Nightmare on Main Street: Angels, Sadomasochism and the Culture of Gothic - Hardcover

Edmundson, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674874846 ISBN 13: 9780674874848

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1997

Synopsis

An assessment of American culture on the eve of the millennium. Once terrified by Anne Rice or Stephen King, watching "Halloween" or following the O.J. Simpson trial, we can rely on the comfort of our inner child, an angel, or even a crystal. In this book the author asks why people are determined to be haunted, courting the Gothic at every turn, yet at the same time, committed to escape through any new scheme for ready-made transcendence. The book depicts a culture suffused with the Gothic, not just in novels and films, but even in the nonfictive realms of politics and academic theories, TV news and talk shows, various therapies and discourses on AIDS and the environment. Gothic's first wave, in the 1790s, reflected the terrifying events unfolding in the French Revolution. Here the author asks what does the ascendancy of the Gothic in the 1990s tell us about our own day? The author also explores another, seemingly unrelated trend, the widespread belief that recreating oneself is as easy as making a wish. Looking at the world of Forrest Gump, the author aims to show how this parallel culture actually works reciprocally with the Gothic. Finally, using the work of Nietzsche and Shelley, and the recent creations of Toni Morrison and Tony Kushner, he aims to show how the Gothic and the visionary can come together in persuasive and renovating ways.

About this title

Review:

