Acoustic Properties: Radio, Narrative, and the New Neighborhood of the Americas discovers the prehistory of wireless culture. It examines both the coevolution of radio and the novel in Argentina, Cuba, and the United States from the early 1930s to the late 1960s, and the various populist political climates in which the emerging medium of radio became the chosen means to produce the voice of the people.   Based on original archival research in Buenos Aires, Havana, Paris, and the United States, the book develops a literary media theory that understands sound as a transmedial phenomenon and radio as a transnational medium. Analyzing the construction of new social and political relations in the wake of the United States’ 1930s Good Neighbor Policy, Acoustic Properties challenges standard narratives of hemispheric influence through new readings of Richard Wright’s cinematic work in Argentina, Severo Sarduy’s radio plays in France, and novels by John Dos Passos, Manuel Puig, Raymond Chandler, and Carson McCullers. Alongside these writers, the book also explores Che Guevara and Fidel Castro’s Radio Rebelde, FDR’s fireside chats, Félix Caignet’s invention of the radionovela in Cuba, Evita Perón’s populist melodramas in Argentina, Orson Welles’s experimental New Deal radio, Cuban and U.S. “radio wars,” and the 1960s African American activist Robert F. Williams’s proto–black power Radio Free Dixie.   From the doldrums of the Great Depression to the tumult of the Cuban Revolution, Acoustic Properties illuminates how novelists in the radio age converted writing into a practice of listening, transforming realism as they struggled to channel and shape popular power.

motw/Acoustic Properties_ Radio, Nar - Tom McEnaney.pdf

Acoustic Properties: Radio, Narrative, and the New Neighborhood of the Americas (FlashPoints Book 26)

Mcenaney, Tom (author.)

Marlboro Press, The

TriQuarterly Books

Hydra Books

FlashPoints (Evanston, Ill.), Evanston, Illinois, 2017

United States, United States of America

FlashPoints, Chicago, 2017

producers:
Adobe PDF Library 10.0.1

Memory of the World Librarian: Slowrotation

Contents 6
Preface: Wireless Cultures 8
Acknowledgments 12
Introduction: Learning to Listen 18
Part I. The New (Deal) Acoustics 38
1. “On the National Hookup”: Radio, Character Networks, and U.S.A. 40
2. The Sound of the Good Neighbor: Radio, Realism, and Real Estate 67
3. Struggling Words: Public Housing, Sound Technologies, and the Position of Speech 92
Part II. Occupying the Airwaves 128
4. Tears in the Ether: The Rise of the Radionovela 130
5. Radio’s Revolutions 155
Part III. Hand-to-Hand Speech 182
6. House Taken Over: Listening, Writing and the Politics of the Commonplace in Manuel Puig’s Fiction 184
7. The Ends of Radio: Tape, Property, and Popular Voice 217
Notes 238
Works Cited 302
Index 322

Preface: Wireless Cultures -- Introduction: Learning To Listen -- The New (deal) Acoustics -- On The National Hookup : Radio, Character Networks, And U.s.a -- The Sound Of The Good Neighbor : Radio, Realism, And Real Estate -- Struggling Words : Public Housing, Sound Technologies, And The Position Of Speech -- Occupying The Airwaves -- Tears In The Ether : The Rise Of The Radionovela -- Radio's Revolutions -- Hand-to-hand Speech -- House Taken Over : Listening, Writing And The Politics Of The Common Place In Manuel Puig's Fiction -- The Ends Of Radio : Tape, Property & Popular Voice. Tom Mcenaney. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.

Explores the prehistory of wireless culture. This book examines both the coevolution of radio and the novel in Argentina, Cuba, and the United States from the early 1930s to the late 1960s, and the various populist political climates in which the emerging medium of radio became the chosen means to produce the voice of the people.

2025-10-27