Part literary analysis, part cultural history, this is an engaging
and perceptive study of the philosophy, achievements, and limits of
the "documentary" - a style and genre which was born and perfected
during the '30's to convey the social realities of America during
the Depression. Stott (American Studies, Univ. of Texas) draws on
an amazingly wide range of sources: the novels of Steinbeck, the
radio broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow, the choreography of Martha
Graham, the speeches of FDR, the anthologies of the Federal
Writers' Project and the photography of Dorothea Lange and Walker
Evans. Stott contends that these works belie the notion that the
essence of the documentary is "informational"; on the contrary the
intent was primarily and powerfully emotional - the aim to arouse
pity and anger by revealing, in the words of James Agee, "a portion
of unimagined existence." It was through the social documentary
that America discovered the plight of the sharecropper, the
immigrant, the Negro, the Indian and the poor; an essentially
populist if not proletariat genre, it dignified the usual and
leveled the extraordinary. Its underlying aim was always to extend
compassion, the first step in rectifying social and economic
inequities. To achieve that goal documentaries consciously appealed
to primitive emotionalism, which meant their reportage was often
distortive and reductivist. In the final section of this study - a
gold mine for anyone interested in the social and psychological
impact of the Depression - Stott turns to Agee's Let Us Now Praise
Famous Men, a work which perfected and paradoxically subverted the
documentary mode. When evaluating the impact of the Evans-Agee
study of southern sharecroppers, Stott points out that it was
neither reform-minded nor ameliorist; Agee despaired of progressive
social improvement though he struggled powerfully against his own
tragic vision of the ineradicability of human suffering. One can
disagree with this reading of Agee but what is indisputable is
StoWs contribution to our understanding of this crucial decade in
America's coming of age and his superlative exploration of that
era's documentary heritage. (Kirkus Reviews)
"A comprehensive inquiry into the attitudes and ambitions that
characterized the documentary impulse of the thirties. The subject
is a large one, for it embraces (among much else) radical
journalism, academic sociology, the esthetics of photography,
Government relief programs, radio broadcasting, the literature of
social work, the rhetoric of political persuasion, and the effect
of all these on the traditional arts of literature, painting,
theater and dance. The great merit of Mr. Stott's study lies
precisely in its wide-ranging view of this complex
terrain."--Hilton Kramer, " New York Times Book Review "
"[Scott] might be called the Aristotle of documentary. No one
before him has so comprehensively surveyed the achievement of the
1930s, suggesting what should be admired, what condemned, and why;
no one else has so persuasively furnished an aesthetic for judging
the form."--"Times Literary Supplement "
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