A compelling explanation of our ever more ghoulish obsessions. -- Jeffrey Toobin "The New Yorker" [A] compelling explanation of our ever more ghoulish obsessions.--Jeffrey Toobin "The New Yorker " Absorbing...The Gothic thrives, Edmundson argues, in a world in which 'those in authority--the supposed exemplars of the good--are under suspicion, ' a world in which cynicism ('the conviction that the worst truth that you can come up with about any person or event is the most consequential truth') is a given...Drawing upon his considerable knowledge of American and European literature, Edmundson does a nimble job of situating the current Gothic craze in context with philosophical developments, while at the same time assessing its social consequences..."Nightmare on Main Street" is a provocative and often illuminating book.--Michiko Kakutani "New York Times " One cannot but admire the forward pressure of the argument, the breadth of reference, the passion with which it is conducted, and, at times, the passages of analysis.--Francis Devlin-Glass "Canadian Review of Literature " In his provocative book about the Gothic, Mr. Edmundson notes that the genre flourished in the years after the French Revolution. Those drafty castles with their dark secrets, the vampirish counts and the leering clergymen were all embodiments of the ancient regime, the old feudal order haunting the unsteady world of the new. Modern innocents are lured into that realm and nearly overwhelmed by it, until they exorcise its demonic control. The past is finally passed. The disgusting is contained, controlled, overcome. But today, Mr. Edmundson argues there is no clear resolution to our Gothic tales. Their haunting addictions and demonic figures keep reappearing in rock videos, computer games, television talk shows and horror films. But the villainy is ambiguous...No sooner do we start to hate the wife abuser on a talk show than we learn that he too is a haunted victim of abuse or a recovering addict. We are all villains and all victims.--Edward Rothstein "New York Times " I never would have thought that Forrest Gump, Sigmund Freud and O.J. Simpson had anything to do with one another. But Mark Edmundson turns them into one big, dysfunctional family in his provocative new book about contemporary American culture...The strength of Edmundson's analysis is his ability to use the concept of the gothic sensibility to tie together seemingly disparate strands of contemporary culture and show how our view of reality is shaped by them...I suggest Nightmare on Main Street to readers who want to understand the stories America tells itself.--Greg Beatty "News & Observer " Edmundson's book has a simple yet visionary thesis. America--the patient--is infected with a psychological virus that fosters a death-worshipping attitude toward existence...Edmundson's clarity of vision, airtight logic, and captivating prose...succeed in convincing the reader of his thesis...[He] is strongly conversant with classic Anglo-American literature, movies and television. Part of this book's intellectual charm is that he draws on such a heterogeneous range of supporting examples, from Oprah to Hitchcock, from Wordsworth to Robert Bly, from Wes Craven to Keats.--Paul Di Fillippo "Washington Post Book World " "[A] compelling explanation of our ever more ghoulish obsessions." --Jeffrey Toobin, "The New Yorker" "In his provocative book about the Gothic, Mr. Edmundson notes that the genre flourished in the years after the French Revolution. Those drafty castles with their dark secrets, the vampirish counts and the leering clergymen were all embodiments of the ancient regime, the old feudal order haunting the unsteady world of the new. Modern innocents are lured into that realm and nearly overwhelmed by it, until they exorcise its demonic control. The past is finally passed. The disgusting is contained, controlled, overcome. But today, Mr. Edmundson argues there is no clear resolution to our Gothic tales. Their haunting addictions and demonic figures keep reappearing in rock videos, computer games, television talk shows and horror films. But the villainy is ambiguous...No sooner do we start to hate the wife abuser on a talk show than we learn that he too is a haunted victim of abuse or a recovering addict. We are all villains and all victims." --Edward Rothstein, "New York Times" "Absorbing...The Gothic thrives, Edmundson argues, in a world in which 'those in authority--the supposed exemplars of the good--are under suspicion, ' a world in which cynicism ('the conviction that the worst truth that you can come up with about any person or event is the most consequential truth') is a given...Drawing upon his considerable knowledge of American and European literature, Edmundson does a nimble job of situating the current Gothic craze in context with philosophical developments, while at the same time assessing its social consequences..."Nightmare on Main Street" is a provocative and oftenilluminating book." --Michiko Kakutani, "New York Times" "Edmundson's book has a simple yet visionary thesis. America--the patient--is infected with a psychological virus that fosters a death-worshipping attitude toward existence...Edmundson's clarity of vision, airtight logic, and captivating prose...succeed in convincing the reader of his thesis...[He] is strongly conversant with classic Anglo-American literature, movies and television. Part of this book's intellectual charm is that he draws on such a heterogeneous range of supporting examples, from Oprah to Hitchcock, from Wordsworth to Robert Bly, from Wes Craven to Keats." --Paul Di Fillippo, "Washington Post Book World" "I never would have thought that Forrest Gump, Sigmund Freud and O.J. Simpson had anything to do with one another. But Mark Edmundson turns them into one big, dysfunctional family in his provocative new book about contemporary American culture...The strength of Edmundson's analysis is his ability to use the concept of the gothic sensibility to tie together seemingly disparate strands of contemporary culture and show how our view of reality is shaped by them...I suggest Nightmare on Main Street to readers who want to understand the stories America tells itself." --Greg Beatty, "News & Observer" "According to some critics, most of today's popular culture can fall under the enveloping shroud of a 'Gothic" rubric. For a witty, lucid but fanciful essay in this vein, read Mark Edmundson's "Nightmare on Main Street..".This is fascinating, smartly-written stuff." --Boyd Tonkin, "The Independent" [UK] ""Nightmare on Main Street" is a perfect specimen of the literary book written for a post-literate audience.It's a brimming shopping basket of high/low cultural references, grabbed from the shelves at lightening speed. A reader can grasp "Nightmare's" feverishness merely by running a finger down the index: Under 'D, ' one finds Dahmer, Derrida, DeNiro, and Dickens; 'H' lists Hegel, Hendrix, Hitchcock, and Hitler." --Debra Goldman, "Brill's Content" "Gothicism, if it ever left us, is enjoying its 'second wave, ' according to academic Mark Edmundson, who offers doubters a convincing spread of modern-day popular gloom as proof: The descendents of the Gothic novelists are at the same grisly business (although in this century they're getting rich doing it) in the personage of Anne Rice, Stephen King, R. L. Stine, etc. AIDS and cancers have left a culture of grim survivors, and gargoyles are back, only this time they're sold at Target for yard and home decor...Academic exegesis is rarely this accessible and amusing." --"City Pages" [Minneapolis, Minnesota] "What do Richard Nixon, Freddy Krueger, O.J. Simpson, and Edgar Allan Poe have in common with one another--but not with Percy Bysshe Shelley and Ralph Waldo Emerson? Answer: The former express our nation's cult of gothic guilt and fear; the latter are potential models of redemption. Edmundson argues that the gothic mindset, exemplified in lurid classics of the late 18th century...dominates contemporary American culture...Edmundson has written an entertaining and thoughtful book...It has many startling insights, shrewd observations, and considerable narrative momentum." --"Kirkus Reviews" "Mark Edmundson audaciously leaps to and fro from the heavens of High Romantic culture (Shelley, Emerson) to the hells of current American pop-Gothic(Hollywood, Stephen King and Anne Rice). He provides a refreshing alternative to the ideological overdeterminations that now masquerade as 'cultural criticism.'" --Harold Bloom, Yale University "Without being either portentous or modish "Nightmare on Main Street" shows us just how 'cultured' and all pervasive gothic is now; and how we need to know its history to find ways of talking about both our contemporary horrors, and our fake cures for them. Inspired in its informality, and incisive in its scholarship, this is a remarkable, timely book. Edmundson is inventing a new kind of cultural criticism; a cultural criticism that might be for the culture and not merely for the academy." --Adam Phillips "Where many see chaos and social disintegration, Edmundson cannily detects a pattern of horror that is itself a response--sometimes creative, sometimes facile--to our anxieties, fears, and dreads. He argues compellingly that we are haunted and that a potent Gothic imagination is at work among us, seeping into the very pores of American cultural life. A fascinating work." --Jean Bethke Elshtain, University of Chicago, author of "Augustine and the Limits of Politics"

From the Back Cover:

Once we've terrified ourselves reading Anne Rice or Stephen King, watching Halloween or following the O. J Simpson trial, we can rely on the comfort of our inner child or Robert Bly's bongos, an angel, or even a crystal. In a brilliant assessment of American culture on the eve of the millennium, Mark Edmundson asks why we're determined to be haunted, courting the Gothic at every turn -- and, at the same time, committed to escape through any new scheme for ready-made transcendence.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0674874846
• ISBN 13: 9780674874848
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 204