Analysis of the 1950s
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Alan EhrenhaltÆs The Lost City: The Forgotten Virtues of Community in America challenges many of the commonly held assumptions and culturally held beliefs about progress and how the idea of progress has changed throughout the course of this American Century for Americans. In many ways, it might be seen as an elegy to the 1950s, not an era that is often elegized, but Ehrenhalt argues that it was nearly as bad as we like to think it was û in terms of insularity, pressure to conform, excessive consumerization of the economy, and suppression of the rights of women, gays and racial and religious minorities. But he also at times seems to argue that even if it were not the ideal decade in many ways, than it was still worth it because it offered to Americans something so precious (and something that is in such short supply these days) that it would have been worth giving up something important to get.One of EhrenhaltÆs most valid points is hardly original to him, but he presents it convincingly and within a context in which it is not often presented. There is no free lunch, and a sense of community, like other kinds of personal (emotional) richnesses must be paid for somehow, although (he argues) not in the kinds of drastic ways that we now think of the 1950s as having required. The book examines the 1950s as the time before Baby Boomers began to attack the institutions of education, government, religious belief û the visible sociological forms of authority û and draws connections b
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protestations that it was not nearly as bad as we all now like to think it was, it is clear in the descriptions of even this fan of the postwar years that difference was not a virtue, and that society held fewer places at the table for those who differences û because of race or sexual preference or moral ideals û they could not lay aside.
EhrenhaltÆs most convincing arguments in favor of the 1950s as a good place and one that we ourselves might want to emulate do not come when he is talking about one particular subject, but rather stem from the seamless quality of his writing and his ability to make his arguments sound convincing because he has based them on the lives of real people. He makes the point that those who could fit in during the 1950s were happy. This is a valid claim and something that we are likely to forget in our own times. All people have a right to happiness, including the white and Republican and suburban and middling classes. What was wrong with the 1950s is not that it afforded people like this a chance at happiness û of course not. What is wrong about the era is the many who were left outside the gates. Ehrenhalt does not seem to understand this distinction, or if he does he is being jesuitical. Or perhaps h
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Approximate Word count = 1413
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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