Beyond the Gray Flannel Suit: Books from the 1950s that Made American Culture

(Paperback)

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This examination and celebration of the literature and thought of the 1950s throws the enduring works of a golden era into high relief. An unconventional tour of a crucial period in 20th-century culture, the present book avoids sweeping surveys and gets to the heart of major achievement.

After the great renaissance of the 1920s and early 1930s, American modernism seemed to be stalled, to be awaiting another burst of talent. The post-World War II period provided that new energy and genius, with book after book that broke through the ordinary realistic atmosphere of bestseller lists, and offered experimentation, arresting content, and transformation of old literary forms.

In short, from the late 1940s through the JFK years, America was the home office of literary innovation. Writers forged new styles with the rapidly changing times, and generated new ideas that fit the challenges of late modernity.

Beyond the Gray Flannel Suit shows how particular landmark books took on the hot-button subjects of the 1950srace and religious difference; social class and the suburbs; the youth culture; rebellion, conformity, and groupthink; the telling conflicts over taste and judgmentand how, in the process, whether we realize it or not, this body of super-charged literature shaped today's American culture.

Reviews

"Castronovo writes with an easy confidence that makes his journey to the heart of the 1950s both enlightening and engaging. His prose style has the light touch of the literary journalist, together with the breadth and discrimination of the scholar. In this respect he reminds us of his master - Edmund Wilson, on whom he is an authority....Make no mistake, Beyond the Gray Flannel Suit is a keenly observed and exhilarating work." -- America
"The 1950s were as important to American literature as the mid-nineteenth century and the jazz-age 1920s Castronovo contends...Top-drawer literary-cultural criticism." - Booklist -- Booklist
"The writing is scholarly yet accessible to the educated lay reader. Recommended for public and academic libraries." - Library Journal -- Library Journal
"Castronovo is an astute, blunt, erudite critic; he is enthusiastic, not jargonistic, and manages to make many of the classic books of the 1950s - the ones most English majors know - seem relevant and fresh." - The Weekly Standard -- Weekly Standard
"Professor Castronovo contends in his marvelous book Beyond the Gray Flannel Suit subtitled Books from the 1950's that Made American Culture that the fifties were a lot more than the contemporary perception.... By God, he's right on." -www.warrenadler.com, 3/14/05 (About Warren Adler: Mr. Adler is the world famous author of 27 novels including The War of the Roses and Random Hearts, as well as short story collections such as The Sunset Gang)
"...the evaluation of the classics is judicious and very well written...[Castronovo] is fresh and interesting... Although more designed for the general reader than the specialist, the book offers a timely reminder of the enormous variety of American fiction in a period before the media set the national agenda. Above all, Castronovo made me want to reread most of them."- Judie Newman, MLR Vol. 101.4, 2006
"It is an era-defining, catchall book... it is exhilarating to read a critic so self-assured in his likes and in his studied disapprovals... We have the sweep and accessible prose style without being bogged down by an apparatus."- Steven Belletto, Contemporary Literature, Vol. 48 No. 1 -- Contemporary Literature
"David Castronovo's notable book takes on a formidable task for its relatively slim size.In a little over two hundred pages, Beyond the Gray Flannel Suit undertakes as voxed in the introduction, to survey America's literary standouts from the fifties and to explain their long-range value for readers in the twenty-first century.'Castronovo delivers much more than this promise...A read-through invigorates the reader to speculate and formulate critical assessments about the greatness of these and other novels, particularly about how they evoke an era and still speak to our current one.Any graduate or undergraduate would benefit from a perusal of Beyond the Gray Flannel Suit." -Studies in the Novel, Vol. 39 number 3

Author Bio

David Castronovo was the acclaimed author of Edmund Wilson, Beyond the Gray Flannel Suit, Critic in Love, The English Gentleman and many others.