9780195098686
The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States
Michael G. Kammen
ISBN 13: 9780195098686
Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr on Demand
Publication Date: 1996
Binding: Hardcover
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He was a friend of James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, e.e. cummings, John Dos Passos, Irving Berlin, and F. Scott Fitzgerald - and the enemy of Ezra Pound, H.L. Mencken, and Ernest Hemingway. He was so influential a critic that Edmund Wilson declared that he had played a leading role in the "liquidation of genteel culture in America". Yet today many students of American culture would not recognize his name. He was Gilbert Seldes, and in this brilliant biographical study, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael Kammen recreates a singularly American life of letters. Equally important, Kammen uses Seldes's life as a lens through which to bring into sharp focus the dramatic shifts in American culture that occurred in the half-century after World War I. As he traces Seldes's remarkable evolution from an acknowledged aesthete and highbrow to a cultural democrat with a passion for the popular arts, Kammen recaptures the critic's prescience, wit, and generosity for a newly expanded audience. We witness Seldes's triumphs and travails as managing editor of The Dial, the most influential literary magazine of its time, and read of New York's endlessly feuding publications and literary rivalries. Kammen offers wonderfully detailed accounts of The Dial's introduction of "The Wasteland" in its November 1922 issue; Seldes's review of Ulysses for The Nation, one of the first (if not the very first) to appear in the U.S.; and the complete story of the writing, publication, and critical reception of The Seven Lively Arts, Seldes's most influential book. And Kammen also covers Seldes's astonishingly versatile later career as a freelance writer (on every conceivable subject), historian, novelist, playwright,filmmaker, radio scriptwriter, the first program director for CBS Television, and the founding dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania.
Review:
"If Kammen's aim in 'The Lively Arts' is to craft a biographical prism through which to view...the dismantling of America's ancient traditions--well, he's turned out an able documentary....One lesson of Seldes' life, this trenchant and enlightening volume implies, is an old one: Beware of what you wish for when you're young--you just may get too much of it when you're old."
Carlin Romano, Philadelphia Inquirer, 05/19/1996
Review:"From our perspective at the end of this century it is enlightening to read an account of mass communication's sudden growth as well as the critical and social questions its development provoked. Employing the life and writing of Gilbert Seldes as a chronicle, Kammen defines how these seemingly contemporary questions were first addressed in public debate."
Alan Andres, Boston Book Review, June 1996
The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States: Search Results
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The Lively Arts Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States (ISBN: 0195098684 / 0-19-509868-4) Kammen, Michael G. Quantity Available: 1
Book Description: Oxford U.P., New York, NY, 1996. Hardcover. Book Condition: New. 24 Photos (illustrator). First Edition. Size=6.5"x9.5". Oxford U.P., New York, NY, 1996. 1st Edition 1st Printing, NEW, Hard Cover, w/Dust Jacket. Size=6.5"x9.5", 495pp(Index). 24 Photos. It's NEW!! NO ink names, DJ tears etc. This is a NEW book. ISBN 0195098684 99% OF OUR BOOKS ARE SHIPPED IN CUSTOM BOXES, WE ALWAYS PACK WITH GREAT CARE!. Book. Bookseller Inventory # CONROY120327I Bookseller & Payment Information | More Books from this Seller | Ask Bookseller a Question |
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The Lively Arts Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States (ISBN: 0195098684 / 0-19-509868-4) Kammen, Michael G. Quantity Available: 1
Book Description: Oxford U.P., New York, NY, 1996. Hardcover. Book Condition: New. 24 Photos (illustrator). First Edition. Size=6.5"x9.5". Oxford U.P., New York, NY, 1996. 1st Edition 1st Printing, NEW, Hard Cover, w/Dust Jacket. Size=6.5"x9.5", 495pp(Index). 24 Photos. It's NEW!! NO ink names, DJ tears etc. This is a NEW book. ISBN 0195098684 99% OF OUR BOOKS ARE SHIPPED IN CUSTOM BOXES, WE ALWAYS PACK WITH GREAT CARE!. Book. Bookseller Inventory # CONROY120326I Bookseller & Payment Information | More Books from this Seller | Ask Bookseller a Question |
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The Lively Arts : Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States (ISBN: 0195098684 / 0-19-509868-4) Kammen, Michael G. Quantity Available: 1
Book Description: New York, NY, U.S.A.: Oxford University Press, 1996, New York, NY, U.S.A., 1996. Hard Cover. Book Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. First Edition. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Hard Cover. First Edition. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. 1st Ed., 1st Printing, number row beginning with 1, HB/DJ, new, 495 pp. He was a friend of James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, E.E. Cummings, John Dos Passos, Irving Berlin, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He was so influential a critic that Edmund Wilson declared that he had played a leading role in the "liquidation of genteel culture in America." He was Gilbert Seldes, and in this brilliant biographical study, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael Kammen recreates a singularly American life of letters. Kammen also covers Seldes's astonishingly versatile later career as a freelance writer, historian, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, radio scriptwriter, the first program director for CBS Television, and the founding dean of the Annenberg School of Communications. Bookseller Inventory # 7754 Bookseller & Payment Information | More Books from this Seller | Ask Bookseller a Question |
