Gitlin, Todd 1943–

PERSONAL:

Born January 6, 1943, in New York, NY; son of Max (a teacher) and Dorothy (a teacher) Gitlin; married Laurel Cook, November 3, 1995; stepchildren: Shoshana, Justin, Fletcher. Education: Harvard University, B.A., 1963; University of Michigan, M.A., 1966; University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D., 1977.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Culture and Communication, School of Education, New York University, 239 Greene St., Rm. 735, New York, NY 10003.

CAREER:

San Francisco Express Times, San Francisco, CA, writer, 1968-69; San Jose State College (now University), San Jose, CA, lecturer, 1970-76; University of California, Santa Cruz, lecturer, 1974-77; University of California, Berkeley, assistant professor, 1978-83, associate professor, 1983-87, professor of sociology and director of mass communications program, 1987-95; New York University, New York, NY, professor of culture and communication, journalism, and sociology, 1995—. Holder of Chair in American Civilization, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, French-American Foundation, Paris, 1994-95; visiting professor of political science, Yale University, 2000.

MEMBER:

PEN American Center (cochairperson of San Francisco branch, 1987-88).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Anne Parsons Educational Trust grant, 1962; Laras Fund grant, 1976; National Endowment for the Humanities grant, 1981; Rockefeller Foundation fellowship, 1981; nonfiction award, Bay Area Book Reviewers Association, 1984, for Inside Prime Time; finalist, Robert F. Kennedy Book Award and Bay Area Book Reviewers Association, 1988, for The Sixties; grant for research and writing in international peace and security, MacArthur Foundation, 1988-89; fellowship, Media Studies Center, 1998-99; Harold U. Ribalow Prize, 2000, for Sacrifice.

WRITINGS:

(With Nanci Hollander) Uptown: Poor Whites in Chicago, Harper (New York, NY), 1970.

(Editor) Campfires of the Resistance: Poetry from the Movement, Bobbs-Merrill (New York, NY), 1971.

Busy Being Born (poems), Straight Arrow Books (New York, NY), 1974.

The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1980.

Inside Prime Time, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1983, revised edition, 1994, republished with new introduction, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 2000.

(Editor and contributor) Watching Television, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1987.

The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage, Bantam (New York, NY), 1987.

The Murder of Albert Einstein (novel), Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1992.

The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars, Metropolitan/Henry Holt (New York, NY), 1995.

Sacrifice (novel), Metropolitan Books (New York, NY), 1999.

Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives, Metropolitan (New York, NY), 2001.

Letters to a Young Activist, Basic Books (New York, NY), 2003.

The Intellectuals and the Flag, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2006.

The Bulldozer and the Big Tent: Blind Republicans, Lame Democrats, and the Recovery of American Ideals, John Wiley & Sons (Hoboken, NJ), 2007.

Contributor to numerous books. Columnist, New York Observer, 1992-99. Contributor to periodicals, including Harper's, New York Times, Washington Post, Theory and Society, American Journalism Review, World Policy Journal, and Yale Review. Member of editorial board, Dissent.

SIDELIGHTS:

Todd Gitlin's writing explores myriad interconnected facets of contemporary life, including the way mass media affects society and vice versa, historical analysis of the recent past, and the changing state of American politics. He is the author or editor of three notable books on mass media: The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left, Inside Prime Time, and Watching Television. All three works reflect Gitlin's political viewpoint—the author, a New Left liberal, was for a time president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), well known in the 1960s as a breeding ground for countercultural activism. In The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars, he examines the disintegration of the American left since his days in the SDS.

In The Whole World Is Watching, Gitlin uses his SDS experiences to make the point that in 1965 the relationship between the SDS and media was minimal, but grew into "something like an active partnership just a few years later," as Frank Viviano reported in a Washington Post review. According to the author, continues Viviano, the expectations of the media—especially television—resulted in increasing coverage of SDS activities, which brought in new members to the organization and also fulfilled the cameras' need for "good copy and photogenic media events" by the youthful activists. New York Times Book Review critic Walter Goodman praised Gitlin's thesis but also expressed some reservations. The most interesting and enjoyable parts of The Whole World Is Watching are when Gitlin "reports on the effects that the heady attentions of reporters and cameramen had on SDS leaders," Goodman stated.

Inside Prime Time is the "best book ever written" about the mindset of the television executives of Hollywood, wrote David Crook in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Gitlin infiltrated media ranks there—the major network television production centers in California—to produce his study of television's power structures, tacit agreements, and dependence on advertisers' standards. The book has "many trenchant observations," commented Washington Post critic Jonathan Yardley. Yardley concluded that Inside Prime Time is a "thorough and sensitive exploration."

