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Chargement... The City's End: Two Centuries of Fantasies, Fears, and Premonitions of New York's Destruction (2008)par Max Page
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Long before 9/11, visions of the destruction of New York City were a part of America's collective imagination From nineteenth-century paintings of fires raging through New York City to scenes of Manhattan engulfed by a gigantic wave in the 1998 movie Deep Impact, images of the city's end have been prolific and diverse. Why have Americans repeatedly imagined New York's destruction? What do the fantasies of annihilation played out in virtually every form of literature and art mean? This book is the first to investigate two centuries of imagined cataclysms visited upon New York, and to provide a critical historical perspective to our understanding of the events of September 11, 2001. Max Page examines the destruction fantasies created by American writers and imagemakers at various stages of New York's development. Seen in every medium from newspapers and films to novels, paintings, and computer software, such images, though disturbing, have been continuously popular. Page demonstrates with vivid examples and illustrations how each era's destruction genre has reflected the city's economic, political, racial, or physical tensions, and he also shows how the images have become forces in their own right, shaping Americans' perceptions of New York and of cities in general. ]]> Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)813.509327471Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th CenturyClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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Page's examination is chronological, with all the strengths and weaknesses that come with this approach. In the nineteenth century, destruction typically took the form of some sort of natural disaster, a modern-day biblical cleansing that would wipe away the sins Americans already associated with Gotham. By the early twentieth century, some authors offered social criticisms as well as moral ones, as did W. E. B. Du Bois when he penned a short story that used the survival of a black man and a white woman to make a broader statement about racism. The destruction of the city was also sometimes accomplished at the hands of an foreign attacker, a useful way of making political points about preparedness and vulnerability. By the 1960s, the sense of urban crisis came to predominate in many depictions, suggesting that its destruction would come from within rather than without. Though the attacks of September 11 brought a temporary moratorium on such explorations, it was not long before the city was being flooded, frozen, and smashed once again, demonstrating that as long as New York remained America's premier metropolis it would be continued to be targeted by writers, artists, and film makers.
Broad ranging and generously supplemented with illustrations, Page's book is an interesting examination of the meaning behind fictional destruction of New York. The September 11 attacks loom large within his analysis as an intersection between life and the theme of the works in his study, suggesting just how much of our fixation on this day was rooted in the longstanding fixation he examines. Yet his focus is somewhat idiosyncratic, as he excludes many relevant works (such as Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka's novel [b:Warday|985060|Warday|Whitley Strieber|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1205036254s/985060.jpg|3004200]) while important historical events such as the burning of the city during the American Revolution barely rate a mention. As a result the book ultimately proves to be something of a disappointment; while readers interested in New York City or disaster fiction with find points of interest in it, most will finish it wanting more than what the author offers, which is a shame given the promise of his topic. ( )