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The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States (ISBN: 9780195098686) Kammen, Michael G. Quantity Available: 5
Book Description: Oxford University Press Inc. Hardback. Book Condition: new. BRAND NEW PRINT ON DEMAND., The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States, Michael Kammen, He was a friend of James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, e.e. cummings, John Dos Passos, Irving Berlin, and F. Scott Fitzgerald--and the enemy of Ezra Pound, H.L. Mencken, and Ernest Hemingway. He was so influential a critic that Edmund Wilson declared that he had played a leading role in the "liquidation of genteel culture in America." Yet today many students of American culture would not recognize his name. He was Gilbert Seldes, and in this brilliant biographical study, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael Kammen recreates a singularly American life of letters. Equally important, Kammen uses Seldes's life as a lens through which to bring into sharp focus the dramatic shifts in American culture that occurred in the half-century after World War I. Born in 1893, Seldes saw in his lifetime an astonishing series of innovations in popular and mass culture: silent films and talkies, the phonograph and the radio, the coming of television, and the proliferation of journalism aimed at mainstream America in such venues as Vanity Fair, The SaturdayEvening Post, and Esquire. (His monthly column in Esquire was called "The Lively Arts.") Seldes was more than a witness to these changes, however; he was the leading champion of popular culture in his time, and a skilled practitioner as well. Kammen, the first scholar to enjoy access to Seldes's unpublished papers, illuminates his immense influence as the earliest cultural critic to insist that the lively arts--vaudeville, musical revues, film, jazz, and the comics--should be taken just as seriously as grand opera, the legitimate theatre, and other manifestations of high culture.As he traces Seldes's remarkable evolution from an acknowledged aesthete and highbrow to a cultural democrat with a passion for the popular arts, Kammen recaptures the critic's prescience, wit, and generosity for a newly expanded audience. We witness Seldes's triumphs and travails as managing editor of The Dial, the most influential literary magazine of its time, and read of New York's endlessly feuding publications and literary rivalries. Kammen offers wonderfully detailed accounts of The Dial's introduction of "The Wasteland" in its November 1922 issue; Seldes's review of Ulysses for TheNation, one of the first (if not the very first) to appear in the U.S.; and the complete story of the writing, publication, and critical reception of The Seven Lively Arts, Seldes's most influential book. And Kammen also covers Seldes's astonishingly versatile later career as a freelance writer (on every conceivable subject), historian, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, radio scriptwriter, the first program director for CBS Television, and the founding dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania. One of popular culture's earliest and most eloquent champions, Seldes was nonetheless publicly worried as early as 1937 that the popularity of radio, film, and television would mean the demise of the "private art of reading." By 1957 he was warning that "with the shift of all entertainment into the area of big business, we are being engulfed into a mass-produced mediocrity." At a time when many thoughtful Americans despair of popular culture, The Lively Arts revisits the opening salvos in the ongoing debate over "democratization" versus "dumbing down" of the arts. It offers a penetrating and timely analysis of Gilbert Seldes's pioneering conviction that the popular and the great arts must not only co-exist but enrich one another if we are to realize the innovation and intensity of American culture at its best. Bookseller Inventory # B9780195098686 Bookseller & Payment Information | More Books from this Seller | Ask Bookseller a Question |
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The Lively Arts (Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States) (ISBN: 0195098684 / 0-19-509868-4) Kammen, Michael G. Quantity Available: 1
Book Description: Oxford University Press, 1996. Hardback. Book Condition: New. 234x156. (506) THIS BOOK IS PRINTED ON DEMAND, PLEASE ALLOW UP TO 10 DAYs EXTRA FOR DELIVERY. The book traces significant changes in twentieth-century American culture through the career of Gilbert Seldes. It was Seldes' book The Seven Lively Arts that produced a wide debate among intellectuals about the so-called popular arts (film, broadcasting, cartoons) and their importance to American culture. (Hardback). Bookseller Inventory # AQ0195098684 Bookseller & Payment Information | More Books from this Seller | Ask Bookseller a Question |
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The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States (ISBN: 9780195098686) Kammen, Michael G. Quantity Available: > 20
Book Description: OXFORD UNIV PR 01/04/2012, 2012. Hardback. Book Condition: New. New print on demand book. Shipped from US. This item is printed on demand. Bookseller Inventory # IJ-9780195098686 Bookseller & Payment Information | More Books from this Seller | Ask Bookseller a Question |
