Society, Antisociality, and Postwar America
Is there such a thing as society? Was the mid-twentieth century an antisocial moment in U.S. history? Theodore Martin describes what happened to the idea of society in the wake of the New Deal and World War II, and argues that sociopolitical changes fueled the emergence of a new kind of antisocial novel, examples of which include Richard Wright\u2019s \u201cThe Outsider,\u201d Patricia Highsmith\u2019s \u201cStrangers on a Train,\u201d and Jim Thompson\u2019s \u201cThe Getaway.\u201d\nKennan Ferguson, ed., The Big No University of Minnesota Press, 2022\nTheodore Martin, Contemporary Drift: Genre, Historicism, and the Problem of the Present Columbia University Press, 2017\nThe post Society, Antisociality, and Postwar America appeared first on KPFA.