Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 24

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Popular Culture Review

their faith in both the social and scientific power of
the new methodology. ...Though the fervent adherence
to the ideal of complete objectivity declines somewhat
under the pressures of economic chaos, the commitment
to a scientific analysis of social problems remained
unshakable (pp. 29-30).
This striving for value-free inquiry into the social dilemmas
of the Depression found its fullest treatment in the documentary
journalism of Edmund Wilson, and, to a lesser extent, Sherwood
Anderson. In his 1932 book. The American Jitters, Wilson chronicled a
year in the life of Depression-tom America—October 1930 to October
1931. A patchwork of the common people whom Wilson encountered
on a cross-country journey, the book is a testament to the struggle for
survival. By writing the book in the present tense and leaving
himself out of the narrative except in the role of the reporter asking
questions, Wilson placed the reader in a front-row seat as the scenes
unfolded. The writer served as camera, and for the most part he
reserved judgment on what he documented. If excessive individualism
was Wilson's underlying message in the American vignettes he
presented, it was a message that he wanted the readers to arrive at
based on objective accounts of ordinary people fighting for survival.
A chapter in The American Jitters called "A Bad Day in
Brooklyn" underscored Wilson's attempt to recount objectively the
impact of the Depression on ordinary Americans. In an
unembellished, matter-of-fact style, Wilson told of the suicide
attempts by three disheartened Brooklyn residents on March 31,1931.
The writer described in painstaking detail what led these three very
different people to attempt suicide. The death of the human spirit
because of economic desperation and emotional turmoil was what
Wilson was after here, but he left it to the readers to decide what
psychic connection to make of these suicide attempts. Wilson simply
turned on the "camera" and let the readers observe as the gas
enveloped the apartment or the trigger was pulled (Wilson, 1932, pp.
121-132).
Juxtaposing seemingly disparate people and events was a
favorite technique of Wilson in The American Jitters. In a chapter
titled "Two Protests," Wilson examined a nonviolent protest that was
met with deaf ears by the Hoover administration, and another