THE SPRAWL

For decades the suburbs have been where art happens despite: despite the conformity, the emptiness, the sameness. Time and again, th e story is one of gems formed under pressure and that resentment of the suburbs is the key ingredient for creative transcendence. Bu t what if, contrary to that, the suburb has actually been an incubator for distinctly American art, as positively and as surely as i n any other cultural hothouse? Mixing personal experience, cultural reportage, and history while rejecting clichés and pieties and t hese ess...[Read more]