Literature, Amusement, and Technology in the Great Depression

This study examines the exchange between literature and recreational practices in 1930s America. William Solomon argues that autobiographical writers like Edward Dahlberg and Henry Miller derived aesthetic inspiration from urban manifestations of the carnival spirit: Coney Island amusement parks, burlesque, vaudeville, and the dime museum display of human oddities. More broadly, he demonstrates that the literary projects of the period pivoted around images of grotesquely disfigured bodies which appeared as part of this recreational culture.