Unbuttoning America

In this lively account of the writing, publication, and legacy of the 1956 bestselling novel, "Peyton Place," Ardis Cameron tells how the story of a patricide in a small New England village became a cultural phenomenon.

Ardis Cameron is Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of Southern Maine, and the author of Radicals of the Worst.

University of Southern Maine American Studies professor Cameron (Radicals of the Worst Sort) presents a unique synthesis of historical research and fresh analysis in this study of Peyton Place.... Cameron dexterously tracks the shock waves, unearthing gushing fan letters as well as scathing reviews that deemed the book a lethal weapon aimed at the purity of family life. Cameron's intelligent treatment of a racy novel meant to be read often at night, under bedcovers, a flashlight illuminating the guilty pleasures of the act' makes for a fascinating read in and of itself.

Anna Creadick:

With its pulpy cover art, ample illustrations, and jaunty writing style, Ardis Cameron's Unbuttoning America will entice any reader interested in how a single novel reshaped America at midcentury... Strengthened by her facility with a range of evidence from literature to fan mail to marginalia to visual culture to oral histories, Cameron produces a richly textured study that both draws from and speaks to a number of overlapping fields...[H]er study is able to 'unbutton midcentury America’s felt responses to the original Peyton Place. That response is worthy of consideration.'

Christopher Loudon:

When first-time author Grace Metalious's tale of a sleepy New England town's sordid underpinnings first appeared in 1956, it rocked America. Released at the height of Eisenhower-era conservatism, her colourful yarn, which addressed such taboos as incest, abortion and class inequality, with murder and large doses of social hypocrisy tossed into the mix, became the world's favourite dirty secret.... Now, six decades on, Ardis Cameron, a professor at the University of Southern Maine, shapes what is likely the first scholarly examination of the book's role in the changing American zeitgeist. The novel, she says, sounded a clarion call to readers to acknowledge the falsity of Ozzie and Harriet mores. With its positive portrayal of single motherhood, working women and female sexuality, she argues, it helped pave the way for Helen Gurley Brown's Sex and the Single Girl and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique.... [Peyton Place] gave an entire generation of women 'hope, courage, confirmation, validation.'.

Kate Tuttle:

More than just a page-turner, Cameron argues, Peyton Place was 'an exercise in rupture, a deep gash in the iron fabric of conventional ways of thinking and being.' Its frank portrayal of sex outside of marriage was enough to invite censure and censorship nationwide. (In Beverly Farms, Cameron writes, the library posted a sign for those seeking Peyton Place: 'If you want it, go to Salem.') The book broke other rules as well, Cameron writes, including speaking directly to women about 'the unfairness of things,' a kind of proto-feminist protest published years before Betty Friedan wrote about the 'problem that had no name.'... This is a serious scholarly work, but with very few exceptions Cameron eschews academic jargon for a plainspoken intelligence that befits her subject, who once rebuked critics: 'If I'm a lousy writer... a hell of a lot of people have got lousy taste.'

B. Wallenstein:

Like any good biography of a human, this volume includes the background history of its subject, here Grace Metalious's scandalous best-selling novel Peyton Place 1956. Cameron's book is a rarity among serious scholarly texts: it is thorough in its scholarship and at the same time a page-turner.

Cameron (American & New England studies, Univ. of Sourthern Maine; Looking for America) explores the impact of this admittedly trashy novel on buttoned-up America: "dirty" books such as Peyton Place presented believable alternatives to people seeking answers to their dilemmas. Metalious's fan mail shows how women identified with her: they felt she understood them; her success gave them hope. This brisk read on a fascinating subject will be helpful in understanding how we got from there to here. VERDICT Readers who remember the stir Peyton Place aroused when it first came out will rush to pick up this lively book.

Edward Kosner:

Unbuttoning America boasts a sizzling cover of a busty '50s pinup girl resting a blue book on her sleek, gartered legs while flashing the reader a come-hither-quick look.... Cameron teases out the book's significance as a bold exploration of sexual, political, gender and class questions rarely recognized in its time. For the general reader, the most rewarding parts of Cameron's book are her pages about Grace Metalious herself, the sources of her material, and her fervent fans. Cameron had access to a trove of thousands of letters written by readers to Metalious. Most came from grateful women who felt that she had told their secret, anguished stories.

Judith E. Smith, University of Massachusetts, Boston, author of Visions of Belonging: Family Stories, Popular Culture, and Postwar Democracy, 1940–1960:

Seldom have I encountered a book as well-written and argued as Unbuttoning America. Ardis Cameron has mastered a tremendous amount of knowledge of the historic era, popular literature and popular culture, women's writing, women's reading, the literary marketplace, New York publishing, the history of sexuality, the construction of New England, consumer culture, and the sociology of everyday life. Cameron deploys this material lightly, with consummate skill, to produce a revelatory account that illuminates how a popular book enters and transforms the cultural landscape.