Masscult and Midcult Essays Against the American Grain [Paperback]

A New York Review Books Original

An uncompromising contrarian, a passionate polemicist, a man of quick wit and wide learning, an anarchist, a pacifist, and a virtuoso of the slashing phrase, Dwight Macdonald was an indefatigable and indomitable critic of America’s susceptibility to well-meaning cultural fakery: all those estimable, eminent, prizewinning works of art that are said to be good and good for you and are not. He dubbed this phenomenon “Midcult” and he attacked it not only on aesthetic but on political grounds. Midcult rendered people complacent and compliant, secure in their common stupidity but neither happy nor free.

This new selection of Macdonald’s finest essays, assembled by John Summers, the editor ofThe Baffler, reintroduces a remarkable American critic and writer. In the era of smart, sexy, and everything indie, Macdonald remains as pertinent and challenging as ever.“He was a radical, he was a conservative, he was compassionate, he was scathing. He had exquisite taste in many a literary matter. But his transcendental virtue, that unique quality which sets him far apart from all other literary figures for whom one can feel respect, was that he had the rare gift of always speaking out of his own voice.” —Norman Mailer

“Dwight Macdonald was a generalist whose specialty was capsizing conventional wisdom, exposing highfalutin fraudulence and filing heretical dissents.” —James Wolcott,The New York Times

“Those who read much and care about the quality of what they read ought to be grateful for the consistent tough-mindedness of Dwight MacDonald. . . He is provocative and well worth rereading. The quality of his essays is in direct ratio to
their ambitiousness.” —Larry McMurtry,The Washington Post

Dwight Macdonald's...real legacy lies in the series of unforgiving, inflammatory and ferociously witty essays he wrote durinl³-