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The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States (ISBN: 9780195098686) Kammen, Michael G. Quantity Available: > 20
Book Description: OXFORD UNIV PR 01/05/2012, 2012. Hardback. Book Condition: New. New print on demand book. Shipped from US. This item is printed on demand. Bookseller Inventory # IO-9780195098686 Bookseller & Payment Information | More Books from this Seller | Ask Bookseller a Question |
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The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States (Hardback) (ISBN: 9780195098686) Kammen, Michael G. Quantity Available: 10
Book Description: Oxford University Press Inc, United States, 1996. Hardback. Book Condition: New. 234 x 156 mm. Brand New Book with Free Worldwide Delivery ***** Print on Demand *****. He was a friend of James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, e.e. cummings, John Dos Passos, Irving Berlin, and F. Scott Fitzgerald--and the enemy of Ezra Pound, H.L. Mencken, and Ernest Hemingway. He was so influential a critic that Edmund Wilson declared that he had played a leading role in the "liquidation of genteel culture in America." Yet today many students of American culture would not recognize his name. He was Gilbert Seldes, and in this brilliant biographical study, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael Kammen recreates a singularly American life of letters. Equally important, Kammen uses Seldes's life as a lens through which to bring into sharp focus the dramatic shifts in American culture that occurred in the half-century after World War I. Born in 1893, Seldes saw in his lifetime an astonishing series of innovations in popular and mass culture: silent films and talkies, the phonograph and the radio, the coming of television, and the proliferation of journalism aimed at mainstream America in such venues as Vanity Fair, The SaturdayEvening Post, and Esquire. (His monthly column in Esquire was called "The Lively Arts.") Seldes was more than a witness to these changes, however; he was the leading champion of popular culture in his time, and a skilled practitioner as well. Kammen, the first scholar to enjoy access to Seldes's unpublished papers, illuminates his immense influence as the earliest cultural critic to insist that the lively arts--vaudeville, musical revues, film, jazz, and the comics--should be taken just as seriously as grand opera, the legitimate theatre, and other manifestations of high culture.As he traces Seldes's remarkable evolution from an acknowledged aesthete and highbrow to a cultural democrat with a passion for the popular arts, Kammen recaptures the critic's prescience, wit, and generosity for a newly expanded audience. We witness Seldes's triumphs and travails as managing editor of The Dial, the most influential literary magazine of its time, and read of New York's endlessly feuding publications and literary rivalries. Kammen offers wonderfully detailed accounts of The Dial's introduction of "The Wasteland" in its November 1922 issue; Seldes's review of Ulysses for TheNation, one of the first (if not the very first) to appear in the U.S.; and the complete story of the writing, publication, and critical reception of The Seven Lively Arts, Seldes's most influential book. And Kammen also covers Seldes's astonishingly versatile later career as a freelance writer (on every conceivable subject), historian, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, radio scriptwriter, the first program director for CBS Television, and the founding dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania. One of popular culture's earliest and most eloquent champions, Seldes was nonetheless publicly worried as early as 1937 that the popularity of radio, film, and television would mean the demise of the "private art of reading." By 1957 he was warning that "with the shift of all entertainment into the area of big business, we are being engulfed into a mass-produced mediocrity." At a time when many thoughtful Americans despair of popular culture, The Lively Arts revisits the opening salvos in the ongoing debate over "democratization" versus "dumbing down" of the arts. It offers a penetrating and timely analysis of Gilbert Seldes's pioneering conviction that the popular and the great arts must not only co-exist but enrich one another if we are to realize the innovation and intensity of American culture at its best. Bookseller Inventory # APC9780195098686 Bookseller & Payment Information | More Books from this Seller | Ask Bookseller a Question |
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| 9. |
The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States (ISBN: 0195098684 / 0-19-509868-4) Kammen, Michael G. Quantity Available: 1
Book Description: OUP USA, 1996. Hardcover. Book Condition: Brand New. 495 pages. 9.50x6.50x1.75 inches. In Stock. Bookseller Inventory # zk0195098684 Bookseller & Payment Information | More Books from this Seller | Ask Bookseller a Question |
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The Lively Arts: Gilbert Seldes and the Transformation of Cultural Criticism in the United States (ISBN: 0195098684 / 0-19-509868-4) Kammen, Michael G. Quantity Available: 1
Book Description: Oxford University Press, USA, 2012. Hardcover. Book Condition: New. 9.26 by 6 inches. (00512 pages) This item is printed on demand. Please allow up to 10 days extra for printing & delivery. {Publisher's Publication Date = 1996-07-18 00:00:00} [ships from USA takes 8-14 days to Europe] Lang=English accessory:NO ACCESSORY (Hardcover ). Bookseller Inventory # AF0195098684 Bookseller & Payment Information | More Books from this Seller | Ask Bookseller a Question |
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