Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression » (New Edition)

Morris Dickstein is Distinguished Professor of English and Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center and the author of Gates of Eden and Leopards in the Temple, among other works. He lives in New York City.

A National Book Critics Circle finalist: "The definitive book about Depression culture for our time."—San Francisco Chronicle

The Barnes & Noble Review

The Joad family's epic journey from Dust Bowl Oklahoma to California, depicted in John Steinbeck's 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, has become an emblem of the Depression. But as Morris Dickstein observes in Dancing in the Dark, his cultural history of the period, the Joads weren't the only ones on the move in America's novels, plays, movies, and nightlife of the '30s: there was the hobo crisscrossing the country in the film I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Bigger Thomas on the run in Richard Wright's Native Son, the synchronized showgirls dancing their way through Busby Berkeley productions, clubgoers swaying to the music of Benny Goodman and his orchestra. Much of the previous literature on the Depression has erected a wall between the social criticism of, say, a Clifford Odets play and the lighthearted escapism of a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie. But Dickstein, in a sweeping, significant work, searches out the unifying themes of what he calls the "split personality of Depression culture.

1 Introduction: Depression Culture 3

Pt. 1 Discovering Poverty

2 The Tenement and the World: Immigrant Lives 15

3 The Starvation Army 50

4 The Country and the City 92

5 Hard Times for Poets 154

6 Black Girls and Native Sons 173

Pt. 2 Success and Failure

7 Beyond the American Dream 215

8 What Price Hollywood? 311

9 The Last Film of the 1930s; or, Nothing Fails like Success 342

Pt. 3 The Culture of Elegance

10 Fantasy, Elegance, Mobility: The Dream Life of the 1930s 357

11 Class for the Masses: Elegance Democratized 408

Pt. 4 The Search for Community

12 The Populist Turn: Copland and the Popular Front 441

13 Who Cares?: The World of Porgy and Bess 464

14 The People vs. Frank Capra: Populism against Itself 477

15 Shakespeare in Overalls: An American Troubadour 496

16 Gender Trouble: Exposing the Intellectuals 507

17 Conclusion: The Work of Culture in Depression America 522

Acknowledgments 531

Notes 533

Selected Bibliography 556

Illustrations and Permissions 565

Index 569