1935 479–80). There was a transformation in the quality of the titles printed, in the new, strong ties to mainstream publishing, and in the widespread distribution of the books (Luey 274–76). Sales rose dramatically: in 1947, 95 million paperbacks were sold; in 1952, sales reached 270 million.

A new suburban literary culture became entrenched, one that welcomed effective guides to help readers sort through the mass of volumes being printed. One of the distinguishing features of this culture was the mail order book club, an important component in petit bourgeois Bildung. As Molly Travis explains, “The emergence of the twentiethcentury middlebrow book club signaled a transition from production to consumption in America. Culture and practical knowledge were conflated so that culture became news. A reader of the reports written by the Book-of-the-Month Club’s selection committee gained advance knowledge of the books before publication.