American Sophistication : How the Casual Became Cool.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Posnock, Ross.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (489 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2026.

Summary:

The fascinating story of sophistication in the United States, from the founding to the present Is there such a thing as "American sophistication"--or is it a contradiction in terms?Those questions have been up for grabs since America's founding.The idea of sophistication has always left Americans uneasy.

Contents:

Cover

Contents

Introduction: The Sophistication Game

The American Way

Sincere Actors

Lunch at Barneys

Virginia Carelessness

Sophisticates Land in Houston

Camp in New York

Precarious Archive

The Appropriation Game

A Few Snapshots

1. Founding Fathers

Fictions of National Character

Art of Concealing Art

Rousseau's Problem with Politeness

Jefferson in Motion

Hume and Hypocrisy

Old Money in England and America

Style as/and Politics

Roman Disinterestedness

2. Making Democratic Manners

Skating On Surfaces

Gentlemanly Balance

Poise and Envy

Inner Aristocrats

Homegrown Sprezzatura

3. License in the Gilded Age

Nietzsche and Wilde

Pausing

Tocqueville's Drift

Stanford White

"Making a Scene"

James versus Virtue

4. Urbanity Triumphant

Map of Manhattan

Enter Harlem

Comedy American Style

Smart Sets

Banker about Town

Mencken and His Tribe

Dorothy Parker

Black Pagan Aesthete

A Born Duke

Astaire Doesn't Do Real Things

Interlude. Lethal Dandies

Contentious Cool

Icy Hauteur

Forget Niceness

Übermenschen in Chicago

Mock Mayhem in Hollywood

Hanniba lLecter

5. How a Sophisticate Is Made

Il Bibi

"Charm Incorporated"

Uses of Insincerity

"A Work of Art Myself"

Mary McCarthy and the Uses of Vulgarity

"Tiresome" New York Intellectuals

Culture Heroine

Northwest Athena

Anti-Isabel Archer

Sexual and Intellectual Currents

6. The Pause That Refreshes

Hef

In the Moment

Nervous Knowingness

Kennedy Atmosphere

Improv

Cool on Broadway

"Hello Gorgeous"

A Threat to Marriage

"Silk-Underwear Music"

Eames Lounge Chair

Nichols and May

Frank O'Hara Going on his Nerve

"Nobody Understood Art"

7. Disassembling the "Exceptional Negro".

"Particular and Invincible Style"

African Cool

Hansberry's village voice

When Baldwin Battled in Cambridge and Paris

Trust in Nakedness

Colonial Insurgency

"Goodbye Mr. Attorney General"

Getting Down to Earth

8. Leonard Bernstein and the Open Secret

Can't Say No

"I Want It"

Experiment in Marriage

Citizen Musician

Whitman

Secret on Display

Tár

Coda

Notes

Acknowledgments

References

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Other Format:

Print version: Posnock, Ross American Sophistication

ISBN:

9780691289441

OCLC:

1597386954