Hip Figures: A Literary History of the Democratic Party

Szalay's academic study of 20th-century novels investigates how writers shaped the "secret imagination of postwar liberalism," especially the revision and consolidation of the Democratic Party in the lead up to the 1960 presidential election and afterwards. The author focuses on the work of Robert Penn Warren, Chandler Brossard, John Updike, Ralph Ellison, William Styron, Norman Mailler, Saul Bellow, E.L. Doctorow, Joan Didion, and more, arguing that these novelists (primarily white males writing for white audiences) fetishize(d) African-American culture in order to create a cohesive stylistic narrative about the aims and politics of the Democratic Party. Although the book falls short of proving that these novelists were "the most important political strategists of their time," it makes a persuasive case that white fantasies of "hip%E2%80%94"which Szalay (New Deal Modernism) sees as "a complex variant of the peculiarly American tradition of blackface minstrelsy%E2%80%94"played a significant role in the coalition of Democratic constituencies. Szalay's approach to the literary fashioning of political consciousness traces how the "logic of hip" that articulated the Democratic "brand" in the 20th century also "mobilizes ethnic and racial hybridity in the service of selling commodities the globe over." Students of literature and political science will get the most out of Szalay's well-researched and compelling study. (July)