Gates of Eden: American Culture in the Sixties

Rating:
Summary: Gates of Eden
Review: Author Dickstein would have better served his readers if he had given his work the subtitle it really deserves: American literature in the 50s and 60s. The book is given over almost entirely to literary criticism beginning with Ginsberg and working its way through 50s Jewish literature, the new journalism, African-American authors, and postmodernism (Barth, Pynchon, Barthelme, etc..).

This was not what I was expecting going into the book and so at first I was rather disappointed as it seemed that it would be a rather high-brow academic look at the era it deals with. But I was won over by Dickstein's deft handling and insight into the literature of the time. As the book progressed there were random glimpses of an unorthodox approach to criticism which I enjoyed very much. Any lit critic who will say of a work, "This may be bullsh--, but it's significant bullsh--" wins my immediate respect.

So don't look to Gates of Eden for another rehash of Columbia, Vietnam, Chicago.... But if you want an original and entertaining analysis of how American literature influenced and was influenced by the turbulence of that era, you won't regret starting here.