Watching Television, a book Gitlin edited and to which he contributed an essay, is composed of seven essays that express "serious complaints about the role television plays in our lives," commented Neil Postman in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Together the essays form a sort of "treatise in social psychology." As for Gitlin's contribution, Postman pointed out that the editor gives the book a "coherent spirit." Brent Staples concluded in a New York Times Book Review article that Watching Television should be seen as a "prolegomenon to any further television criticism."

Departing from mass-media themes, Gitlin produced The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage in 1987, a year that itself saw much interest sparked in sixties recollection. The book "fuses research, personal witness and a willingness to discuss shortfalls and successes alike," according to Abe Peck in a Chicago Tribune Books review. The most valuable parts of The Sixties "are autobiographical," remarked New York Times Book Review writer Jim Miller. The critic further reported that Gitlin's reminiscences center mainly on his college days, where in the early years of the decade he "began to learn about left-wing politics."

From there The Sixties covers events in Berkeley and Chicago, where Gitlin joined such activists as Abbie Hoffman and Thomas Hayden in movements like SDS. Sometimes Gitlin "seems overwhelmed by his material," found Miller. But in many places, through careful reconstruction of key events, "he succeeds admirably in bringing this ‘gone time’ back to life."

Gitlin takes a look at where the American left has gone since the 1960s in The Twilight of Common Dreams. Gitlin observes that the growth of "identity politics" catering to specialized groups such as women, Latinos, gays, and so forth has led to the near-death of anything that can really be identified as an American left. The idea of a common "American dream" has died as each group has chosen to pursue its own ends. The author's "survey of the left's demise is cogent and useful," wrote Jonathan Alter in Washington Monthly. Tikkun reviewer Frank Browning remarked that the author "brings a moving sense of anguish" to the book.

Gitlin tried his hand at fiction in 1992 with The Murder of Albert Einstein and again in 1999 with the novel Sacrifice. The latter concerns the suicide of a well-known social activist and psychiatrist, and the repercussions of his death on his adult son, Paul. After inheriting his father's journals, Paul embarks on a journey of discovery about his estranged father's emotional life, the reasons his marriage disintegrated, and what led him to the final self-destructive act. Woven within the story is the text of a book written by the character of Paul's father, which Paul reads for the first time along with the journals. The book-within-a-book is an analysis of the biblical stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Esau. With that device, according to Booklist reviewer Frank Caso, the author "provides an interesting explication of the Bible tales."

New York Times Book Review contributor Judith Dunford described Sacrifice as an "ambitious work." However, Dunford complained that what she considered disjointed aspects of the book do not "necessarily add up to a successful novel." She faulted Sacrifice as emotionally unconvincing and marred by the author's overly earnest writing. A Kirkus Reviews writer allowed that "Chester's journals and the world they evoke provide a fine portrait of a tortured soul."

In 2006, Gitlin returned to nonfiction with the book The Intellectuals and the Flag. This collection of seven essays divided into three parts addresses the author's liberal-minded audience, like many of his previous works. The first section of essays focuses on David Riesman, C. Wright Mills, and Irving Howe, notable intellectuals from recent history. In the second section, Gitlin writes essays criticizing two popular intellectual trends as well as values the mass media represents. The final section and essay, bearing the book's title, encourages left-leaning citizens to engage in a patriotism that is fitting for their ideals. Gitlin relates his own experiences as a New Yorker after the September 11, 2001, attacks, and how he found his own sense of patriotism as a result. Critics responded positively to The Intellectuals and the Flag overall, citing the book's thoughtful reflections and demonstrative arguments. Gitlin has an "excellent grasp of the adversarial mindset," wrote Paul Hollander in a review for New Criterion. Others appreciated the author's use of his own personal experiences. The "best parts of Gitlin's book … are his reflections on patriotism," noted Commonweal contributor Alan Wolfe.

The following year, Gitlin published his next book, The Bulldozer and the Big Tent: Blind Republicans, Lame Democrats, and the Recovery of American Ideals. The book primarily examines the reign of the Republican Party at the beginning of the twenty-first century, with Gitlin describing the party's approach to politics as similar to that of a bulldozer. He argues that the actions of Republican leaders like President George W. Bush have damaged the image of the country both at home and abroad, and these actions have created an atmosphere of secrecy and corruption. The author reviews the history of the Bush administration and tries to determine why and how the country followed this path. He also offers lessons the country and people can learn from the errors of the administration and how to avoid similar mistakes in the future. While many critics praised The Bulldozer and the Big Tent, some found the author's writing style to be a bit over the top. Gitlin's "taste for grandiloquence sometimes leads to cartoonish overstatement," observed Michael Crowley in a review for the New York Times. Others found much wisdom and insight in the book. The Bulldozer and the Big Tent "offers lessons to be learned," wrote Booklist contributor Vanessa Bush.

