Keith Gandal
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195338911
- eISBN:
- 9780199867127
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195338911.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory, American, 20th Century Literature
By the 1930s, the postmobilization tale of Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and Hemingway (the racist promiscuity plot) was already being subverted, while still being utilized. In Tropic of Cancer by Henry ...
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By the 1930s, the postmobilization tale of Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and Hemingway (the racist promiscuity plot) was already being subverted, while still being utilized. In Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, and The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West, there is still a central promiscuous Anglo woman; there are love relationships with ethnic Americans, and often with Jews; there are obsessed romantics; there are sometimes mentally deficient characters, and there are lovers who have special relationships with a promiscuous woman. But now the ethnic character is not scapegoated; the masculine soldierly ideal comes under attack; the figure of the charity girl is parodied, and the military is openly criticized, its concern over venereal disease mocked. The postmobilization novels of the thirties are no longer haunted by sexual liaisons between military figures and women — as were the twenties novels, as well as the 1917-1918 military authorities; rather, the figures of the prostitute and the charity girl are now fetishized, not romanticized or problematized.Less
By the 1930s, the postmobilization tale of Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and Hemingway (the racist promiscuity plot) was already being subverted, while still being utilized. In Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, and The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West, there is still a central promiscuous Anglo woman; there are love relationships with ethnic Americans, and often with Jews; there are obsessed romantics; there are sometimes mentally deficient characters, and there are lovers who have special relationships with a promiscuous woman. But now the ethnic character is not scapegoated; the masculine soldierly ideal comes under attack; the figure of the charity girl is parodied, and the military is openly criticized, its concern over venereal disease mocked. The postmobilization novels of the thirties are no longer haunted by sexual liaisons between military figures and women — as were the twenties novels, as well as the 1917-1918 military authorities; rather, the figures of the prostitute and the charity girl are now fetishized, not romanticized or problematized.
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846312120
- eISBN:
- 9781846315190
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846315190.014
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
The Hollywood novel emerged in 1912, on the heels of the rising Hollywood film industry. The Hollywood novel was a broad category that included romance, satire, and crime fiction, and revolved around ...
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The Hollywood novel emerged in 1912, on the heels of the rising Hollywood film industry. The Hollywood novel was a broad category that included romance, satire, and crime fiction, and revolved around a central theme, the ‘confusion of illusion and reality’. This chapter examines those Hollywood novels that appropriate or imitate the very representational techniques of the film medium they are describing, and shows how characters are drawn into the complex process of commodification within the Hollywood system. These novels include Harry Leon Wilson's Merton of the Movies (1922), Carl Van Vechten's Spider Boy (1928), and Elmer Rice's A Voyage to Purilia (1930).Less
The Hollywood novel emerged in 1912, on the heels of the rising Hollywood film industry. The Hollywood novel was a broad category that included romance, satire, and crime fiction, and revolved around a central theme, the ‘confusion of illusion and reality’. This chapter examines those Hollywood novels that appropriate or imitate the very representational techniques of the film medium they are describing, and shows how characters are drawn into the complex process of commodification within the Hollywood system. These novels include Harry Leon Wilson's Merton of the Movies (1922), Carl Van Vechten's Spider Boy (1928), and Elmer Rice's A Voyage to Purilia (1930).
Ritzenberg Aaron
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823245529
- eISBN:
- 9780823252558
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823245529.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
Chapter 4 argues that Nathanael West's surprising use of sentimental language in Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) typifies the ways that sentimental tropes have changed in the eighty-one years since Uncle ...
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Chapter 4 argues that Nathanael West's surprising use of sentimental language in Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) typifies the ways that sentimental tropes have changed in the eighty-one years since Uncle Tom's Cabin. West's work is important for the way that its language and form respond to a deep shift in the organization of daily life in the United States. West's unexpected use of a sentimental literary figuration becomes a gauge by which we can measure his response to a bureaucratized civilization that seems to be failing. The sentimental touch is not merely the moment when characters overcome a crisis of personal alienation; the sentimental touch becomes the moment when West both demonstrates and resists the social changes that have rendered moments of unmediated bodily expression so fragile and unlikely. The human touch seems to be lost in the world ruled by the manager, but might be gained in literature.Less
Chapter 4 argues that Nathanael West's surprising use of sentimental language in Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) typifies the ways that sentimental tropes have changed in the eighty-one years since Uncle Tom's Cabin. West's work is important for the way that its language and form respond to a deep shift in the organization of daily life in the United States. West's unexpected use of a sentimental literary figuration becomes a gauge by which we can measure his response to a bureaucratized civilization that seems to be failing. The sentimental touch is not merely the moment when characters overcome a crisis of personal alienation; the sentimental touch becomes the moment when West both demonstrates and resists the social changes that have rendered moments of unmediated bodily expression so fragile and unlikely. The human touch seems to be lost in the world ruled by the manager, but might be gained in literature.
