Wartime Kiss (ebook)

Argumento de Wartime Kiss (ebook)

"Beginning with Alfred Eisenstaedt's famous image of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square at the end of the Second World War, the art historian Alexander Nemerov's Wartime Kiss examines photos and film stills from the war period and later in the nineteen-forties. Many of the images collected here are lesser-known or obscure, and the more recognizable ones he interprets in surprising ways. . . . By providing the stories behind these images, he examines the ties between war and Hollywood, romance and violence, and provides a glimpse into a particular moment in American history."--New Yorker, Page-Turner blog

"As art historian Nemerov reminds us in this exceptional set of reflections on photography and history, photographs bring a lost moment and person directly into our view, so that what was and what is coalesce in eerie combination. . . . Nemerov's radiant meditations cast a penetrating glance into the moments captured in the photos and the larger stories they reflect."--Publishers Weekly

"Wartime Kiss is a fascinating introduction to the underlying symbolism, planned and unplanned, of the war. It encourages the reader to look with fresh eyes at old movies and photo stills hidden in private albums or stuffed away in drawers."--Stephen Williams, H-Net Reviews

One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2013

"In this engagingly written, even poetic book, Nemerov views selected images from films and photographs of the 1940s. . . . Through the experience of reading this extraordinary historical meditation, students will learn how they can engage, and engage others, in pursuing a personal and social understanding of history."--Choice

"This stunning book defies easy categorization. . . . [A] personal meditation on why we love art and the movies and the enduring power of popular culture to transcend its own moment in time. . . . Nemerov does the world, or at least avid film fans, a great service. . . . Indeed, the book flows in time like a beautifully made movie. . . . Reading Wartime Kiss is something akin to flying."--Farisa Khalid, PopMatters

"Alexander Nemerov is preoccupied with photographic or cinematic images that trigger 'a piercing, wounding sensation without explanation,' or as Roland Barthes' put it, a punctum. . . . In Wartime Kiss, his speculative study of American movie scenes and photojournalism of World War II, Nemerov 'tries to imagine a different way of writing history' that addresses and tries to illuminate the renegade aspects of the moment that seem to lurk within or just beyond the images. . . . The many pleasures of Wartime Kiss hinge on Nemerov's assemblage of anecdote and related fact."--Ron Slate, On the Seawall

"Alexander Nemerov's incandescent new book elucidates moments of being--an electrifying kiss, a lost snapshot of a dreamy Olivia de Havilland and Jimmy Stewart, the shimmery arc of a swimmer on the cover of Life magazine--and through them reveals and deciphers the invisible writing of lost time. A mesmerizing meditation by one of our most brilliant and original thinkers."--Cynthia Zarin, author of An Enlarged Heart: A Personal History

"Wartime Kiss creates an exhilarating high from a seductively humble set of connections with the strange, fragmentary pictures of the past that happen to move us. It is a luminous and deeply felt meditation on pursuing history as a poetic flight."--Elisa Tamarkin, University of California, Berkeley

"Filled with personal self-reflection and insightful analysis of photographs and films, this eloquent book is ultimately a meditation on how we know and write history. Nemerov is a wonderful stylist and he is extraordinarily adept at picking out telling details and mining them for all they are worth. Wartime Kiss is a pleasure to read."--Cécile Whiting, University of California, Irvine0Introduction 1

One
Kissing in August 1945 - Belita Jepson-Turner 5

Two
Sleeping Beauty - Olivia de Havilland 23

Three
When the World Smiled - Margaret Bourke-White 61

Four
Sentimental Mysticism - Stovall at Archbury 97

Five
Hold Back the Dawn - Olivia de Havilland 127

Acknowledgments 147
Bibliographic Notes 149
Index 169