Summary
Cool. It was a new word and a new way to be , and in a single generation, it became the supreme compliment of American culture. The Origins of Cool in Postwar America uncovers the hidden history of this concept and its new set of codes that came to define a global attitude and style. As Joel Dinerstein reveals in this dynamic book, cool began as a stylish defiance of racism, a challenge to suppressed sexuality, a philosophy of individual rebellion, and a youthful search for social change.
Through eye-opening portraits of iconic figures, Dinerstein illuminates the cultural connections and artistic innovations among Lester Young, Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Jack Kerouac, Albert Camus, Marlon Brando, and James Dean, among others. We eavesdrop on conversations among Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Miles Davis, and on a forgotten debate between Lorraine Hansberry and Norman Mailer over the "white Negro" and black cool. We come to understand how the cool worlds of Beat writers and Method actors emerged from the intersections of film noir, jazz, and existentialism. Out of this mix, Dinerstein sketches nuanced definitions of cool that unite concepts from African-American and Euro-American culture: the stylish stoicism of the ethical rebel loner; the relaxed intensity of the improvising jazz musician; the effortless, physical grace of the Method actor. To be cool is not to be hip and to be hot is definitely not to be cool.
This is the first work to trace the history of cool during the Cold War by exploring the intersections of film noir, jazz, existential literature, Method acting, blues, and rock and roll. Dinerstein reveals that they came together to create something completely new--and that something is cool .
Author Notes
Joel Dinerstein was the curator of American Cool, an acclaimed exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, and the author of its accompanying catalog. He is also the author of the award-winning Swinging the Machine: Modernity, Technology, and African-American Culture and Coach: A History of New York Cool . He is a cultural historian and professor of English at Tulane University.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Dinerstein (Swinging the Machine) traces the trajectory of the notion of American cool through the cultural milieu of the 1920s through the early 1960s, emphasizing its deep associations with jazz culture. "Keeping cool" originally served as a survival tactic against the many injustices of the Jim Crow era, and it found triumphant voices in the improvisations of jazz heroes like Lester Young and Billie Holiday who refused to cater to the expectations of white audiences. Dinerstein deftly reveals points of convergence between expressions of cool in jazz, film noir, and existentialist literature; each rejected societal constructs perceived as inexorably flawed or corrupt (such as capitalism or the law) and celebrated the "ethical rebel," always a rugged loner. In the 1950s, this rebel ethic shifted focus, emphasizing instead rebellion against what was perceived as vacuous material culture and consumer society, a sentiment lucidly expressed in Kerouac's On the Road. Stars like Frank Sinatra (who headlined events for Martin Luther King Jr. and refused to patronize white-only establishments) gave substance to the celluloid rebels of the noir-era, becoming real-life rebels against racial injustice. Impressively researched and broad in its reach, drawing from film, music, theater, philosophy, and literature, this book approaches the subject with scholarly authority while remaining eminently readable. Much more than just a history of cool, this book is a studied examination of the very real, often problematic social issues that popular culture responds to. 40 b&w halftones. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
The anxiety that followed WWII produced a new type of character in a variety of genres, the antihero. This stimulating book makes a good place to begin understanding that phenomenon and the related emergence of the concept of cool. Dinerstein's focus is the definition of cool as a kind of relaxed dignity, which became predominant in literature (Camus, Richard Wright, Kerouac, Sartre, and de Beauvoir), song (Sinatra, Billie Holiday), music (blues and jazz quintessentially, Miles Davis), and film (Bogart, Mitchum, Brando). The text traces the various embodiments of cool, individual by individual. Starting out with Miles (though cool was embodied before the war by tenor saxophonist Lester Young), and focusing on the themes and iconic figures of cool, the author spells it out in painstaking, occasionally tortured, detail. Cool is a provocative concept, but Dinerstein writes in an overly academic style that drains the theme of some of its appeal. Still, the cool subject mostly triumphs over the sometimes dull treatment.--Levine, Mark Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
