Around Quitting Time

Seguin Robert Seguin

Description

Virtually since its inception, the United States has nurtured a dreamlike and often delirious image of itself as an essentially classless society. Given the stark levels of social inequality that have actually existed and that continue today, what sustains this at once hopelessly ideological and breathlessly utopian mirage? In Around Quitting Time Robert Seguin investigates this question, focusing on a series of modern writers who were acutely sensitive to the American web of ideology and utopic vision in order to argue that a pervasive middle-class imaginary is the key to the enigma of class in America.Tracing connections between the reconstruction of the labor process and the aesthetic dilemmas of modernism, between the emergence of the modern state and the structure of narrative, Seguin analyzes the work of Nathanael West, Ernest Hemingway, Willa Cather, John Barth, and others. These fictional narratives serve to demonstrate for Seguin the pattern of social sites and cultural phenomenon that have emerged where work and leisure, production and consumption, and activity and passivity coincide. He reveals how, by creating pathways between these seemingly opposed domains, the middle-class imaginary at once captures and suspends the dynamics of social class and opens out onto a political and cultural terrain where class is both omnipresent and invisible. Aroung Quitting Time will interest critics and historians of modern U.S. culture, literary scholars, and those who explore the interaction between economic and cultural forms.

Sujets

• USA
• Inglés estadounidense
• Social class
• American English
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 20 juin 2001
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822380818
• Langue: English

Extrait

around quitting time

new americanists

a series edited by Donald E. Pease

around quitting time

Work and Middle-Class

Fantasy in American Fiction

robert seguin

Duke University Press

Durham and London

2001

∫2001 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$ Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan Typeset in Minion by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

For my family, and for Liz

contents

acknowledgmentsix

oneClass, Middle Class, and the Modalities of Labor 1

twoThe Burden of Toil:Sister Carrie as Urban Pastoral 19

threeWilla Cather and the Ambivalence of Hierarchy 57

fourNew Frontiers in Hollywood: Mobility and Desire inThe Day of the Locust83

fiveInto the 1950s: Fiction in the Age of Consensus 121

postscriptThe Insistence of Class and the Framing of Culture in the American Scene 153

notes167

bibliography189

index201

acknowledgments

For their critical acumen, wise advice, and steadfast faith in this project, I would like to thank Fredric Jameson, Jan Radway, Tom Ferraro, Susan Willis, and Ken Surin. Phil Wegner, Susan Hegeman, and John Evelev—chefs ex- traordinaire—provided food for both body and mind, sustaining me still. The protean gang at 819 Clarendon Street o√ered almost a home away from home, as well as the space for reading groups galore. Thanks to Richard Dienst for facilitating material support. Harris Breslow was always ready to listen, and Evan Watkins came through in the clutch. Liz Blasco was around to share—in this, and much else besides.