Description
Book SynopsisWhen Cowboys Come Home: Veterans, Authenticity, and Manhood in Post–World War II America is a cultural and intellectual history of the 1950s that argues that World War II led to a breakdown of traditional markers of manhood and opened space for veterans to reimagine what masculinity could mean. One particularly important strand of thought, which influenced later anxieties over “other-direction” and “conformity,” argued that masculinity was not defined by traits like bravery, stoicism, and competitiveness but instead by authenticity, shared camaraderie, and emotional honesty. To elucidate this challenge to traditional “frontiersman” masculinity, Aaron George presents three intellectual biographies of important veterans who became writers after the war: James Jones, the writer of the monumentally important war novel
From Here to Eternity; Stewart Stern, one of the most important screenwriters of the fifties and sixties, including for
Rebel without a Cause; and Edward Field, a bohemian poet who used poetry to explore his love for other men. Through their lives, George shows how wartime disabused men of the notion that war was inherently a brave or heroic enterprise and how the alienation they felt upon their return led them to value the authentic connections they made with other men during the war.
Trade Review"A fascinating story of three writers—veterans of World War II in search of authenticity."
-- James B. Gilbert * author of Men in the Middle: Searching for Masculinity in the 1950s *
"Beautifully written and sensitively wrought,
When Cowboys Come Home rejects the images of WWII veterans as pugilists or Organization Men. Through neglected figures, including James Jones and Edward Fields, Aaron George audaciously insists that vets took from their war experience a thirst for male bonding, camaraderie, and intense relationships."
-- David Steigerwald * author of The Sixties and the End of Modern America *
Table of ContentsPreface: What We Bring Home
Introduction: Hemingway's Shadow
Part I Cowboys on the Wartime Frontier
1 Never a Secondhand Man: James Jones and the Perils of Homecoming
2 The Big Noise: Stewart Stern's Long March to Gar Naruah
3 The "Age of Heroes": Edward Field and Gay Authenticity in the Midst of War
Part II Coming Home
4 The Hipster, the Prophet, and the Angel: Writers on the Edge of Eternity
5 The Men Who Came Running: James Jones and the Handy Writers' Colony
6 Waiting for Peter Pan: Adulthood and How to Attain It
7 The Continuing Adventures of Icarus: Edward Field's Life in the Postwar Closet
Conclusion: A Nation of Gray Flannel Men
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
