Morris Dickstein (1940–2021)

I'll start off by saying that this wasn't this book I was expecting as I was looking for more of the experience of everyday life in the Great Depression. Upon reflection that would probably be labeled a social history, which is probably obvious to most people, but I thought it worth mentioning in case any potential reader is making the same mistake I did. The other thing I should note is that I listened to the audiobook and had a lot of trouble with the CDs so I probably did not hear the show more entire book, although I did hear the majority. With that said, the book is actually an exploration of culture created during the Great Depression - films, music, novels, poetry, fine arts and decorative arts - and how they were influenced by the social trends of the time and in turn their effect (or lack thereof) on society. The essays Dickstein writes are thorough and opinionated and often out of my league since they refer to things of which I have no prior knowledge. That being said I did enjoy his critique on artists and performers such as John Steinbeck, Zora Neale Hurston, Busby Berkley, Fred Astaire, Louis Armstrong, and Bing Crosby. Overall this book was not for me but I expect it would be a valuable resource for anyone looking for the light some cultural artifacts of the 1930s shine on the Great Depression. show less

Interesting that this was hailed as one of the best books of 2009. A good survey of the decade, but with those types of accolades, I expected more insight and analysis. Interesting read though.

This was a somewhat challenging read. , as the author is a literary critic and writes like one, using the terminology and processes of his trade. It was somewhat repetitive as he would revisit the same tropes again and again.

That said, the book is filled with lots of great insight, and I particularly enjoyed the sections on gangster films and screwball comedies.

Morris Dickstein has given us, in his own words, “a hybrid of cultural history and criticism.” of America in the sixties. My having lived through this period, I am struck by what Dickstein did not include. Two examples would be not a mention of Chaim Potok and not a mention of the vast assortment of rock singers and bands who were an integral part of Rock and Roll. His ongoing commentary about the old left and the new left, the work of Bob Dylan, obscure lesser writers, and the show more happenings at Columbia although important seems overblown, out of proportion and indulgent. Still, there is plenty of insight and lively commentary. One gets a sound feeling of how one particular critic lived and went about his business.

Quotes: (page 50) “Finally, the literature and politics of the period are one. There is no special 'key' to the sensibility of the age; almost anything works if we turn it right and press it hard. But the Jewish novel works especially well...But this anxiety is metaphysical and hermetic, closed in upon itself: the Bomb evokes despair rather than anger or opposition. The Jewish novel reflects this spirit and ministers to it, for it is literally overwrought---anguish hemmed in by form---offering finally the uneasy absolution of art for a torment whose origin it cannot know and whose course it cannot alter.”

(page 53) “The Organization Man of the fifties, like the con-man intellectual living off the foundations, knows that the old dreams and ideals are finished, that it's all a game, just as Mailer's hipster knows from Hemingway that 'in a bad world there is no love nor mercy nor charity nor justice unless a man can keep his courage...that what made him feel good became therfore The Good.'”

(page 155) “It was the Jews who first discovered how much of their identity and effective life they might have to surrender to the bland uniformity of the melting pot. If the growth of Jewish writing in the forties and fifties was connected to political quietism, the exhaustion of millennial hopes, as I argued earlier, it also had a more troublesome dimension.”

(page 214) “For evidence I've gone to the work of writers and artists who are the most sensitive reflectors of alternatives to consciousness, both in themselves and in the world around them. In their work, in its shifts in form and content, we perceive the deepest conjunction of private and public, the personal and the general.”

(page 239) “As Mary McCarthy puts it 'Language, unlike paint and sound, cannot slough off its primary function of saying something. When it tries,we simply stop listening. This is why large audiences can be attracted by every sort of non-objective art and 'concrete' music but so very few people will consent to turn pages from which no meaning emerges.'” show less