A Pinnacle of Feeling

Zusatztext "It is a tribute to McCann's superb book--one of the best I have read in the past five years--that his sharp description of the Republican project is a mere side-light! not central to his concerns or his thesis. McCann's scholarship! his knowledge of American history and the debates throughout that history about presidential power! his powers of exact description! and his probing analysis of the fundamental tensions in American democracy combine to make [other's] perfectly honorable books look rather pedestrian." ---John McGowan! American Literary History Informationen zum Autor Sean McCann is professor of English at Wesleyan University. He is the author of Gumshoe America: Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Rise and Fall of New Deal Liberalism . Klappentext There is no more powerful symbol in American political life than the presidency, and the image of presidential power has had no less profound an impact on American fiction. A Pinnacle of Feeling is the first book to examine twentieth-century literature's deep fascination with the modern presidency and with the ideas about the relationship between state power and democracy that underwrote the rise of presidential authority. Sean McCann challenges prevailing critical interpretations through revelatory new readings of major writers, including Richard Wright, Gertrude Stein, Henry Roth, Zora Neale Hurston, Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, Norman Mailer, Don Delillo, and Philip Roth. He argues that these writers not only represented or satirized presidents, but echoed political thinkers who cast the chief executive as the agent of the sovereign will of the American people. They viewed the president as ideally a national redeemer, and they took that ideal as a model and rival for their own work. A Pinnacle of Feeling illuminates the fundamental concern with democratic sovereignty that informs the most innovative literary works of the twentieth century, and shows how these works helped redefine and elevate the role of executive power in American culture. Zusammenfassung There is no more powerful symbol in American political life than the presidency, and the image of presidential power has had no less profound an impact on American fiction. A Pinnacle of Feeling is the first book to examine twentieth-century literature's deep fascination with the modern presidency and with the ideas about the relationship between state power and democracy that underwrote the rise of presidential authority. Sean McCann challenges prevailing critical interpretations through revelatory new readings of major writers, including Richard Wright, Gertrude Stein, Henry Roth, Zora Neale Hurston, Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, Norman Mailer, Don Delillo, and Philip Roth. He argues that these writers not only represented or satirized presidents, but echoed political thinkers who cast the chief executive as the agent of the sovereign will of the American people. They viewed the president as ideally a national redeemer, and they took that ideal as a model and rival for their own work. A Pinnacle of Feeling illuminates the fundamental concern with democratic sovereignty that informs the most innovative literary works of the twentieth century, and shows how these works helped redefine and elevate the role of executive power in American culture. Inhaltsverzeichnis PREFACE ix INTRODUCTION: "The Executive Disease": Presidential Power and Literary Imagination 1 CHAPTER ONE: Masters of Their Constitution: Gertrude Stein and the Promise of Progressive Leadership 33 CHAPTER TWO: Governable Beasts: Hurston! Roth! and the New Deal 67 CHAPTER THREE: The Myth of the Public Interest: Pluralism and Presidentialism in the Fifties 100 CHAPTER FOUR: Come Home! America: Vietnam and the End of the Progressive Presidency 139 EPILOGUE: Philip Roth and the Waning and Waxing of Polit...

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Sean McCann

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There is no more powerful symbol in American political life than the presidency, and the image of presidential power has had no less profound an impact on American fiction. A Pinnacle of Feeling is the first book to examine twentieth-century literature's deep fascination with the modern presidency and with the ideas about the relationship between state power and democracy that underwrote the rise of presidential authority. Sean McCann challenges prevailing critical interpretations through revelatory new readings of major writers, including Richard Wright, Gertrude Stein, Henry Roth, Zora Neale Hurston, Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, Norman Mailer, Don Delillo, and Philip Roth. He argues that these writers not only represented or satirized presidents, but echoed political thinkers who cast the chief executive as the agent of the sovereign will of the American people. They viewed the president as ideally a national redeemer, and they took that ideal as a model and rival for their own work. A Pinnacle of Feeling illuminates the fundamental concern with democratic sovereignty that informs the most innovative literary works of the twentieth century, and shows how these works helped redefine and elevate the role of executive power in American culture.

Contenu
PREFACE ix INTRODUCTION: "The Executive Disease": Presidential Power and Literary Imagination 1 CHAPTER ONE: Masters of Their Constitution: Gertrude Stein and the Promise of Progressive Leadership 33 CHAPTER TWO: Governable Beasts: Hurston, Roth, and the New Deal 67 CHAPTER THREE: The Myth of the Public Interest: Pluralism and Presidentialism in the Fifties 100 CHAPTER FOUR: Come Home, America: Vietnam and the End of the Progressive Presidency 139 EPILOGUE: Philip Roth and the Waning and Waxing of Political Time 178 Notes 197 Index 243