Suburban Tastes

Abstract

The modern American suburbs were simultaneously subject and object of a set of highly charged discourses. They were seen as compensation for the deprivations of the war years, as a solution to the perceived and actual problems associated with urban overcrowding, and as the supreme manifestation, even telos, of American perfectibility. Tied to the promise of postwar suburbia were all kinds of other aspirations—to satisfying and well-paid work, to material prosperity, to companionate marriage, to the raising of well-adjusted children, to a meaningful civic life, and to full participation in a thriving consumer economy. A great deal—perhaps too much—was invested in these tightly entwined ideals. The disappointment evident in contemporary critical commentary and latent in some of the poetry offers a measure of the height and thus unattainability of such dreams.