247 records matched your query
04162aam a2200505 i 4500 001 E2B36CE208AF11E8917D353297128E48 003 SILO 005 20180203010014 008 170731s2018 nyua b 001 0 eng 010 $a 2017025027 020 $a 023116338X 020 $a 9780231163385 035 $a (OCoLC)987660079 040 $a DLC $b eng $e rda $c DLC $d OCLCO $d WZW $d JAI $d OCLCF $d YDX $d SILO 042 $a pcc 043 $a n-us--- 050 00 $a PS223 $b .H88 2018 082 00 $a 810.9/0052 $2 23 100 1 $a Hutchinson, George, $d 1953- $e author. 245 10 $a Facing the abyss : $b American literature and culture in the 1940s / $c George Hutchinson. 246 30 $a American literature and cultur.e in the 1940s 264 1 $a New York : $b Columbia University Press, $c [2018] 300 $a xvii, 439 pages : $b illustrations ; $c 24 cm 504 $a Includes bibliographical references and index. 505 0 $a Introduction -- When literature mattered -- Popular culture and the avant-garde -- Labor, politics, and the arts -- The war -- America! America! a Jewish renaissance? -- A rising wind: "literature of the Negro" and civil rights -- Queer horizons -- Women and power -- Culture and ecology -- Epilogue: one world. 520 $a "Mythologized as the era of the "good war" and the "Greatest Generation," the 1940s are frequently understood as a more heroic, uncomplicated time in American history. Yet just below the surface, a sense of dread, alienation, and the haunting specter of radical evil permeated American art and literature. Writers returned home from World War II and gave form to their disorienting experiences of violence and cruelty. They probed the darkness that the war opened up and confronted bigotry, existential guilt, ecological concerns, and fear about the nature and survival of the human race. In Facing the Abyss, George Hutchinson offers readings of individual works and the larger intellectual and cultural scene to reveal the 1940s as a period of profound and influential accomplishment. Facing the Abyss examines the relation of aesthetics to politics, the idea of universalism, and the connections among authors across racial, ethnic, and gender divisions. Modernist and avant-garde styles were absorbed into popular culture as writers and artists turned away from social realism to emphasize the process of artistic creation. Hutchinson explores a range of important writers, from Saul Bellow and Mary McCarthy to Richard Wright and James Baldwin. African American and Jewish novelists critiqued racism and anti-Semitism, women writers pushed back on the misogyny unleashed during the war, and authors such as Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams reflected a new openness in the depiction of homosexuality. The decade also witnessed an awakening of American environmental and ecological consciousness. Hutchinson argues that a common belief in art's ability to communicate the universal in particulars united the most important works of literature and art during the 1940s" -- $c Provided by publisher. 648 7 $a 1900-1999 $2 fast 650 0 $a American literature $y 20th century $x History and criticism. 650 0 $a Literature and society $z United States $x History $y 20th century. 650 0 $a Popular culture $z United States $x History $y 20th century. 650 7 $a American literature $2 fast $0 (OCoLC)fst00807113 650 7 $a Civilization $2 fast $0 (OCoLC)fst00862898 650 7 $a Literature and society $2 fast $0 (OCoLC)fst01000096 650 7 $a Popular culture $2 fast $0 (OCoLC)fst01071344 651 0 $a United States $x Civilization $y 20th century 651 7 $a United States $2 fast $0 (OCoLC)fst01204155 655 7 $a Criticism, interpretation, etc. $2 fast $0 (OCoLC)fst01411635 655 7 $a History. $2 fast $0 (OCoLC)fst01411628 776 08 $i Online version: $a Hutchinson, George, 1953- author. $t Facing the abyss $d New York : Columbia University Press, 2018 $z 9780231545969 941 $a 3 952 $l GAAX314 $d 20190523010021.0 952 $l OVUX522 $d 20181116054923.0 952 $l USUX851 $d 20180605013803.0 956 $a http://locator.silo.lib.ia.us/search.cgi?index_0=id&term_0=E2B36CE208AF11E8917D353297128E48 994 $a Z0 $b HL6Initiate Another SILO Locator Search