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

"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."

"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

"The writing is scholarly yet accessible to the educated lay reader. Recommended for public and academic libraries." - Library Journal

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 1950s-race and religious difference; social class and the suburbs; the youth culture; rebellion, conformity, and groupthink; the telling conflicts over taste and judgment-and how, in the process, whether we realize it or not, this body of super-charged literature shaped today's American culture.