Gothic Perspectives on the American Experience

FROM THE PUBLISHER

From the founding of the United States to the present day, America's conception of itself as a functional democracy has been clouded by a dark suspicion of subversion, conspiracy, and failure. Gothic Perspectives on the American Experience explores this dark side of America's past, from the era of Thomas Jefferson and Charles Brockden Brown to that of John F. Kennedy and Oliver Stone. Drawing upon insights garnered from history, literature, pulp fiction, and film, this book probes unresolved divisions between adherents of the authentic American dream - which is based on faith in civilized dialogue within an open political process - and an alternative conception of America based in commercialism, covert politics, and faith in the effectiveness of armed might. Although this alternative vision found its most virulent expression in the fascist ideology of Nazi Germany, the philosophical and psychological precedents of modern fascism were latent in the philistinism, nationalism, and militarism of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American history. According to some, these latent tendencies eventually culminated in a Cold War conflict between John F. Kennedy and the military-industrial-intelligence complex, sometimes referred to as the shadow government. According to the Gothic imagination, that conflict cost John F. Kennedy his life. This book examines the tensions between democratic idealism and covert fascism in the American experience, the Gothic dilemmas those tensions have provoked, and the contributions made by some of America's preeminent authors, politicians, historians, and filmmakers toward reforming an increasingly dystopian society along the utopian lines envisioned by the Founding Fathers.

SYNOPSIS