The Making of Middlebrow CultureUniv of North Carolina Press, 09.11.2000 - 438 Seiten The proliferation of book clubs, reading groups, "outline" volumes, and new forms of book reviewing in the first half of the twentieth century influenced the tastes and pastimes of millions of Americans. Joan Rubin here provides the first comprehensive analysis of this phenomenon, the rise of American middlebrow culture, and the values encompassed by it. Rubin centers her discussion on five important expressions of the middlebrow: the founding of the Book-of-the-Month Club; the beginnings of "great books" programs; the creation of the New York Herald Tribune's book-review section; the popularity of such works as Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy; and the emergence of literary radio programs. She also investigates the lives and expectations of the individuals who shaped these middlebrow institutions--such figures as Stuart Pratt Sherman, Irita Van Doren, Henry Seidel Canby, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, John Erskine, William Lyon Phelps, Alexander Woollcott, and Clifton Fadiman. Moreover, as she pursues the significance of these cultural intermediaries who connected elites and the masses by interpreting ideas to the public, Rubin forces a reconsideration of the boundary between high culture and popular sensibility. |
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Seite xii
... intellectual caliber , " highbrow " was , in the 1880s , already synonymous with " refined " ; twenty years later , " low- brow " came to denote a lack of cultivation . Shortly thereafter , as is well known , Van Wyck Brooks ...
... intellectual caliber , " highbrow " was , in the 1880s , already synonymous with " refined " ; twenty years later , " low- brow " came to denote a lack of cultivation . Shortly thereafter , as is well known , Van Wyck Brooks ...
Seite xiv
... intellectual satire : his highbrows wished that " all middlebrows , presumably , would have their televisions taken away , be suspended from society until they had agreed to give up their subscriptions to the Book - of - the - Month ...
... intellectual satire : his highbrows wished that " all middlebrows , presumably , would have their televisions taken away , be suspended from society until they had agreed to give up their subscriptions to the Book - of - the - Month ...
Seite xv
... intellectuals such as the coterie clustered around the Partisan Review , they have concentrated on the development of amusement parks , the movies , the sporting scene , and other varieties of mass entertainment . Like their colleagues ...
... intellectuals such as the coterie clustered around the Partisan Review , they have concentrated on the development of amusement parks , the movies , the sporting scene , and other varieties of mass entertainment . Like their colleagues ...
Seite xvii
... intellectuals struck fatal blows against the Vic- torian faith in optimism , morality , and progress . The United States after those years , May concluded , was a fundamentally different civili- zation from the one that had preceded it ...
... intellectuals struck fatal blows against the Vic- torian faith in optimism , morality , and progress . The United States after those years , May concluded , was a fundamentally different civili- zation from the one that had preceded it ...
Seite xx
... intellectuals also dedicated themselves to fostering a widely shared aesthetic sensitivity . I have tried to recover those attitudes and thus to expand the meaning of " genteel tradition " beyond the associa- tions Brooks and Santayana ...
... intellectuals also dedicated themselves to fostering a widely shared aesthetic sensitivity . I have tried to recover those attitudes and thus to expand the meaning of " genteel tradition " beyond the associa- tions Brooks and Santayana ...
Inhalt
1 | |
Stuart Pratt Sherman Irita Van Doren and Books | 34 |
The Early History of the BookoftheMonth Club | 93 |
John Erskine and Great Books | 148 |
illustrations | 199 |
Will Durant and the Vogue of the Outline | 209 |
Book Programs on Commercial Radio | 266 |
Notes | 331 |
Bibliography | 373 |
Index | 405 |
Permissions | 415 |
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Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen
Adler advertising aesthetic Alexander Woollcott American appeared Arnold Arnoldian audience authority Autobiography Babbitt Book Review Book-of-the-Month Club broadcast Broun Canby Canby's Canfield character civilization classics Clifton Fadiman club's COHC College critics democratic Dewey Dorothy Canfield Fisher Durant's early editor effort Eliot Emerson Erskine Papers Erskine's essay example experience Fadiman Fisher Folder genteel tradition Haldeman-Julius Helen Helen Rogers Reid Henry Seidel Canby Herald Tribune human Ibid idea ideal intellectual Irita Van Doren James John Erskine Lazarsfeld lecture Letters Library Lincoln Schuster listeners literary Loon Loon's Mark Van Doren Max Lincoln ment middlebrow modern moral Morley NBC Records Norton novel outline personality Phelps Phelps's political popular publishers quiz Radio readers reading Review of Literature role Saturday Review selection sense Sept Sherman Similarly Simon and Schuster social Story of Philosophy tion Weekly Wells's William William Lyon Phelps Woodberry Woodberry's Woollcott writers wrote Yale