Masscult And Midcult

Author : Dwight Macdonald
Publisher : New York Review of Books
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2011-10-11
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781590174685

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Masscult and Midcult by Dwight Macdonald Pdf

A New York Review Books Original An uncompromising contrarian, a passionate polemicist, a man of quick wit and wide learning, an anarchist, a pacifist, and a virtuoso of the slashing phrase, Dwight Macdonald was an indefatigable and indomitable critic of America’s susceptibility to well-meaning cultural fakery: all those estimable, eminent, prizewinning works of art that are said to be good and good for you and are not. He dubbed this phenomenon “Midcult” and he attacked it not only on aesthetic but on political grounds. Midcult rendered people complacent and compliant, secure in their common stupidity but neither happy nor free. This new selection of Macdonald’s finest essays, assembled by John Summers, the editor of The Baffler, reintroduces a remarkable American critic and writer. In the era of smart, sexy, and everything indie, Macdonald remains as pertinent and challenging as ever.

Author : Dwight Macdonald
Publisher : Da Capo Press, Incorporated
Page : 464 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 1983
Category : Social Science
ISBN : IND:30000048966042

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Against The American Grain by Dwight Macdonald Pdf

Author : Louis Menand
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2007-02-19
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780199774715

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Discovering Modernism by Louis Menand Pdf

When Discovering Modernism was first published, it shed new and welcome light on the birth of Modernism. This reissue of Menand's classic intellectual history of T.S. Eliot and the singular role he played in the rise of literary modernism features an updated Afterword by the author, as well as a detailed critical appraisal of the progression of Eliot's career as a poet and critic. The new Afterword was adapted from Menand's critically lauded essay on Eliot in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Volume Seven: Modernism and the New Criticism. Menand shows how Eliot's early views on literary value and authenticity, and his later repudiation of those views, reflect the profound changes regarding the understanding of literature and its significance that occurred in the early part of the twentieth century. It will prove an eye-opening study for readers with an interest in the writings of T.S. Eliot and other luminaries of the Modernist era.

Author : Dwight MacDonald
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 80 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2011-10-01
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1258106132

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Masscult and Midcult by Dwight MacDonald Pdf

An Inquiry Into American Popular Culture And The Role Of The Middlebrows In The Distortion Of Cultural Values.

Author : Jennifer Hecht
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 433 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2005-12-20
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780231502382

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The End of the Soul by Jennifer Hecht Pdf

On October 19, 1876 a group of leading French citizens, both men and women included, joined together to form an unusual group, The Society of Mutual Autopsy, with the aim of proving that souls do not exist. The idea was that, after death, they would dissect one another and (hopefully) show a direct relationship between brain shapes and sizes and the character, abilities and intelligence of individuals. This strange scientific pact, and indeed what we have come to think of as anthropology, which the group's members helped to develop, had its genesis in aggressive, evangelical atheism. With this group as its focus, The End of the Soul is a study of science and atheism in France in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It shows that anthropology grew in the context of an impassioned struggle between the forces of tradition, especially the Catholic faith, and those of a more freethinking modernism, and moreover that it became for many a secular religion. Among the adherents of this new faith discussed here are the novelist Emile Zola, the great statesman Leon Gambetta, the American birth control advocate Margaret Sanger, and Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Sherlock Holmes embodied the triumph of ratiocination over credulity. Boldly argued, full of colorful characters and often bizarre battles over science and faith, this book represents a major contribution to the history of science and European intellectual history.

Author : Scott Timberg
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2015-01-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780300195880

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Culture Crash by Scott Timberg Pdf

Argues that United States' creative class is fighting for survival and explains why this should matter to all Americans.

Author : Fiona Green
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2015-01-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780748682515

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Writing for The New Yorker: Critical Essays on an American Periodical by Fiona Green Pdf

Original critical essays on an iconic American periodical, providing new insights into twentieth-century literary culture This collection of newly commissioned critical essays reads across and between New Yorker departments, from sports writing to short stories, cartoons to reporters at large, poetry to annals of business. Attending to the relations between these kinds of writing and the magazine's visual and material constituents, the collection examines the distinctive ways in which imaginative writing has inhabited the 'prime real estate' of this enormously influential periodical. In bringing together a range of sharply angled analyses of particular authors, styles, columns, and pages, this book offers multiple perspectives on American writing and periodical culture at specific moments in twentieth-century history.

