Feast of Excess

In 1952, John Cage shocked audiences with 4'33", his compositional ode to the ironic power of silence. From Cage's minimalism to Chris Burden's radical performance art two decades later (in one piece he had himself shot), the post-war American avant-garde shattered the divide between low and high art, between artist and audience. They changed the cultural landscape. Feast of Excess is an engaging and accessible portrait of "The New Sensibility," as it was named by Susan Sontag in 1965. The New Sensibility sought to push culture in extreme directions: either towards stark minimalism or gaudy maximalism. Through vignette profiles of prominent figures-John Cage, Patricia Highsmith, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol, Anne Sexton, John Coltrane, Bob Dylan, Erica Jong, and Thomas Pynchon, to name a few-George Cotkin presents their bold, headline-grabbing performances and places them within the historical moment. This inventive and jaunty narrative captures the excitement of liberation in American culture. The roots of this release, as Cotkin demonstrates, began in the 1950s, boomed in the 1960s, and became the cultural norm by the 1970s. More than a detailed immersion in the history of cultural extremism, Feast of Excess raises provocative questions for our present-day culture.

George Cotkin is Professor of History at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. His previous books include Existential America (2005) and Morality's Muddy Waters (2010).

Introduction: The New Sensibility
Prelude: A New Year: Judith Malina
Emergence, 1952-1960
Ch. 1 - - 1952: Sounds of Silence: John Cage
Ch. 2 - - 1953: Erasure and Addition: Robert Rauschenberg
Ch. 3 - - 1954: The Wild One: Marlon Brando
Ch. 4 - - 1955: Ever Mysterious: Patricia Highsmith
Ch. 5 - - 1956: Howling in the Wilderness: Allen Ginsberg
Ch. 6 - - 1957: 'Great Balls of Fire': Jerry Lee Lewis
Ch. 7 - - 1958: To 'Nullify Explanation': Robert Frank
Ch. 8 - - 1959: Making a Connection: Judith Malina and Jack Gelber
Ch. 9 - - 1960: All About Me: Norman Mailer
Explosion, 1961-1969
Ch.10 - -1961: Say What? : Lenny Bruce
Ch.11- - 1962: Pop Goes the Paradigm
Ch.12- - 1963: Picking His Nose at Tradition: Andy Warhol
Ch.13- - 1964: Naming the New: Susan Sontag
Ch.14- - 1965: 'How Does It Feel?': John Coltrane and Bob Dylan
Ch.15- - 1966: Living and Dying: Anne Sexton
Ch.16- - 1967: 'Utmost Freedom of Imagination': William Styron
Ch.17- - 1968: An 'Extreme Gesture': Gore Vidal
Cultural Commonplace, 1970-1974
Ch.18- - 1969: 'Terribleness': Amiri Baraka
Ch.19- - 1970: 'I Just Love Freaks': Diane Arbus
Ch.20- - 1971: Vegas, Baby!: Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Hunter Thompson
Ch.21- - 1972: Erectile Destruction: Samuel R. Delany and Thomas Pynchon
Ch.22- - 1973: Zipless Abandon: Erica Jong
Ch.23- - 1974: Crucified and Shot: Chris Burden
Conclusion: The Shock of the Old - and New
Index