TO END A PRESIDENCY By Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz. (Basic, $28.) Should a president be impeached? And if so, how do you go about it? Tribe and Matz, both highly respected legal scholars, play out various scenarios, bringing to bear a sense of history and a deep knowledge of constitutional law. when life gives you LULULEMONS By Lauren Weisberger. (Simon & Schuster, $26.99.) From the author of "The Devil Wears Prada" comes a sequel featuring Emily Charlton, ex-assistant to the fashion editor Miranda Priestly. Charlton is now living in the Connecticut suburbs and her career as a Hollywood image consultant has suffered a number of blows, ft's time for an uplifting comeback. the origins of cool in postwar America By Joel Dinerstein. (University of Chicago, $40.) Exploring the intersection of all those midcentury markers of hipness - from film noir to jazz to existential literature - Dinerstein maps out a grand unified theory of "cool," as the concept that came to define the postwar era. not that bad Edited by Roxane Gay. (Harper Perennial, paper, $16.99.) What does it mean to live in a world in which women are, as one essay in this collection puts it, "routinely secondguessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked" simply for speaking their minds? Gay gathers a group of feminist writers who offer answers, ruthless tide By Al Roker. (William Morrow/HarperCollins, $28.99.) The "Today" show co-host and weatherman writes a narrative history of the 1889 Johnstown flood, the deadliest in American history, immersing himself, for a change, in the weather of the past. & Noteworthy "En route to my 20 th college reunion, 1 started reading Elif Batuman's the idiot. Its clever, awkward, insecure protagonist, Selin, is an unforgettable character. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, is a lovelorn Slavicist entering Harvard in 1995, when email was becoming ubiquitous but smartphones were far in the future. The novel is a terrific satire, because it comes from a sympathetic place, (ft even helped relieve my anxiety about the reunion, which turned out to be fun.) One memorable nonfiction book 1 just finished is Lauren Hilgers's patriot number one, a richly reported account of a Chinese dissident who settles in Flushing, Queens, the neighborhood where 1 grew up. ft's the second book I've read about Flushing lately - the other is Atticus Lish's debut novel, preparation for the next life. From radically different narrative perspectives, both books offer compelling portraits of the hopes and disappointments that exist in one of New York's fastest-growing immigrant communities." -SEWELL CHAN, INTERNATIONAL NEWS EDITOR, ON WHAT HE'S READING.
Choice Review
Dinerstein (English, Tulane Univ.) delivers that rare kind of book, one that is both academically sound and deserving of a large readership beyond colleges, universities, and discerning intellectuals. The subject is inherently fascinating. The book looks at how "cool" developed in common parlance and culture in the US following WW II. Weaving micro-biographies into a coherent analytical framework, Dinerstein offers telling presentations of musical, cinematic, and literary greats who exuded antiheroic qualities in some manner. Included in the discussion are such musicians as Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Sonny Rollins, and Miles Davis; film stars on the order of Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, and James Dean; and such writers as Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, and Lorraine Hansberry. The Origins of Cool focuses particularly on jazz, noir, and existential literature and how they intersected, drawing on black-and-white roots. Appropriately, the book closes with a look at John F. Kennedy and Paul Newman, exemplars of cool in their own fashion. This brief review hardly does justice to this enthralling study. Pinpointing highlights is difficult because the book is replete with them. Happily, too, it is a good read. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. --Robert C. Cottrell, California State University, Chico
Library Journal Review
What is cool? According to Dinerstein (English, Tulane Univ.; curator, National Portrait Gallery's American Cool exhibit), "cool" originated within the realms of jazz, noir film, literature, and existential philosophy, encompassing defiance, rebellion, self-mastery, masking, and self-possession. Dinerstein uses concrete examples as designated in his delineation of Postwar I (1945-53) and Postwar II (1953-60), laying out a cohesive look at how cool started with jazz great Lester Young and evolved to embody the vulnerable rebels portrayed by Marlon Brando and James Dean. The work shows the progression of "cool" as opposition to the social norms of capitalism and Christianity, using jazz and blues as an "emotional conduit" for expressing rage within an unequal society. Although Dinerstein does mention women (Ida Lupino, Simone de Beauvoir, Billie Holiday, Lorraine Hansberry), he shows that cool is mainly a masculine construct. All versions of the concept, however, have one requirement: authenticity. -VERDICT This well researched, scholarly book is an excellent addition to understanding the -cultural landscape of postwar America and how it helped shape what we see as cool today. Highly recommended for academic collections.-Maria Bagshaw, Elgin Community Coll. Lib., IL © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.