Intellectuals incorporated : politics, art, and ideas inside Henry Luce's media empire

Author(s)

    • Vanderlan, Robert

Bibliographic Information

Intellectuals incorporated : politics, art, and ideas inside Henry Luce's media empire

Robert Vanderlan

(Politics and culture in modern America)

University of Pennsylvania Press, c2010

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Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Publishing tycoon Henry Luce famously championed many conservative causes, and his views as a capitalist and cold warrior were reflected in his glossy publications. Republican Luce aimed squarely for the Middle American masses, yet his magazines attracted intellectually and politically ambitious minds who were moved by the democratic aspirations of the New Deal and the left. Much of the best work of intellectuals such as James Agee, Archibald MacLeish, Daniel Bell, John Hersey, and Walker Evans owes a great debt to their experiences writing for Luce and his publications. Intellectuals Incorporated tells the story of the serious writers and artists who worked for Henry Luce and his magazines Time, Fortune, and Life between 1923 and 1960, the period when the relationship between intellectuals, the culture industry, and corporate capitalism assumed its modern form. Countering the notions that working for corporations means selling out and that the true life of the mind must be free from institutional ties, historian Robert Vanderlan explains how being embedded in the corporate culture industries was vital to the creative efforts of mid-century thinkers. Illuminating their struggles through careful research and biographical vignettes, Vanderlan shows how their contributions to literary journalism and the wider political culture would have been impossible outside Luce's media empire. By paying attention to how these writers and photographers balanced intellectual aspiration with journalistic perspiration, Intellectuals Incorporated advances the idea of the intellectual as a connected public figure who can engage and criticize organizations from within.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Intellectuals in Mass Culture America Chapter One: On the Road to Time Inc. Chapter Two: Giving the People the Truth the Time Inc. Way Chapter Three: The Search for a "Radical Capitalism" at Fortune Magazine Chapter Four: Intellectuals Visible and Invisible Chapter Five: The Intellectual as Insider at Time Inc. Chapter Six: Journalism and Politics at Time Magazine Chapter Seven: Interstitial Intellectuals and the Liberal Consensus Epilogue: Intellectuals in Their American Century and in Ours Archival Sources and Abbreviations Notes Index Acknowledgments

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