The Power of Fit

LAURA B. MCGRATH’S Middlemen: Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction is not the first book about literary agents, but it is the first to try to take their impact on American fiction seriously. That is, in part, because many agents like to downplay their role in the business of fiction, preferring to stand outside the spotlight where their handiwork can’t be seen. Critics and readers let them get away with it because agents represent the commercial, transactional side of literary fiction—the bit that reminds us that even the most high-art novel is still a commodity to be traded for money—and literary fiction is only sacred when such business is invisible.