Book excerpt: "The Ordeal of Warwick Deeping seeks to demonstrate that the way cultural hierarchies are established shapes the nature of the products generated. Although commentators on mass culture have stressed the homogenous identity of popular texts, the mechanical nature of their production and the passivity of their consumers, Deeping's novels imply that readers are aware of and resistant to such characterizations. Q. D. Leavis identified this resistance, but she and other self-appointed members of the cultural elite failed to recognize that the "game" of drawing cultural distinctions blunted the exercise of the very quality on which the self-appointed. umpires based their claim to cultural superiority-moral intelligence and discrimination."--BOOK JACKET.