Mystic Chords of Memory
The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Mystic Chords of Memory
"Illustrated with hundreds of well-chosen anecdotes and minute observations . . . Kammen is a demon researcher who seems to have mined his nuggets from the entire corpus of American cultural history . . . insightful and sardonic."
—Washington Post Book World
In this ground-breaking, panoramic work of American cultural history, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Machine That Would Go of Itself examines a central paradox of our national identity How did "the land of the future" acquire a past? And to what extent has our collective memory of that past—as embodied in our traditions—have been distorted, or even manufactured? Ranging from John Adams to Ronald Reagan, from the origins of Independence Day celebrations to the controversies surrounding the Vietnam War Memorial, from the Daughters of the American Revolution to immigrant associations, and filled with incisive analyses of such phenonema as Americana and its collectors, "historic" villages and Disneyland, Mystic Chords of Memory is a brilliant, immensely readable, and enormously important book.
"Fascinating . . . a subtle and teeming narrative . . . masterly." —Time
"This is a big, ambitious book, and Kammen pulls it off admirably. . . . [He] brings a prodigious mind and much scholarly rigor to his task . . . an importnat book—and a revealing look at how Americans look at themselves."
—Milwaukee Journal
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1942, during the intermission in a Metropolitan Opera broadcast performance, Walt Disney commented that "Dopey is as well qualified as I am to discuss culture in America," adding that even the word "culture" had "an un-American connotation... as if it thought it was better than the next fellow." In Kammen's view, Disney's rejection of the elite connotations of "culture" is emblematic of conflicted U.S. attitudes--since the formation of the Republic, and particularly in this century--toward art, leisure, entertainment and pleasure. Kammen, a professor of American history and culture at Cornell, and the winner of a 1973 Pulitzer Prize for People of Paradox, attempts to chart how Americans have defined and controlled culture--by inventing such categories as low-, middle- and highbrow, by funding and de-funding the National Endowment for the Arts--as well as how advertising, mall culture and economic fluctuations affect attitudes about culture. Drawing on the work of such theorists as Raymond Williams, Dwight McDonald and Herbert Marcuse, and on such varied examples as The Simpsons, jigsaw puzzles, Walter Winchell's gossip columns, the poetry of Walt Whitman, Andy Warhol's art and the Book-of-the-Month Club, Kammen explores how our endless cultural skirmishes not only reflect but also change how we view citizenship and democracy. Though Kammen's writing is clear and his insights illuminating and provocative, his arguments are dense and often purely theoretical, and may be hard going for uninitiated readers.
