Description
A Permanent Etc offers ten new 'readings' in the culture of post-war America, from Hollywood to Coca Cola, Madonna to McDonalds - via Dallas, Disneyland and Rodeo Drive.
Playing one form of American self-expression against another-whether high or vernacular, literary or visual, domestic or international - Ralph Willett examines America as popular culture; A Robert Lee considers the rebirth of a non-European ethnicity in fiction and autobiography; and the new feminist dispensation, from Betty Friedan to Madonna, is explored by Faith Pullin and Claire Colebrook.
Dale Carter pursues America's fascination for the machine from the Ford assembly line to space hardware while Graham Clarke looks at the alienated images of photographers Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Robert Frank and Lee Friedlander.
Robert Giddings puts Alistair Cooke under scrutiny; Brian Lee considers the revisionings of America in the work of filmmaker Michael Cimino; and David Murray reviews the American 'language' poets, from Whitman to Charles Olson and beyond.
In the final section, Jacqueline Kaye considers the unique relationship between America and Cuba-America's only and nearest Marxist neighbour - and Clive Bush offers a portrait of Professor Eric Mottram, to whom this collection is dedicated, in recognition of his unique contribution to the development of American Studies. A Robert Lee teaches American Studies and American Literature at the
University of Kent at Canterbury. He has edited numerous collections on aspects of
American literature and is also the editor of the Everyman Moby Dick.
