The Great Depression and the Culture of Abundance: Kenneth Fearing, Nathanael West, and Mass Culture in the 1930sThe Great Depression and the Culture of Abundance examines the response of American leftist writers of the 1930s to the rise of mass culture, and to the continued propagation of the values of consumerism during the Depression. Rita Barnard traces in the work of Kenneth Fearing and Nathanael West theoretical positions associated with the Frankfurt School (especially Walter Benjamin) and with contemporary theorists of postmodernism. As well as probing the relationship between literature and mass culture, the book offers a new reading of two of the most unjustifiably neglected literary figures of the 1930s. |
Other editions - View all
The Great Depression and the Culture of Abundance: Kenneth Fearing ... Rita Barnard No preview available - 2009 |
Common terms and phrases
Adorno American Dream American Rhapsody Arcades Project argued artistic Auden audience become billboard capitalist chapter cited comic strip commodities Communist consumer culture consumption contemporary Cool Million critical critique Culture as History culture industry culture of abundance Debord decade Depression describes dialectical discussion Eliot emergent essay example experience fact fantasy Fearing's Fearing's poems film forms Frankfurt school Fredric Jameson Guy Debord Hollywood Ibid idea ideological instance Jackson Lears Jameson Kenneth Fearing kind literary literature living Locust Lynd Marchand Marxist mass culture mass-mediated culture Mike Gold Miss Lonelyhearts modern movie narrative Nathanael West notion novel offers perhaps phrase poet poetic political Popular Culture postmodern present production proletarian radio reification revolutionary satire seems sense social spectacle story Storyteller style suggests Susman symbolic T. S. Eliot texts things thirties tion transformation University Press utopian voice Walter Benjamin wish worker World's Fair writing York