Robin Blyn
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816678167
- eISBN:
- 9781452947853
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816678167.003.0004
- Subject:
- Art, Visual Culture
This chapter considers the novels of Nathanael West within the crucial context of a crisis in revolutionary philosophy specific to the United States. It discusses the notion of the Left’s recognition ...
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This chapter considers the novels of Nathanael West within the crucial context of a crisis in revolutionary philosophy specific to the United States. It discusses the notion of the Left’s recognition that a revolution of the proletariat in the United States was neither the inevitable result of the Great Depression nor hastened by the rise of fascism. It suggests that the left was forced to grapple with the problem of transforming the idea of liberal capitalism into a revolution. It argues that West’s novels are part of a larger conversation into a subject of revolution; highlights the novels A Cool Million and The Day of the Locust; and contends that they reject humanism altogether, thus making machines out of persons.Less
This chapter considers the novels of Nathanael West within the crucial context of a crisis in revolutionary philosophy specific to the United States. It discusses the notion of the Left’s recognition that a revolution of the proletariat in the United States was neither the inevitable result of the Great Depression nor hastened by the rise of fascism. It suggests that the left was forced to grapple with the problem of transforming the idea of liberal capitalism into a revolution. It argues that West’s novels are part of a larger conversation into a subject of revolution; highlights the novels A Cool Million and The Day of the Locust; and contends that they reject humanism altogether, thus making machines out of persons.
Justin Gautreau
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780190944551
- eISBN:
- 9780190944599
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190944551.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Reapproaching more canonical Hollywood novels in the context of three-color Technicolor and the Production Code, this chapter argues that Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust and Raymond Chandler’s ...
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Reapproaching more canonical Hollywood novels in the context of three-color Technicolor and the Production Code, this chapter argues that Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust and Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (both 1939) countered Technicolor treatments of Southern California in film, which had reified not only the industry’s sanitized façade but also boosterism’s whitewashed history. In opposition to the Technicolor Corporation’s persistent claims to realism, The Day of the Locust laments mass culture’s colonization of the senses, while The Big Sleep critiques the unreality of everyday life in a place built on a commodified past. West and Chandler depict a Hollywood landscape collapsing in on itself, becoming visually indistinguishable from a Technicolor film yet morally unrecognizable by the standards of the screen.Less
Reapproaching more canonical Hollywood novels in the context of three-color Technicolor and the Production Code, this chapter argues that Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust and Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (both 1939) countered Technicolor treatments of Southern California in film, which had reified not only the industry’s sanitized façade but also boosterism’s whitewashed history. In opposition to the Technicolor Corporation’s persistent claims to realism, The Day of the Locust laments mass culture’s colonization of the senses, while The Big Sleep critiques the unreality of everyday life in a place built on a commodified past. West and Chandler depict a Hollywood landscape collapsing in on itself, becoming visually indistinguishable from a Technicolor film yet morally unrecognizable by the standards of the screen.
Aaron Ritzenberg
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823245529
- eISBN:
- 9780823252558
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823245529.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
The Sentimental Touch investigates emotion in American literature during a period in which American culture became more and more impersonal. Between 1850 and 1940, with the rise of managerial ...
