The ideal of sociability and full-fledged conversation is universal to humanity, but also unique to each culture. The American ideal, emerging (in the 18th-19th centuries) in the force field of market practices, political democracy, and the newborn system of mass communications, is close to the “bargaining” model. It presupposes competitive cooperation, mutually interested disagreement combines calculation and adventure, “the Eden of innate human rights” and the duel of egoistic wills, game and ritual. “The discourse of bargaining” - in psychological, rhetorical and aesthetic dimensions - is considered on the material of classical American autobiography (B .Franklin, D.Crocket, F.T.Barnum) and fiction (E.A.Poe, G.Melville, Mark Twain). A comparative dialogical analysis of Russian and American literary discourses allows us to characterize the peculiarities of implied themes and other ideals of communication. The literary tradition is being interpreted in a new way - as a continuing, continuous, correspondence “conversation” between writers and readers in the space of national culture.