Dwight Macdonald on Culture

Dwight Macdonald was the most prominent American excoriator of mass culture in the 1950s and '60s, but has since been derided as elitist and irrelevant. Dwight Macdonald on Culture argues against previous interpretations, offering new perspectives on a figure that grappled with issues of culture that remain ever-pertinent.

Dwight Macdonald was the most prominent excoriator of mass culture in the 1950s and '60s. Since that time his reputation has not fared well. Derided as elitist and passé, his tracts now represent everything wrong-headed about mid-century cultural criticism. Nonetheless, Macdonald remains relevant and deserves reconsideration. His detractors, though uncovering many of Macdonald's failings, have in part misunderstood him, while the field of cultural studies has misclassified his essays in the radical rather than conservative tradition of criticism. Dwight Macdonald on Culture seeks to amend previous misconceptions, offering new perspectives on a figure who grappled with issues of culture that remain ever-pertinent.

Autorentext

Tadeusz Lewandowski, PhD, teaches at Opole University (Poland). A graduate of the University of Rochester and Opole University, he has taught at the State University of New York, and published a book on Polish/English interlingual errors along with many articles in American and European journals.

Zusammenfassung
«[T]his short but persuasive and excellently researched new study of Macdonald's outlook comes from a New York-educated academic of Polish origins, Tadeusz Lewandowski, who [...] has shown an extraordinary gift for close reading of Macdonald's oeuvre, including the fugitive essays as well as the books that made Macdonald's wider name.» (R. J. Stove, The University Bookman, November 2014)

Inhalt

Contents: Dwight Macdonald Mass Culture Cultural Studies A Theory of Popular Culture A Theory of Mass Culture Masscult and Midcult Partisan Review Matthew Arnold Ortega Y Gasset Frankfurt School Max Horkheimer Theodor Adorno Clement Greenberg T. S. Eliot Gilbert Seldes Daniel Bell Edward Shils.