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<h1 style="font-family: sans-serif; color: black;
font-size: 19.5px; display: table-cell; vertical-align:
top;">The Age of the Crisis of Man:<br>
Thought and Fiction in America, 1933–1973<br>
<span style="font-weight: lighter;">Mark Greif</span></h1>
<p style="font-family: sans-serif; color: black;
font-size: small;"><b>One of<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Flavorwire</i>’s
10 Must-Read Academic Books for 2015</b></p>
<p style="font-family: sans-serif; color: black;
font-size: small;">Hardcover | 2014 |<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><b>$29.95</b><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>/ £19.95 | ISBN:
9780691146393<br>
448 pp. | 6 x 9 |<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><img
src="cid:part3.09090202.08040108@ziggo.nl" border="0"><a
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small;">SHOPPING CART</a></p>
<p style="font-family: sans-serif; color: black;
font-size: small;">eBook | ISBN: 9781400852109 |<span
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<p style="font-family: sans-serif; color: black;
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href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10326.html#TOC"
style="font-family: sans-serif; font-weight: 600;
color: black; text-decoration: none; font-size:
small;">Table of Contents</a><br>
<a class="san"
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small;">Chapter 1[PDF]<span
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<p style="font-family: sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant:
normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;
line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align:
-webkit-left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color:
rgb(255, 255, 255);">In a midcentury American cultural
episode forgotten today, intellectuals of all schools
shared a belief that human nature was under threat. The
immediate result was a glut of dense, abstract books on
the “nature of man.” But the dawning “age of the crisis
of man,” as Mark Greif calls it, was far more than a
historical curiosity. In this ambitious intellectual and
literary history, Greif recovers this lost line of
thought to show how it influenced society, politics, and
culture before, during, and long after World War II.</p>
<p style="font-family: sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant:
normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;
line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align:
-webkit-left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color:
rgb(255, 255, 255);">During the 1930s and 1940s, fears
of the barbarization of humanity energized New York
intellectuals, Chicago protoconservatives, European
Jewish émigrés, and native-born bohemians to seek
“re-enlightenment,” a new philosophical account of human
nature and history. After the war this effort diffused,
leading to a rebirth of modern human rights and a new
power for the literary arts.</p>
<p style="font-family: sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant:
normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;
line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align:
-webkit-left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color:
rgb(255, 255, 255);">Critics’ predictions of a “death of
the novel” challenged writers to invest bloodless
questions of human nature with flesh and detail.
Hemingway, Faulkner, and Richard Wright wrote flawed
novels of abstract man. Succeeding them, Ralph Ellison,
Saul Bellow, Flannery O’Connor, and Thomas Pynchon
constituted a new guard who tested philosophical
questions against social realities—race, religious
faith, and the rise of technology—that kept difference
and diversity alive.</p>
<p style="font-family: sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant:
normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;
line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align:
-webkit-left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color:
rgb(255, 255, 255);">By the 1960s, the idea of
“universal man” gave way to moral antihumanism, as new
sensibilities and social movements transformed what had
come before. Greif’s reframing of a foundational debate
takes us beyond old antagonisms into a new future, and
gives a prehistory to the fractures of our own era.</p>
<p style="font-family: sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant:
normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;
line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align:
-webkit-left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color:
rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Mark Greif</b><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>is assistant
professor of literary studies at the New School. He is a
founder and editor of the journal<i>n+1</i>.</p>
<p style="font-family: sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant:
normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;
line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align:
-webkit-left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color:
rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a name="reviews"></a><b>Review:</b></p>
<p style="font-family: sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant:
normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;
line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align:
-webkit-left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color:
rgb(255, 255, 255);">"An important book, a brilliant
book, an exasperating book. . . . In<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The Age of
the Crisis of Man: Thought and Fiction in America,
1933-1973</i>, the gifted essayist Mark Greif, who
reveals himself to be also a skillful historian of
ideas, charts the history of the 20th-century reckonings
with the definition of 'man.'"<b>--Leon Wieseltier,<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>New York
Times Book Review</i></b></p>
<p style="font-family: sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant:
normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;
line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align:
-webkit-left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color:
rgb(255, 255, 255);">"[<i>The Age of the Crisis of Man</i><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>is] a brilliant
contribution to the history of ideas, one of the rare
books that reshapes the present by reinterpreting the
past."<b>--Adam Kirsch,<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Tablet</i></b></p>
<p style="font-family: sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant:
normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;
line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align:
-webkit-left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color:
rgb(255, 255, 255);">"'One of the striking features of
the discourse of man to modern eyes, in a sense the most
striking, is how unreadable it is, how tedious, how
unhelpful. The puzzle is why it is unreadable.' Thus,
Mark Greif in his exhilarating study<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The Age of
the Crisis of Man: Thought and Fiction in America
1933-1973</i>. By 'the discourse of man' Greif means
the vast midcentury literature on human dignity, from
Being and Nothingness, to the 'Family of Man' photo
exhibition, to the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights--a discourse that Greif interrogates with verve,
erudition, sympathy, and suspicion, and that he follows
into the fiction of our time."<b>--Lorin Stein,<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Paris
Review</i></b></p>
<p style="font-family: sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant:
normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;
line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align:
-webkit-left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color:
rgb(255, 255, 255);">"[<i>The Age of the Crisis of Man</i>]
works to uncover a major discourse in American letters,
a largely postwar dialogue about the human (or
posthuman) condition. It's a formidable project on
Greif's part, one that could change the story we tell
about intellectual politics in the 20th century."<b>--Jonathan
Sturgeon,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Flavorwire</i></b></p>
<p style="font-family: sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant:
normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;
line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align:
-webkit-left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color:
rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Endorsement:</b></p>
<p style="font-family: sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant:
normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;
line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align:
-webkit-left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color:
rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a class="alt"
href="http://press.princeton.edu/quotes/q10326.html"
style="font-family: sans-serif; font-weight: 600;
color: rgb(204, 51, 0); text-decoration: none;
font-size: small;">More Endorsements</a></p>
<p style="font-family: sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant:
normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;
line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align:
-webkit-left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color:
rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a name="TOC"></a><b>Table of
Contents:</b></p>
<p style="font-family: sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
font-size: small; font-style: normal; font-variant:
normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;
line-height: normal; orphans: auto; text-align:
-webkit-left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color:
rgb(255, 255, 255);"><i>Preface</i><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>ix<br>
PART I Genesis 1<br>
CHAPTER 1 Introduction<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The “Crisis
of Man” as Obscurity and Re-enlightenment</i><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>3<br>
CHAPTER 2 Currents through the War 27<br>
CHAPTER 3 The End of the War and After 61<br>
PART II Transmission 101<br>
CHAPTER 4 Criticism and the Literary Crisis of Man 103<br>
PART III Studies in Fiction 143<br>
CHAPTER 5 Saul Bellow and Ralph Ellison<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Man and
History, the Questions</i><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>145<br>
CHAPTER 6 Ralph Ellison and Saul Bellow<span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><i>History and
Man, the Answers</i><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>181<br>
CHAPTER 7 Flannery O’Connor and Faith 204<br>
CHAPTER 8 Thomas Pynchon and Technology 227<br>
PART IV Transmutation 253<br>
CHAPTER 9 The Sixties as Big Bang 255<br>
CHAPTER 10 Universal Philosophy and Antihumanist Theory
281<br>
CONCLUSION Moral History and the Twentieth Century 316<br>
<i>Notes</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>331<br>
<i>Acknowledgments</i><span
class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>401<br>
<i>Index</i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>405</p>
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