Linking classic American literature to contemporary popular culture, Sublime Enjoyment argues that the rational systems of normal social life are motivated and sustained by "perverse" desires. This perversity arises from the failure of symbolic satisfaction—love, work, success—to make us happy, and from our refusal to accept that failure. Examining the ways in which this inadvertence is represented in American literature and culture, Dennis Foster identifies ways that longings are linked to social forces.