How do novels that literally discuss invention and inventors engage through such discussions an array of critically important conversations and issues beyond invention And to where and how can we trace and follow such discourses In Where the World Is Not Cultural Authority and Democratic Desire in Modern American Literature Kim Savelson examines the ways in which resoundingly popular U.S. novels by Frank Norris Willa Cather F.ampampnbspScott Fitzgerald and Ralph Ellison host the tugofwar between thought and action between the democratic agenda of the pragmatist movement and the aristocratic idea of aesthetics. Savelson argues for and reads these novels as a way of thinking through the implications for the meaning and making of culture brought about by the ongoing social revolution of democratic modernity. She thus expands the scope of the current work being done on pragmatism as well as the work being done on literature and democracy carving out an intersection of these two fields. ampampnbsp Savelson demonstrates that the questions under her consideration appeared at different key moments over the course of the first half of the twentieth century embodying and deepening the struggle between the abstract and the practical the cultural and the commerciala struggle that turned into a dilemma and a period of growth for modern democratic desire. In so doing she offers a historical recontextualization of selected literary texts analyzing them as a way of thinking about intellectual history with subtlety and particularity. ampampnbsp ampampnbsp