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The Repeal of Reticence: A History of America's Cultural and Legal Struggles over Free Speech, Obscenity, Sexual Liberation, and Modern Art - Hardcover
Synopsis
Describes the unexpected consequences of the successful movement to bring private matters into public life
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Reviews
Public discourse today, asserts Gurstein in this jeremiad, is a noisy, vulgar circus where privacy and modesty are flouted, and where so-called avant-garde artists invoke free-speech rights to justify violent, dehumanizing or pornographic works. Her rigorous study charts the death in the U.S. of a "reticent sensibility" valuing tact, discretion, good taste and politeness. Among the chief destroyers of this sensibility, she argues unpersuasively, were intrusive, sensationalistic journalists dating back to the 1830s penny press; realist novelists like Theodore Dreiser and William Dean Howells; and sex reformers such as Margaret Sanger, Mary Ware Dennett and Emma Goldman who discredited their Victorian forbears by equating reticence with prudery, evasion and hypocrisy. Gurstein, who teaches history and other subjects at Bard Graduate Center in Manhattan, covers landmark cases such as the 1933 trial exonerating James Joyce's Ulysses of obscenity charges, as well as cases that steadily eroded the right to privacy as defined by Louis Brandeis in 1890. In Gurstein's analysis, H.L. Mencken, Walter Lippmann, Joseph Wood Krutch and Philip Rahv reformulated aspects of the reticent creed, but mass culture won out, abetted by Olympia Press erotic publisher Maurice Girodias and Susan Sontag's defense of pornography as an art form. Gurstein brings a historical dimension to current debate over free speech and media responsibility.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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The Repeal of Reticence: A History of America's Cultural and Legal Struggles over Free Speech, Obscenity, Sexual Liberation, and Modern Art
Seller: ThriftBooks-Dallas, Dallas, TX, U.S.A.
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Hardcover. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0809080699I3N00
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The Repeal of Reticence: A History of America's Cultural and Legal Struggles over Free Speech, Obscenity, Sexual Liberation, and Modern Art
Seller: ThriftBooks-Dallas, Dallas, TX, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0809080699I4N00
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The Repeal of Reticence
Seller: World of Books (was SecondSale), Montgomery, IL, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Hardback. Condition: Good. This striking study of America's battles over what we can decently say and do in public traces how and why principled debate about the character of our common world has been displaced by a new kind of public noise. Rochelle Gurstein offers a brilliant history of the arguments made for and against the forces - invasive journalism, realist fiction, and sex reform - that altered public discourse between the late nineteenth century, when they first appeared, and the 1960s, when new controversies erupted about mass culture, avant-garde art, and sexual liberation. Now the public sphere is dominated by rights talk, by puritan-baiting, and by knee-jerk liberalism or illiberalism. Is this the best we can do? Gurstein gives a detailed account of how the party of exposure successfully opened American public life to matters that had once been hidden away in private, and studies the unexpected consequences of that victory. And she retrieves a way of thinking, wrongly discredited as Victorian, that could in fact move us beyond our stalemates over what should and what should not be said or done in public. Once, Americans influenced by the party of reticence held that if personal matters were exposed to public scrutiny they risked becoming trivial or obscene; they thought that any indiscriminate display of private matters deformed standards of taste and judgment, lowered the tone of public conversation, and polluted public space. Ms. Gurstein's penetrating analysis suggests that we must reconsider these positions, and she establishes the vital connection between our legal-cultural history and current debates about obscenity, privacy, and issues of public decency. Seller Inventory # 00100322056
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The Repeal of Reticence
Published by
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996
ISBN 10: 0809080699
ISBN 13: 9780809080694
Used
Hardcover
First Edition
Seller: Better World Books, Mishawaka, IN, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: Very Good. 1st. Pages intact with possible writing/highlighting. Binding strong with minor wear. Dust jackets/supplements may not be included. Stock photo provided. Product includes identifying sticker. Better World Books: Buy Books. Do Good. Seller Inventory # 6509342-6
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The Repeal of Reticence
Published by
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996
ISBN 10: 0809080699
ISBN 13: 9780809080694
Used
Hardcover
First Edition
Seller: Better World Books, Mishawaka, IN, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: Good. 1st. Pages intact with minimal writing/highlighting. The binding may be loose and creased. Dust jackets/supplements are not included. Stock photo provided. Product includes identifying sticker. Better World Books: Buy Books. Do Good. Seller Inventory # 4704089-6
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The Repeal of Reticence
Published by
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996
ISBN 10: 0809080699
ISBN 13: 9780809080694
Used
Hardcover
First Edition
Seller: Better World Books, Mishawaka, IN, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: Good. 1st. Former library copy. Pages intact with minimal writing/highlighting. The binding may be loose and creased. Dust jackets/supplements are not included. Includes library markings. Stock photo provided. Product includes identifying sticker. Better World Books: Buy Books. Do Good. Seller Inventory # 11612848-6
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The Repeal of Reticence: A History of America's Cultural and Legal Struggles over Free Speech, Obscenity, Sexual Liberation, and Modern Art
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Condition: Very Good. Very Good condition. Very Good dust jacket. A copy that may have a few cosmetic defects. May also contain light spine creasing or a few markings such as an owner's name, short gifter's inscription or light stamp. Seller Inventory # G08F-01975
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The Repeal of Reticence: A History of America's Cultural and Legal Struggles over Free Speech, Obscenity, Sexual Liberation, and Modern Art
Seller: Wonder Book, Frederick, MD, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Condition: Very Good. Very Good condition. Good dust jacket. A copy that may have a few cosmetic defects. May also contain light spine creasing or a few markings such as an owner's name, short gifter's inscription or light stamp. Seller Inventory # G08F-02040
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The Repeal of Reticence
Seller: World of Books Inc, Montgomery, IL, U.S.A.
Seller rating 4 out of 5 stars
Hardback. Condition: Good. This striking study of America's battles over what we can decently say and do in public traces how and why principled debate about the character of our common world has been displaced by a new kind of public noise. Rochelle Gurstein offers a brilliant history of the arguments made for and against the forces - invasive journalism, realist fiction, and sex reform - that altered public discourse between the late nineteenth century, when they first appeared, and the 1960s, when new controversies erupted about mass culture, avant-garde art, and sexual liberation. Now the public sphere is dominated by rights talk, by puritan-baiting, and by knee-jerk liberalism or illiberalism. Is this the best we can do? Gurstein gives a detailed account of how the party of exposure successfully opened American public life to matters that had once been hidden away in private, and studies the unexpected consequences of that victory. And she retrieves a way of thinking, wrongly discredited as Victorian, that could in fact move us beyond our stalemates over what should and what should not be said or done in public. Once, Americans influenced by the party of reticence held that if personal matters were exposed to public scrutiny they risked becoming trivial or obscene; they thought that any indiscriminate display of private matters deformed standards of taste and judgment, lowered the tone of public conversation, and polluted public space. Ms. Gurstein's penetrating analysis suggests that we must reconsider these positions, and she establishes the vital connection between our legal-cultural history and current debates about obscenity, privacy, and issues of public decency. Seller Inventory # CIN0809080699G
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The Repeal of Reticence: A History of America's Cultural and Legal Struggles over Free Speech, Obscenity, Sexual Liberation, and Modern Art
Seller: Books From California, Simi Valley, CA, U.S.A.
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Hardcover. Condition: Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Includes dust jacket. Dust jacket shows minor shelf wear. Pages are underlined and annotated by previous owner. Seller Inventory # mon0003642388