Reviews: 7

From Charlie Chaplin's ironic and playful attacks on political and social hierarchies, to the pop art of the Independent Group and its ambivalence towards the modernity its members at once celebrated and detested, from the hot desert nights full of cars Tom Wolfe so enjoyed to the sociologist H...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of American studies 2013-05, Vol.47 (2)
Main Author: O'HARA, GLEN
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund (1903-1969)
American literature
British & Irish literature
Chaplin, Charlie (1889-1977)
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns) (1888-1965)
McLuhan, Herbert Marshall (1911-1980)
Sontag, Susan (1933-2004)
Wolfe, Tom
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:From Charlie Chaplin's ironic and playful attacks on political and social hierarchies, to the pop art of the Independent Group and its ambivalence towards the modernity its members at once celebrated and detested, from the hot desert nights full of cars Tom Wolfe so enjoyed to the sociologist Herbert Gans's view of cultural identities as a form of capital in themselves: the cacophony and the vitality of intellectual life in the English-speaking Atlantic is here laid bare. The index and the footnotes are very helpful, critical in such a wide-ranging book; the subheadings identify each author or group of authors in turn. Other histories of the literary world's engagement with the public sphere - Jonathan Rose's recent The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes comes to mind - have paid attention to grassroots views of academic writing concerning mass culture.
ISSN:0021-8758
1469-5154
DOI:10.1017/S0021875813000546