Today we are obsessed with the networks electronic media have enabled, and what things like crowdsourcing do for economic innovation and democratic deliberation. In this lively, learned, and engaging book, Stacey Margolis is here to tell us that our interest isn’t new, and that these phenomena have never depended on media technologies. Margolis notes that writers in the early nation discovered that fiction was an ideal format for exploring and theorizing the new world of democratic public opinion. In that form, they offered a “series of thought experiments on the new democratic reality” (20). In short stories and novels, early national writers could trace “political influence as it moves through invisible networks of friends, acquaintances and strangers” (1). As such, they offer “investigations into the basic principles and mechanisms of mass democracy” (21). They diagram “the complex geometry of social influence,” offering “a more complex picture of the democratic public sphere than we have seen of late, one that provides not a model of political action to which we should aspire, but an analysis of the intricacy and complexity of social change that is surprisingly relevant to the digital age” (21, 2). What Margolis discovers in the fiction that she studies leads her to contest and refine some of the most durable recent theories of the public sphere and counterpublics, of deliberative and radical democracy. Despite their differences, Margolis argues, these recent theories unite in their shared “conviction that democracy both depends on and fosters the individual voice, the freedom to argue, persuade, and join others in enacting visions of justice” (6). Margolis discovers (a discovery reflected in her cover) something a little darker and less optimistic, leading her to “reject this romance of participation and idealization of the individual voice in favor of a kind of democratic realism” (6). The “central insight” of the fictions she studies teaches that “explicit political expression—moments when ‘the people’ speak (either collectively in crowds and petitions or through debate on matters of public interest)—comprises only a small fraction of democratic practice” (7). Of far greater import are the “less visible, less directed, and far less dramatic modes of politically consequential communication” like gossip, hearsay, and complaint (7). And these far less dramatic modes of communication in essence moot the putative revolutionary impact of new modes of communication. The fictions Margolis examines—by Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Harriet Jacobs, Fanny Fern, and James Fenimore Cooper—“attempt to think about the problem of modernity without thinking about the modern technologies that made new forms of connection across time and space possible—such developments as the radical expansion of the national postal service, the railroad, and the telegraph.” Indeed, “if the early nineteenth century witnessed a ‘communications revolution,’ you would never know it from these meditations on the power of everyday speech” (9). Instead, writers hone in on “the kind of informal, uncoordinated talk that could produce disproportionate social effects”—like financial panics and unfair verdicts: public opinion. As Margolis summarizes:

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斯泰西·马戈利斯 (Stacey Margolis) 的十九世纪美国大众民主小说

今天，我们沉迷于电子媒体所支持的网络，以及众包之类的东西对经济创新和民主协商的作用。在这本生动、博学且引人入胜的书中，Stacey Margolis 在这里告诉我们，我们的兴趣并不新鲜，而且这些现象从未依赖于媒体技术。马戈利斯指出，早期国家的作家发现小说是探索和理论化民主舆论新世界的理想形式。以这种形式，他们提供了“关于新民主现实的一系列思想实验”（20）。在短篇小说和小说中，早期的民族作家可以追踪“政治影响，因为它通过朋友、熟人和陌生人的隐形网络移动”（1）。因此，他们提供“对大众民主的基本原则和机制的调查”（21）。他们描绘了“社会影响的复杂几何学”，提供了“比我们最近看到的更复杂的民主公共领域图景，它提供的不是我们应该追求的政治行动模型，而是对错综复杂的分析。以及与数字时代惊人相关的社会变革的复杂性”（21, 2）。马戈利斯在她研究的小说中发现的东西使她对一些最近最持久的关于公共领域和反公众、协商和激进民主的理论进行了质疑和完善。马戈利斯认为，尽管存在差异，但这些最近的理论在他们共同的“信念中统一起来，即民主既取决于并促进个人的声音、争论、说服、并与其他人一起制定正义的愿景”（6）。Margolis 发现（反映在她的封面上的发现）一些更阴暗和不那么乐观的东西，导致她“拒绝这种参与的浪漫和个人声音的理想化，转而支持一种民主现实主义”（6）。她研究的小说的“核心洞察力”教导说，“明确的政治表达——‘人民’说话的时刻（无论是在人群和请愿中，还是通过对公共利益问题的辩论）——只包含民主实践的一小部分” (7). 更重要的是“不那么明显、不那么直接、也不那么戏剧化的政治后果传播模式”，如八卦、传闻和抱怨 (7)。而这些远没有那么戏剧化的传播模式实质上与新传播模式的假定革命性影响无关。马戈利斯考察的小说——查尔斯·布罗克登·布朗、埃德加·爱伦·坡、纳撒尼尔·霍桑、赫尔曼·梅尔维尔、哈丽特·雅各布斯、范妮·芬和詹姆斯·费尼莫尔·库珀——“试图思考现代性问题，而不考虑创造新形式的现代技术跨越时间和空间的联系成为可能——例如国家邮政服务、铁路和电报的急剧扩张。” 事实上，“如果 19 世纪早期见证了一场‘通信革命’，那么你永远不会从这些对日常言语力量的思考中了解到这一点”（9）。相反，作家们专注于“那种非正式的，不协调的谈话可能会产生不成比例的社会影响”——比如金融恐慌和不公平的判决：公众舆论。正如马戈利斯总结的那样：