Living Up to the Ads

“Living up to the Ads is an informative analysis . . . . [T]he book displays an entirely realistic approach t. . . . [C]onvincing insights into gender roles toward a stronger engagement with the ad-world’s actual media, visual or otherwise.” - Janet Ward , Modernism/Modernity

“Davis’s essays are arranged like a well-wrought ‘string of pearls,’ each chapter a complex study of literary, cultural, and advertising signifiers—and their interplay. Writing with erudition and imagination, Davis pens memorable tropes. . . .” - Marsha Cassidy , symploke

"[C]hallenging and ambitious. . . .[Davis's] work exemplifies today's cultural studies at its best. . . . In what is surely the most sophisticated,thorough, and sympathetic reading of Save Me the Waltz to date,Davis insists that Fitzgerald self-consciously brought the tenets of surrealism to bear on the plight of the all-American girl condemned to live the dream-like life of a vehicle while yearning to produce something transcendental." - Michael Nowlin , Studies in the Novel

"[T]he chapter in which Davis reads . . . agency archives, as well as the manuals and memoirs of Dorothy Dignam, Helen Woodward, Ruth Waldo, and Christine Frederick, co-founder of the League of Advertising Women . . . is rich and illuminating. . . . These figures simultaneously speak as women and analysts of women, as females and professionals, as feminine and masculine. That is, they walk the same tightrope negotiated by women in journalism, publishing, public relations, and filmmaking."
- Linda Steiner , Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

"The Jazz Age coincided with the dawn of the Age of Advertising and Simone Weil Davis's study of the intersection between commerce and culture provides a provocative look at the results of that phenomenon." - Gretchen A. Adams , Journal of Women's History

“A strikingly thoughtful study of a crucible period in American cultural and literary history. Bristling with intelligence, highly engaged, and critically informed, Living Up to the Ads investigates the shifting nature of selfhood as commodity capitalism and public relations converge on the subject.” - Jennifer Wicke, author of Advertising Fictions: Literature, Advertisement, and Social Reading

“A very stimulating book. Davis explores the complexity of the relations between advertising and personal identity, and between advertising and literature, with a lively, sharp, idiosyncratic style.” - Rachel Bowlby, author of Shopping with Freud

“Davis offers a new and provocative perspective on a cultural shift that, even in the 1920s, was marked as much by its subtle presence in fiction as it was by its heavy-handed presence in print media. This book will contribute a great deal to interdisciplinary studies of commodity culture.” - Jennifer Scanlon, author of Inarticulate Longings: “The Ladies’ Home Journal,” Gender, and the Promises of Consumer Culture