Reading America

Citizenship, Democracy, and Cold War Literature

Häftad, Engelska, 2016

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During the Cold War, the editor of Time magazine declared, ""A good citizen is a good reader."" As postwar euphoria faded, a wide variety of Americans turned to reading to understand their place in the changing world. Yet, what did it mean to be a good reader? And how did reading make you a good citizen?In Reading America, Kristin L. Matthews puts into conversation a range of political, educational, popular, and touchstone literary texts to demonstrate how Americans from across the political spectrum - including ""great works"" proponents, New Critics, civil rights leaders, postmodern theorists, neoconservatives, and multiculturalists - celebrated particular texts and advocated particular interpretive methods as they worked to make their vision of ""America"" a reality. She situates the fiction of J. D. Salinger, Ralph Ellison, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, and Maxine Hong Kingston within these debates, illustrating how Cold War literature was not just an object of but also a vested participant in postwar efforts to define good reading and citizenship.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2016-11-30
Mått154 x 233 x 15 mm
Vikt350 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
SerieStudies in Print Culture and the History of the Book
Antal sidor288
FörlagUniversity of Massachusetts Press
ISBN9781625342355

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Litteraturvetenskap inom Skonlitteratur

Reading America is a pioneering addition to Cold War literary and cultural studies. For those working in this field, what is perhaps most revelatory about Matthews’s book is how she demonstrates the elasticity of the idea of the “cold war”—she calls the term “simultaneously historical, political, ideological, and romantic” (4)—while still being highly specific when it comes to how this layered concept might have meaning for literature and culture. We often think we know what “political” means—or “aesthetic” or “interpretation”—but by foregrounding Cold War reading as such, Matthews asks us to reconsider our presumptive definitions in light of historical particularities, which in turns demands that we see the era itself anew." — ALH Online Review, XIX.1