The Cultural Front

The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century

Author: Michael Denning
ISBN: 1859841708

"The cultural front," James T. Farrell once wrote, was made up of "commercial writers, high-priced Hollywood scenarists, a motley assortment of mystery-plot mechanics, humorists, newspaper columnists, stripteasers, band leaders, glamour girls, actors, press agents, Broadway producers, aging wives with thwarted literary ambitions, and other such ornaments of American culture." The cultural front, that extraordinary upsurge of cultural activity and theory in America, was born in the Great Depression as communists sought to organize cultural workers against Fascism and crisis-ridden capitalism. Spawned by the Popular Front of the Communist Party, the cultural front grew to encompass virtually every aspect of high and popular art in the US during the 1930s and beyond. Thoroughly infused with a radically popular and oppositional mentality, the cultural front informed one of the most culturally exciting and rich periods in American history -- a veritable "Second American Renaissance," in the

Publisher: Verso
Publish Date: 1998

Subjects: History / Social History, Social Science / Sociology / General

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