Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture

In 1942, during the intermission in a Metropolitan Opera broadcast performance, Walt Disney commented that ""Dopey is as well qualified as I am to discuss culture in America,"" adding that even the word ""culture"" had ""an un-American connotation... as if it thought it was better than the next fellow."" In Kammen's view, Disney's rejection of the elite connotations of ""culture"" is emblematic of conflicted U.S. attitudes--since the formation of the Republic, and particularly in this century--toward art, leisure, entertainment and pleasure. Kammen, a professor of American history and culture at Cornell, and the winner of a 1973 Pulitzer Prize for People of Paradox, attempts to chart how Americans have defined and controlled culture--by inventing such categories as low-, middle- and highbrow, by funding and de-funding the National Endowment for the Arts--as well as how advertising, mall culture and economic fluctuations affect attitudes about culture. Drawing on the work of such theorists as Raymond Williams, Dwight McDonald and Herbert Marcuse, and on such varied examples as The Simpsons, jigsaw puzzles, Walter Winchell's gossip columns, the poetry of Walt Whitman, Andy Warhol's art and the Book-of-the-Month Club, Kammen explores how our endless cultural skirmishes not only reflect but also change how we view citizenship and democracy. Though Kammen's writing is clear and his insights illuminating and provocative, his arguments are dense and often purely theoretical, and may be hard going for uninitiated readers. (Aug.)