โ Scribed by David Cochran
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
In America Noir David Cochran details how ten writers and filmmakers challenged the social pieties prevalent during the Cold War, such as the superiority of the American democracy, the benevolence of free enterprise, and the sanctity of the suburban family. Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone featured victims of vast, faceless, bureaucratic powers. Jim Thompson's noir thrillers, such as The Grifters , portrayed the ravages of capitalism on those at the bottom of the social ladder. Patricia Highsmith, in The Talented Mr. Ripley , placed an amoral con man in an international setting, implicitly questioning America's fitness as leader of the free world. Charles Willeford's pulp novels, such as Wild Wives and Woman Chaser , depicted the family as a hotbed of violence and chaos.
These artists pioneered a detached, ironic sensibility that radically juxtaposed cultural references and blurred the distinctions between "high" and "low" art. Their...
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
In *The Program Era,* Mark McGurl offers a fundamental reinterpretation of postwar American fiction, asserting that it can be properly understood only in relation to the rise of mass higher education and the creative writing program. McGurl asks both how the patronage of the university has reorganiz
For Tributes, Conjunctions invited a number of contemporary writers to pay homage to American literary masters who made something possible for them--whether that was the act of writing itself, writing a certain book, writing in a particular manner, or living in a way that was consonant with the act
A brilliant, ambitious, insightful inquiry into the art of writing from the legendary Margaret Atwood. What do we mean when we say that someone is a writer? Is he or she an entertainer? A high priest of the god of Art? An improver of readers' minds and morals? Looking back on her own childhood
A brilliant, ambitious, insightful inquiry into the art of writing from the legendary Margaret Atwood. What do we mean when we say that someone is a writer? Is he or she an entertainer? A high priest of the god of Art? An improver of readers' minds and morals? Looking back on her own childhood