'50 Freakout!

Writing over at The Gray Flannel Suit–er, The Weekly Standard–Brian Murray reviews David Castronovo's new literary history of the 1950s and realizes that you couldn't swing a dead cat with hitting a beatnik, a gentleman junkie, or a something cooler than ice:

Change was in the air, on a thousand fronts. Network television, air conditioning, computers, jet travel, a national highway system, chain hotels, franchised fast food: The country shrank as business boomed. Cultural and intellectual life was no less dynamic, as Eero Saarinen designed buildings, Elia Kazan made movies, Arthur Miller wrote plays, and John Coltrane blew his horn. Political journals thrived in a Cold War climate where much was at stake: Commentary, Politics, Partisan Review, National Review. From our current perspective, American culture of the fifties looks both daring and substantial, assured and adult. No wonder it excited the world.

Whole story here.

Fifties' revisionism isn't new: I reviewed a book about it called Seeds of the Sixties a decade ago (so old the review isn't even online!) and writers such as Thomas Doherty have created complex pictures of the decade simply by paying attention to its cultural artifacts.

But the revisionism is always welcome (and important), as it enriches the understanding of the current moment.