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“To be continued . . . Whether these words fall at a season-ending episode of Star Trek or a TV commercial flirtation between coffee-loving neighbors, true fans find them impossible to resist. Ever since the 1830s, when Charles Dickens’s Pickwick Papers enticed a mass market for fiction, the serial has been a popular means of snaring avid audiences. Jennifer Hayward establishes serial fiction as a distinct genre—one defined by the activities of its audience rather than by the formal qualities of the text. Ranging from installment novels, mysteries, and detective fiction of the 1800s to the television and movie series, comics, and advertisements of the twentieth century, serials are loosely linked by what may be called “family resemblances.These traits include intertwined subplots, diverse casts of characters, dramatic plot reversals, suspense, an such narrative devices as long-lost family members and evil twins. Hayward chooses four texts to represent the evolution of serial fiction as a genre and to analyze the peculiar draw that serials have upon their audiences: Dickens’s novel Our Mutual Friend, Milton Canif’s comic strip Terry and the Pirates, and the soap operas All My Children and One Life to Live. Hayward argues that serial audiences have developed active strategies of consumption, such as collaborative reading and attempts to shape the production process. In this way fans have forced serial producers to acknowledge the power of the audience.

"This remarkable study gives us, for the first time, the full story of serial fiction from the point of view of its audiences. By taking the long, historical view, Consuming Pleasures shows what we have missed in focussing on the local, short-term evolution of serial genres. Many of the cherished assumptions of genre criticism may need to be revised in light of this book's findings."—Andrew Ross, New York University

"An excellent and much-needed study. . . . an important contribution to the study of genre as an interaction between texts and their readers."—Choice

"Hayward's section on Dickens is of substantial importance to readers of Dickens."—Dickens Quarterly

"Hayward's work breaks new ground in discussing the serial text."—JASAT

"Hayward aims to establish common features of mass-market serials across historical eras and genres, and to counteract scholarly dismissal of mass culture forms like soap operas, by elucidating audiences' active roles. She succeeds in both aims."—Nineteenth-Century Literature

"Hayward's thesis is a provocative one . . . a strong case is made here for the value of studying popular fiction in all its forms."—Ohioana Quarterly

Publication Date

1997

Publisher

The University Press of Kentucky

Place of Publication

Lexington, KY

ISBN

9780813192826

eISBN

9780813149639

Keywords

TV serials, Serialized fiction, Serials

Disciplines

Film and Media Studies

Consuming Pleasures: Active Audiences and Serial Fictions from Dickens to Soap Opera
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