The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twenieth Century

In his introduction, Denning quotes Sean Wilentz's pronouncement: ""To this day, when I hear the words Pop Front I think of atrocious art."" But were art and literature from the 1930s really that bad or that unimportant to the development of American culture? Looking back at this much neglected period in American art and letters, the author, a professor of American studies at Yale, bucks received academic opinion and cogently argues that Popular Front artistsDplaywrights, novelists, painters, songwriters and singersDaffected American culture far more than is generally acknowledged. The answers to Denning's central questions of ""What is the laboring of American culture? What does it mean to labor a culture?"" are complex and intricate. Despite its clear prose, this volume is not for beginners in labor history or cultural theory. The depth of archival research in the volume is profound, and Denning freely cites such cultural theorists as Antonio Gramsci, Frederic Jameson, Raymond Williams and Kenneth Burke to explain the ""laboring of American culture."" Most important, however, is Denning's valuable attempt to rethink labor history in more constructive terms. Instead of joining in the academic mudslinging over which artists were Communists, fellow-travelers or neither, he broadens the significance of the 1930s by asking not who was what or who did what but what was the cumulative affect of these artists' artworksDfrom John Steinbeck's and John Dos Passos's novels to Billie Holiday's and Josh White's blues songsDon post-1930s culture. For this reason alone, this volume represents a significant departure from most popular histories of the Depression and its artists. (Feb.)