Author : MacDonald Harris
Publisher : ABRAMS
Page : 208 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2012-11-06
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781468303735

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The Balloonist by MacDonald Harris Pdf

The acclaimed novel of love, ambition, and Arctic adventure “told with fin de siecle elegance”—with an introduction by Philip Pullman (Kirkus Reviews). It is July 1897, at the northernmost reach of the inhabited world. Swedish inventor Gustav Crispin is determined to become the first person to set foot on the North Pole, and return, borne by hot air balloon. Making the expedition with two companions—an American journalist and a young, French-speaking adventurer—all three climb into the small wicker gondola and cuts the ropes. But as Gustav pursues his history-making ambition, and their flimsy balloon is battered by Arctic winds, his mind returns again and again to his fraught romance with the beautiful Luisa. Nominated for the National Book Award in 1977, The Balloonist was hailed by Mary Renault as a “tour de force.” The story of Gustav Crispin is “chilling and comic by turn . . . An unusual mixture of Arctic adventure and Parisian love story with philosophic overtones” (Kirkus Reviews).

Author : James Wood
Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
Page : 285 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2012-10-30
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9780374709068

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The Fun Stuff by James Wood Pdf

Following The Broken Estate, The Irresponsible Self, and How Fiction Works—books that established James Wood as the leading critic of his generation—The Fun Stuff confirms Wood's preeminence, not only as a discerning judge but also as an appreciator of the contemporary novel. In twenty-three passionate, sparkling dispatches—that range over such crucial writers as Thomas Hardy, Leon Tolstoy, Edmund Wilson, and Mikhail Lermontov—Wood offers a panoramic look at the modern novel. He effortlessly connects his encyclopedic, passionate understanding of the literary canon with an equally in-depth analysis of the most important authors writing today, including Cormac McCarthy, Lydia Davis, Aleksandar Hemon, and Michel Houellebecq. Included in The Fun Stuff are the title essay on Keith Moon and the lost joys of drumming—which was a finalist for last year's National Magazine Awards—as well as Wood's essay on George Orwell, which Christopher Hitchens selected for the Best American Essays 2010. The Fun Stuff is indispensable reading for anyone who cares about contemporary literature.

Author : Peter C. Whybrow
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 359 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2006-04-17
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780393348194

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American Mania: When More is Not Enough by Peter C. Whybrow Pdf

A doctor's bold analysis of the cultural disease that afflicts us all. Despite an astonishing appetite for life, more and more Americans are feeling overworked and dissatisfied. In the world's most affluent nation, epidemic rates of stress, anxiety, depression, obesity, and time urgency are now grudgingly accepted as part of everyday existence they signal the American Dream gone awry. Peter C. Whybrow, director of the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA, grounds the extraordinary achievements and excessive consumption of the American nation in an understanding of the biology of the brain's reward system offering for the first time a comprehensive and physical explanation for the addictive mania of consumerism. American Mania presents a clear and novel vantage point from which to understand the most pressing social issues of our time, while offering an informed approach to refocusing our pursuit of happiness. Drawing upon rich scientific case studies and colorful portraits, "this fascinating and important book will change the way you think about American life" (Karen Olson, Utne Reader).

Author : Louis Menand
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 176 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2010-01-18
Category : Education
ISBN : 9780393062755

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The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University (Issues of Our Time) by Louis Menand Pdf

Sparking a long-overdue debate about the future of American education, "The Marketplace of Ideas" examines traditional university institutions, assessing what is worth saving and what is not

Author : Natasha Joffe,Justine Roberts
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 417 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2012-01-01
Category : Family & Relationships
ISBN : 9781408822265

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Why Did Nobody Tell Me? by Natasha Joffe,Justine Roberts Pdf

WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME...... that the gurus don't always know best... that you don't have to 'get your figure back' six weeks after birth... that you don't need to worry about the other parents at the school gates... that it's okay to let them eat dirt... that you don't have to have a naughty stepAnd most importantly... that you should never buy a guinea pig?Drawn from the message boards of mumsnet.com and based on the assumption that if thousands of parents have found a piece of advice to be helpful then you can be pretty sure it's worth knowing, this book shapes that collective wisdom into dozens of dos and don'ts that will lead you through the minefield that is twenty-first-century parenting.

Author : Dwight Macdonald
Publisher : Ivan R. Dee Publisher
Page : 520 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : UOM:39015053116151

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A Moral Temper by Dwight Macdonald Pdf

Here in one volume is a comprehensive selection of letters from the correspondence of one of the most astute observers of American politics, society, and culture in the 20th century.

Author : Ernest Hemingway
Publisher : DigiCat
Page : 65 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2022-08-01
Category : Fiction
ISBN : EAN:8596547117650

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The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway Pdf

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Author : Craig Brown
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 385 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2013-08-20
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781451684513

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Hello Goodbye Hello by Craig Brown Pdf

A collection of whimsical true encounters between famous and infamous individuals describes the unlikely meetings of Marilyn Monroe with Frank Lloyd Wright, Michael Jackson with Nancy Reagan, and Sigmund Freud with Gustav Mahler.