Feast of Strangers - (Contributions in American Studies) by Tony Quagliano & Reuel Denney (Hardcover)

About the Book

Poet, social scientist, and literary essayist, Reuel Denney is best known perhaps as co-author of The Lonely Crowd with David Riesman and Nathan Glaser. These selected essays and poems, edited by Tony Quagliano, span a wide range of topics and more than a half century of American cultural history.

The topics range from international finance to leisure, from Greek mythology to Disney, from American poetry to the great oral tradition of Polynesian poetry. Woven throughout is Denney's fascinating memoir Experience in the World, an autobiographical meditation on America in the twentieth century. This unique collection presents one poet and scholar's encounter with the complexities of American life. American culture, Denney shows us, is the product of the many cultures of the world; it is indeed a Feast of Strangers. This is a work for scholars, students, and other researchers of American literature and culture studies.

Book Synopsis

Poet, social scientist, and literary essayist, Reuel Denney is best known perhaps as co-author of The Lonely Crowd with David Riesman and Nathan Glaser. These selected essays and poems, edited by Tony Quagliano, span a wide range of topics and more than a half century of American cultural history.

The topics range from international finance to leisure, from Greek mythology to Disney, from American poetry to the great oral tradition of Polynesian poetry. Woven throughout is Denney's fascinating memoir Experience in the World, an autobiographical meditation on America in the twentieth century. This unique collection presents one poet and scholar's encounter with the complexities of American life. American culture, Denney shows us, is the product of the many cultures of the world; it is indeed a Feast of Strangers. This is a work for scholars, students, and other researchers of American literature and culture studies.

Review Quotes

?[T]his well-selected and carefully arranged compendium of Denney's several voices provides us with a wonderfully satisfying introduction to the works of one of our best writers.?-Words & Music

"ÝT¨his well-selected and carefully arranged compendium of Denney's several voices provides us with a wonderfully satisfying introduction to the works of one of our best writers."-Words & Music

"[T]his well-selected and carefully arranged compendium of Denney's several voices provides us with a wonderfully satisfying introduction to the works of one of our best writers."-Words & Music

About the Author

REUEL DENNEY was one of the leading analysts of American culture, a scholar, author, teacher, journalist, and poet. His first collection of poetry The Connecticut River and Other Poems won the Yale Younger Poets Award in 1939. The author of numerous studies of American culture, including The Astonished Muse, he may be best known as a co-author, with David Riesman and Nathan Glazer, of The Lonely Crowd. He taught at the University of Chicago and the University of Hawaii. He was at work on this collection at the time of his death in 1995.

TONY QUAGLIANO is Professor of American Culture and Society at the Japan-America Institute in Honolulu. A widely published poet and essayist whose works have appeared in New Directions and Rolling Stone, he is a contributing editor to the annual anthology The Pushcart Prize--Best of the Small Presses and is editor of KAIMANA (Diamond), the journal of the Hawaii Literary Arts Council.