Gitlin once told CA: "Since my college days, my profession—my calling, to use the old-fashioned word—has been that of the writer, the writer before anything else. Why I took a Ph.D. in sociology and spent many years in a sociology department is a long story, the details of which are idiosyncratic, but the key element, I think, is that I wanted a certificate and a location which would permit me to write as much about whatever interested me, in the ways that interested me, as possible. In a specialized world, writing about media and popular culture gave me a way of slicing into a whole tangle of political, social, cultural, and intellectual questions. Since publishing The Sixties, I continue to write regularly on the mass media as a way of slicing into all kinds of social and cultural questions.

"I have been more ‘writerly’ than before. I published a novel, The Murder of Albert Einstein, a thriller set in the worlds of television, politics, and physics. In the conventions of American writing, a thriller is a low form, not taken very seriously, not regarded as ‘about anything’ especially, but this book, in my estimation, was also an exploration of moral questions. My second novel, Sacrifice, was quite different in form and style, more inward, formally more complex, more intense. I plan a third novel, musing and scribbling as I pursue other projects.

"Another major project of recent years was a nonfiction book, The Twilight of Common Dreams. This was an attempt to transcend the stale debates about American identity, multiculturalism, and so forth, and to explain why American politics has developed its distracted quality, its paralysis. The book was an extended essay in American history, philosophy, social theory, and sociology. I am now writing about the contemporary experience of all-encompassing media.

"In fiction, I need not respect the truth of details, only the truth of the intricacy of the truth. Here I go with Picasso: ‘Art is the lies by which the truth is known.’ Nonfiction has other obligations. I need both."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Gitlin, Todd, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage, Bantam (New York, NY), 1987.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 1, 1999, Frank Caso, review of Sacrifice, p. 1150; September 1, 2007, Vanessa Bush, review of The Bulldozer and the Big Tent: Blind Republicans, Lame Democrats, and the Recovery of American Ideals, p. 24.

Canadian Journal of Sociology, July-August, 2007, Neil McLaughlin, review of The Intellectuals and the Flag.

Chicago Tribune, February 24, 1987, Steve Daley, review of Watching Television, p. 3.

Christianity Today, April, 2006, Allen C. Guelzo, review of The Intellectuals and the Flag.

Commonweal, March 24, 2006, Alan Wolfe, review of The Intellectuals and the Flag, p. 26.

Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 1999, review of Sacrifice; October 1, 2005, review of The Intellectuals and the Flag, p. 1062.

Library Journal, March 1, 1999, Francisca Goldsmith, review of Sacrifice, p. 109.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, October 23, 1983, David Crook, review of Inside Prime Time, p. 1; March 22, 1987, Neil Postman, review of Watching Television, p. 1; December 27, 1987, Sam Hurst, review of The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage, p. 5.

Nation, May 3, 1980, Tom Smucker, review of The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left, p. 526.

New Criterion, May, 2006, Paul Hollander, review of The Intellectuals and the Flag, p. 75.

New Republic, April 4, 1981, Michael Schudson, review of The Whole World Is Watching, p. 36.

New York Times, October 14, 2007, Michael Crowley, review of The Bulldozer and the Big Tent.

New York Times Book Review, August 31, 1980, Walter Goodman, review of The Whole World Is Watching, p. 11; October 2, 1983, Robert Sklar, review of Inside Prime Time, p. 12; February 8, 1987, Brent Staples, review of Watching Television, p. 7; November 8, 1987, Jim Miller, review of The Sixties, p. 13; July 18, 1999, Judith Dunford, review of Sacrifice, p. 23.

Perspectives on Political Science, winter, 2006, Howard L. Reiter, review of The Intellectuals and the Flag, p. 51.

Tikkun, September-October, 1996, Frank Browning, review of The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars, p. 86.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), October 25, 1987, review of Sacrifice, p. 6; February 12, 1989, Abe Peck, review of The Sixties, p. 9.

Washington Monthly, January, 1996, Jonathan Alter, review of The Twilight of Common Dreams, p. 55.

Washington Post, September 19, 1980, Frank Viviano, review of The Whole World Is Watching, p. 4; October 5, 1983, Jonathan Yardley, review of Inside Prime Time, p. 1; February 4, 1987, Jonathan Yardley, review of Watching Television, p. 2.