Overview

This collection of eight wide-ranging essays on aspects of American culture, first published in 1988, has been out of print for many years. It explores guns, cars, racism, politics and paranoia in startling ways, unparallelled before or since. It is even more relevant today. Our edition is completely reset and corrected, with a new introduction by Michael Hrebeniak assessing Mottram's achievement in the context of today's USA

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9781874400929

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Reviews

"""He ranges widely and deeply, interested in imaginative writing from James Fenimore Cooper to Burroughs (Edgar Rice orWilliam) and beyond. Engineers and visionaries like Buckminster Fuller intrigue him. So does the culture of mass entertainment and technology.... He is fascinated by official pronouncements and what they conceal; by apocalypse and fantasy; by the fusion of real and surreal in the scenarios of the United States. Eric Mottram is an original and so are his densely documented yet visionary writings."" - MARCUS CUNLIFFE ""Such an unrestrained zeal for knowledge and perspective is both refreshing and stimulating."" - STUART KIDD, Journal of American Studies ""Eric Mottram is a fine critic and essayist. He is truly an intellectual citizen of the twentieth century world."" - WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS"

""He ranges widely and deeply, interested in imaginative writing from James Fenimore Cooper to Burroughs (Edgar Rice orWilliam) and beyond. Engineers and visionaries like Buckminster Fuller intrigue him. So does the culture of mass entertainment and technology.... He is fascinated by official pronouncements and what they conceal; by apocalypse and fantasy; by the fusion of real and surreal in the scenarios of the United States. Eric Mottram is an original and so are his densely documented yet visionary writings."" - MARCUS CUNLIFFE ""Such an unrestrained zeal for knowledge and perspective is both refreshing and stimulating."" - STUART KIDD, Journal of American Studies ""Eric Mottram is a fine critic and essayist. He is truly an intellectual citizen of the twentieth century world."" - WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

Author Information

ERIC MOTTRAM (1924-1995) was a hugely influential British teacher, critic, editor and poet. He taught English and American literature at King's College London for many years, as well as in visiting lectureships all over the world. He co-founded the Institute of United States Studies in London and was a pioneer of the discipline that became cultural studies. He was a pivotal figure in the British Poetry Revival during the 1970s, and introduced the Beat Generation writers to British and European readerships. Michael Hrebeniak is Founder and Convenor of the New School of the Anthropocene (London) and Lecturer in Film Poetics at University College London. Prior to this he taught literature and visual culture at the University of Cambridge. He was Eric Mottram's final PhD student.

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