A Permanent Etcetera: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Post-War America

Ezra Pound sums up American culture as a "tradition of the new". This collection of essays in honour of Eric Mottram seeks to explore selective but interacting aspects of post-war America as precisely a culture whose inclination for better or worse has been towards the future. "A permanent etc" looks at a number of key elements which have determined the culture of America since World War II and explores the principal forms in which it has expressed itself. Its new kinds of fiction and poetry, its popular culture, its cinema, its photography, its response to the new ethnic demographics, its tradition of feminism, its development of cybernetics and robotology, its response to Cuba and its self-envisioning as passed on by Alistair Cooke all come under the scrutiny of Britain's leading scholars in American studies.