American Literature in Transition, 1960–1970

The decade of the 1960s has come to occupy a uniquely seductive place in both the popular and the historical imagination. While few might disagree that it was a transformative period, the United States remains divided on the question of whether the changes that occurred were for the better or for the worse. Some see it as a decade when people became more free; others as a time when people became more lost. American Literature in Transition, 1960–1970 provides the latest scholarship on this time of fateful turning as seen through the eyes of writers as various as Toni Morrison, Gary Snyder, Michael Herr, Amiri Baraka, Joan Didion, Louis Chu, John Rechy, and Gwendolyn Brooks. This collection of essays by twenty-five scholars offers analysis and explication of the culture wars surrounding the period, and explores the enduring testimonies left behind by its literature.

Introduction David Wyatt; Part I. Modes: 1. Poetry Patricia Wallace; 2. The novel Morris Dickstein; 3. Drama David Krasner; 4. New journalism Daniel Lehman; 5. Translation Michael Collier; 6. Criticism and theory David Wyatt; 7. Social thought Philip Longo; 8. The literature of film Robert P. Kolker; 9. Orations Keith D. Miller and Joseph Kubiak; Part II. Forces: 10. Vietnam Philip D. Beidler; 11. The secret world Timothy Parrish; 12. The counterculture Loren Glass; 13. The university Fredrik deBoer; 14. Work Christin Marie Taylor; 15. The suburbs Randy Ontiveros; Part III. Movements: 16. The end of modernism Al Filreis; 17. Civil rights Valerie Sweeney Prince; 18. The new right Angela S. Allan; 19. Women's liberation Nancy J. Peterson; 20. Toward stonewall Octavio R. González; 21. The greening Robert Schultz; 22. Voices of color: first peoples Catherine Rainwater; 23. Voices of color: later arrivals Crystal Parikh; 24. The postmodern John Hellmann; 25. Canon formation Paul Lauter.

David Wyatt is an authority on the literature and history of the American 1960s. His first book on the subject, Out of the Sixties: Storytelling and the Vietnam Generation (Cambridge, 1994), focused on the careers of ten writer-artists born between Pearl Harbor and Ike's election and included chapters on Bruce Springsteen, Sam Shepard, Alice Walker, and Louise Glück. In 2014, he published When America Turned: Reckoning with 1968, a riveting narrative of the events of that fateful year.