The American Dream and the Popular NovelRoutledge, 23.10.2017 - 256 Seiten This title, originally published in 1985, examines conceptions of success and the good life expressed in bestselling novels – ranging from historical sagas and spy thrillers to more serious works by Updike, Bellows, Steinbeck and Mailer – published from 1945 to 1975. Using these popular books as cultural evidence, Elizabeth Long argues that the meaning of the American dream has changed dramatically, but in a more complex fashion than has been recognised by that country’s most prominent social critics. Her study presents a challenge to prevailing social-scientific views of contemporary American culture, and represents, both in theory and method, an important contribution to the study of culture and social criticism. |
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... leisure; and the vast migration to the suburbs - all challenged older values of entrepreneurial independence, thrift and self-discipline, and cast doubt on the old equation between material and social advance. These structural changes ...
... leisure are seen as conflicting priorities. Later still, there is a significant shift from concern with occupational success to the personal rewards it brings. At this point, as heroes venture into the wilderness of 'success as self ...
... leisure had been drastically transformed from the era of the expanding frontier and the small enterprise. As I detail in Chapter 6, David Riesman, William H. Whyte, and C. Wright Mills, social critics of the 1950s, feared that the ...
... leisure, but no relief from the pressures of conformity, in their analysis, since they thought that people's old values and traditions had disappeared, leaving only a 'lonely crowd' of isolated individuals who had no defenses against ...
... leisure - may indeed permit individuals to invoke a wider range of personal and social metaphors for their lives than has heretofore been the case. It must be clear by now that the systematic examination of popular novels challenges ...
Inhalt
from entrepreneurial adventure | |
the varieties of selffulfillment | |
the failure of success | |
The social critics | |
Conclusion | |
Notes | |
Bibliography | |
Index | |