Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression

By Morris Dickstein

Book Overview

Now, in this timely and long-awaited cultural history, Morris Dickstein, whom Norman Mailer called "one of our best and most distinguished critics of American literature," explores the anxiety and hope, the despair and surprising optimism of a traumatized nation. Dickstein's fascination springs from his own childhood, from a father who feared a pink slip every Friday and from his own love of the more exuberant side of the era: zany screwball comedies, witty musicals, and the lubricious choreography of Busby Berkeley. Whether analyzing the influence of film, design, literature, theater, or music, Dickstein lyrically demonstrates how the arts were then so integral to the fabric of American society.

While any lover of American literature knows Fitzgerald and Steinbeck, Dickstein also reclaims the lives of other novelists whose work offers enduring insights. Nathanael West saw Los Angeles as a vast dream dump, a Sargasso Sea of tawdry longing that exposed the pinched and disappointed lives of ordinary people, while Erskine Caldwell, his books Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre festooned with lurid covers, provided the most graphic portrayal of rural destitution in the 1930s. Dickstein also immerses us in the visions of Zora Neale Hurston and Henry Roth, only later recognized for their literary masterpieces.

Just as Dickstein radically transforms our understanding of Depression literature, he explodes the prevailing myths that 1930s musicals and movies were merely escapist. Whether describing the undertone of sadness that lurks just below the surface of Cole Porter's bubbly world or stressing the darker side of Capra's wildly popular films, he shows how they delivered a catharsis of pain and an evangel of hope. Dickstein suggests that the tragic and comic worlds of Broadway and Hollywood preserved a radiance and energy that became a bastion against social suffering. Dancing in the Dark describes how FDR's administration recognized the critical role that the arts could play in enabling "the helpless to become hopeful, the victims to become agents." Along with the WPA, the photography unit of the FSA represented a historic partnership between government and art, and the photographers, among them Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, created the defining look of the period.

The symbolic end to this cultural flowering came finally with the New York World's Fair of 1939-40, a collective event that presented a vision of the future as a utopia of streamlined modernity and, at long last, consumer abundance. Retrieving the stories of an entire generation of performers and writers, Dancing in the Dark shows how a rich, panoramic culture both exposed and helped alleviate the national trauma. This luminous work is a monumental study of one of America's most remarkable artistic periods.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393072258
• ISBN13: 9780393072259
• Release Date: September 2009
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 598 Pages
• Weight: 2.23 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.6" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Comprehensive and compelling

Terrific cultural history, and an excellent synthesis of culture, politics, social history and economic history. For more on the economic history of the Great Depression I recommend: The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money The Great Crash 1929 The Pecora Report: The 1934 Report on the Practices of Stock Exchanges from the "Pecora Commission" The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008

A fascinating examination of the culture of the Depression

Readers searching for an in-depth, compelling examination of all aspects of the cultural history of the Depression can do no better than Professor Dickstein's first-rate study. In reviewing music, theater, architecture, literature, photography and film of this era, the author creates a backdrop that is at once informative and - more importantly - invites the reader to further explore for himself the riches of the era. From his wonderful overview of the films of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire; the writings of Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and so many more; the music of the Gershwins and Cole Porter..."Dancing" is a can't-put-it-down page-turner... one wished the book would never end. "Dancing" is highly recommended but, be warned: this introduction to Depression-era culture will make you want to explore more for yourself. A thoroughly rewarding, richly documented study.

As accessible as it is authoritative

I found "Dancing in the Dark" to be an embarrassment of riches. The elegance of its writing, the political and psychological sophistication that inform it, the depth and clarity of its argumentation, and the jaw-dropping breadth of source material at Morris Dickstein's command all combine to make this a magisterial work of cultural history. Dickstein accomplishes what all cultural historians attempt, but few manage, to bring off, creating a palpable sense of what it must have been like to live, think and feel during the period in question - here the era of the gravest U.S. crisis after the Civil War, the 1930s. With breathtaking erudition, Dickstein draws together insights from disciplines as diverse as literary criticism, film theory, art history, sociology and psychoanalysis, making connections among them that are unexpected but never facile or strained. And "Dancing in the Dark" gives the reader the best of both worlds, bringing together the rigor and careful documentation of the serious academician Dickstein is, with the galloping narrative verve associated with the best popular history writing. Whether you're a professional student of the Great Depression looking for sparkling insights or fresh information, or just a lover of a good, rich read, you'll be entranced by this deeply beautiful book.

One of America's top literary critics at his very best

If you're a fan of Morris Dickstein (and if you've read any of his books, you probably already are), you can look forward to another gem from this distinguished scholar, critic and author. A lifetime of complex but unpretentious wisdom, of lightly-worn learning, and love of human creativity yield a feast for the mind and spirit.

The Depression vs. The Arts, and Vice Versa

Over twenty years ago, Morris Dickstein began gathering reference material for _Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression_ (Norton). He did not realize at the time that his book would be coming out in the worst financial crisis since the Depression. It might be that our own crisis is being tamed, and if so, it will never be the subject of a book like this one, which details the cultural forces at work in America in the 1930s. Dickstein admits that it seems a daunting task: "How can one era have produced both Woody Guthrie and Rudy Vallee, both the Rockettes high-stepping at the Radio Center Music Hall and the Okies on their desperate trek toward the pastures of plenty in California?" I think he would admit that he hasn't been able to untangle all the artistic efforts and influences of the time, but he has made a big and inclusive book on an important theme. "My subject here," he tells us, "is at once concrete--the books, the films of an era: the stories they told, the fears and hopes they expressed--and yet intangible, the look, the mood, the feel of the historical moment." A reader comes away from this book with awe at how much has gotten included. Dickstein is very good at analyzing popular culture; when he considers films and songs, for instance, or popular novels, he scores one hit after another. Much of his book, however, has to do with novels that, well, few people read anymore. Dickstein has read them, and admired them, but literature has been the focus of his life of scholarship. Anyway, the books of the period are not as much fun as the songs or movies. He himself writes, "As serious writers began to emphasize the limitations and distortions of the American Dream, popular artists became obsessed with fantastic, even magical images of success." Dickstein rightly discusses most at length the work of Steinbeck, especially _The Grapes of Wrath_. Dickstein shows how the book was a sensation followed by a movie version that was far more faithful to its source novel than most Hollywood films were. F. Scott Fitzgerald everyone remembers for _The Great Gatsby_, but that was a 1920s story. Dickstein shows that Fitzgerald came into his own with his confessional "Crack-Up" essays of the next decade, and _Tender Is the Night_, works in which he "... tried to build a new career by exploring the ways in which he had been overextended, self-destructive, like America itself during the boom years." Dickstein's descriptions and analyses of movies are much more fun. After describing the Fascist films of Leni Riefenstahl, Dickstein compares her "appalling choreography of human masses" to that of Busby Berkeley. In _Gold Diggers of 1933_ Ginger Rogers may have opened by singing "We're in the Money", but the show closed with the phantasmagorical "Remember My Forgotten Man", about the veterans who were now neglected and destitute. The movies of the time are famous for their escapism, but Dickstein sees the situation dif