num_pages: 384
description: Leo Marx is one of the major critics of American culture, technology, and literature, and his widely influential The Machine in the Garden (Oxford, 1964) is a classic of American literary criticism. In The Pilot and the Passenger , he brings together essays written over four decades thatexplore the interplay among literature, technology, and political ideology in the United States. Grouping the essays into three sections, Marx first examines major American writers, providing brilliant analyses of Melville, Thoreau, Twain, and Frost, which reveal the ways in which these writersdefined the conflicts of our culture. The second section considers the larger controversies generated by science, technology, and urban industrialism. Marx concludes with a thought-provoking section on modern criticism, including a moving reminiscence of F.O. Matthiessen and a study of SusanSontag's account of the Vietnam War, in which Marx analyzes the incompatible mix of pastoral and revolutionary fantasies that characterized the New Left of the 1960s. A provocative and insightful contribution to American studies, this book elucidates some of the chief paradoxes and conflicts thatdefine the special quality of America's literature, politics, and people.
language: English
title: The Pilot and the Passenger: Essays on Literature, Technology, and Culture in the United States
titlecomplete: The Pilot and the Passenger: Essays on Literature, Technology, and Culture in the United States
ratings_count: 4
publisher: Oxford University Press