9.6 /10 1 Votes9.6
Publication date 2010 ISBN 978-0-7735-3766-8 OCLC 648097211 | 4.8/5 Goodreads Pages 221 Originally published 2010 Page count 221 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Publisher McGill-Queen's University Press Similar From Lowbrow to Nobrow, American Utopia and Social En, From Literature to Biterat, A Stanislaw Lem Rea, American Crime Fiction: A | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Ars Americana, Ars Politica: Partisan Expression in Contemporary American Literature and Culture is a 2010 critical study by Peter Swirski.
The book examines contemporary American political literature and culture in the context of American politics and history. It examines not only the partisan credentials of what it argues is a new brand of art engagé but also the nobrow style in which it conducts its political business.
The principal examples of American literature that Swirski discusses in detail are: Irving Wallace’s The Man (1964), Richard Condon’s Death of a Politician (1978), P.J. O’Rourke’s Parliament of Whores (1991; 2003), Warren Beatty’s script and film Bulworth (1998), and Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men... and Other Sorry Excises for the State of the Nation (2002; 2004). All are selected because political partisanship is a part of their artistic agenda. As Swirski puts it in the introduction, the political art discussed in Ars Americana “should come equipped with shock-absorbers”.
Nominated for a dozen major awards it attracted equal plaudits from the left (Howard Zinn touted it as “fascinating and original”) and from the right (Financial Times ).