The Death and Life of Main Street: Small Towns in American Memory, Space, and Community

In this thought-provoking study, Temple University English and American studies professor Orvell (American Photography) examines cultural myths, simplifications, and media images of Smalltown, U.S.A. According to Orvell, the small town is “both place and an idea,” with advocates and detractors imbuing it with their own value judgments and imposing a simplistic one-size-fits-all dogma on the diversity and complexity of genuine smalltown life. Though Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street “shatter[ed] the complacency of small-town America” in 1920, Main Street came to occupy “a mythic plane” in the 1930s and 1940s. Orvell reviews economic and technological innovations, ranging from mail-order catalogues and rail shipping to the social impact of the automobile. More recently, the New Urbanism movement sees the “warm and fuzzy memories of the past” as a legitimate model for new communities. As Orvell notes, these memories often deliberately ignore lynchings and exclusionary practices. He astutely observes that the smalltown myth “nurture[s] a sense of community in a society that is otherwise a scene of fragmentation and social disintegration.” Illus. (Oct.)