Tuesday, February 08, 2011

What I'm reading . . .

Picked this one up at the local free book emporium: Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

that actually sounds pretty interesting.

In His Grace ~ Nan said...

What a fabuous title! Based on what I've watched and read about the Depression, "Dancing in the Dark" is an apt poetic analogy. Did you read it?
Do tell us more...

Bob Spencer said...

Actually, I was a little disappointed and didn't finish. It was very focused on the literary culture, and especially on New York. More litcrit than anything. When Dickstein did talk about the movies it was in a very intellectual way. The book has a great title, a sound thesis, and it is filled with great images from the period, but it is almost a caricature of New York cultural elitism, missing out completely (for example) on the important rise of country music in the 30s.