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The Sentimental Touch investigates emotion in American literature during a period in which American culture became more and more impersonal. Between 1850 and 1940, with the rise of managerial capitalism in the United States, the most powerful businesses were no longer family-owned, but became sprawling organizations controlled by complex bureaucracies. Rapid changes in the economy transformed U.S. culture: capitalism emerged as a massive ruling order whose hierarchical structures outlasted any human, and Americans became increasingly atomized and alienated. Sentimental literature—work written specifically to convey and inspire deep feeling—does not seem to fit with a swiftly bureaucratizing society. Yet sentimental language persisted in American literature, even as a culture of managed systems threatened to obscure the power of individual affect. The Sentimental Touch explores the strange, enduring power of sentimental language by focusing on one of the hallmark expressions of the sentimental novel: the human touch whose meaning surpasses all language. When characters make their deepest feelings visible through silent bodily contact, characters and readers alike imagine they are experiencing unmediated emotion. Analyzing novels by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Sherwood Anderson, and Nathanael West, this book demonstrates that sentimental tropes change but remain powerful, even in works by authors who self-consciously write against the sentimental tradition. Sentimental language has an afterlife, enduring in American literature long after authors and critics declared it dead, insisting that human feeling can resist a mechanizing culture, and embodying, paradoxically, the way that literary conventions themselves become mechanical and systematic.Less
The Sentimental Touch investigates emotion in American literature during a period in which American culture became more and more impersonal. Between 1850 and 1940, with the rise of managerial capitalism in the United States, the most powerful businesses were no longer family-owned, but became sprawling organizations controlled by complex bureaucracies. Rapid changes in the economy transformed U.S. culture: capitalism emerged as a massive ruling order whose hierarchical structures outlasted any human, and Americans became increasingly atomized and alienated. Sentimental literature—work written specifically to convey and inspire deep feeling—does not seem to fit with a swiftly bureaucratizing society. Yet sentimental language persisted in American literature, even as a culture of managed systems threatened to obscure the power of individual affect. The Sentimental Touch explores the strange, enduring power of sentimental language by focusing on one of the hallmark expressions of the sentimental novel: the human touch whose meaning surpasses all language. When characters make their deepest feelings visible through silent bodily contact, characters and readers alike imagine they are experiencing unmediated emotion. Analyzing novels by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Sherwood Anderson, and Nathanael West, this book demonstrates that sentimental tropes change but remain powerful, even in works by authors who self-consciously write against the sentimental tradition. Sentimental language has an afterlife, enduring in American literature long after authors and critics declared it dead, insisting that human feeling can resist a mechanizing culture, and embodying, paradoxically, the way that literary conventions themselves become mechanical and systematic.
Thomas J. Ferraro
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- December 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198863052
- eISBN:
- 9780191895586
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198863052.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
The coda to Transgression & Redemption considers how the knowledges, methods, and values of the book might contribute to further considerations of the American novel, with immediate emphasis on ...
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The coda to Transgression & Redemption considers how the knowledges, methods, and values of the book might contribute to further considerations of the American novel, with immediate emphasis on several canonical masterpieces of the 1930s, including William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust (1939); how, alternatively, the critical repertoire of this book might contribute to Hollywood scholarship beyond poststructuralist feminist critique, with emphasis split between the erotic-spiritual edginess of individual Criterion-canonized masterpieces (the not happily-ever-after: Casablanca, All About Eve, Blue Velvet) and the luminous achievement of “sexually ever after” in serial Hollywood films, featuring Bogey and Bacall, Katherine Hepburn and one of her men, or Myrna Loy and William Powell; and how, finally, the book’s critical reorientation can reveal the mythopoetic force of American popular music, beginning for illustration’s sake with the two greatest vocalists in that history, Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra, whose vocalized radiance, entailing bent notes and captured lyric, express obsessively the twin dimensions of incarnate passion, sex and sentiment. Or, as the two of them (sort of Catholics, Marian both) liked to put it, body and soul.Less
The coda to Transgression & Redemption considers how the knowledges, methods, and values of the book might contribute to further considerations of the American novel, with immediate emphasis on several canonical masterpieces of the 1930s, including William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust (1939); how, alternatively, the critical repertoire of this book might contribute to Hollywood scholarship beyond poststructuralist feminist critique, with emphasis split between the erotic-spiritual edginess of individual Criterion-canonized masterpieces (the not happily-ever-after: Casablanca, All About Eve, Blue Velvet) and the luminous achievement of “sexually ever after” in serial Hollywood films, featuring Bogey and Bacall, Katherine Hepburn and one of her men, or Myrna Loy and William Powell; and how, finally, the book’s critical reorientation can reveal the mythopoetic force of American popular music, beginning for illustration’s sake with the two greatest vocalists in that history, Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra, whose vocalized radiance, entailing bent notes and captured lyric, express obsessively the twin dimensions of incarnate passion, sex and sentiment. Or, as the two of them (sort of Catholics, Marian both) liked to put it, body and soul.
