American cultural leaders project : oral history, 1968

Scope and Contents

This series of interviews was conducted by Joan Simpson Burns to provide material for a study of patterns in American cultural life. Burns' interest centered on her subjects' family backgrounds and early exposure to the arts as well as on their later contributions to American culture. Her interviewing method, frankly experimental, encouraged free association and frequent digressions. The principals' memoirs are supplemented by conversations with their professional associates. Interviews served as the basis of Burns' monograph The Awkward Embrace. Narrators include figures in media, higher education, government, and philanthropy. Participants and pagination: William Arrowsmith and Roger Shattuck, 16; Mody Boatwright, 12; Robert Brustein, 17; Turner Catledge, 35; Hedley Donovan, 184; Ronnie Dugger, 33; Lloyd Goodrich, 86; John Hawkes, 51; Barnaby Keeney, 23; Goddard Lieberson, 95; W. McNeil Lowry, 296; Robert McCord, 50; Harry Ransom, 87; Gordon Ray, 18; Frank Stanton, 330; Frank Thompson, 138; Mrs. Marshall Thompson, 37

Subjects

• Culture.
• Interviews.
• Oral histories (literary works)
• United States--Intellectual life.
• United States--Social life and customs.