One True Theory and the Quest for an American Aesthetic Book

Acknowledgments     xi
Introduction     xiii
An American Aesthetic and Its Travails     1
The Burning Question     1
Measuring Up to Veblenism     7
Lagging Arts/Advancing Sciences     11
The Economics of Cultural Deficit     14
Angers of Influence     21
Technics, Technics!     24
Nature, God, Art, Science     28
God's Time/Government Time     30
Raw, Ripe, Rot     36
Transitions without Resolutions     41
Anxieties of Modernity     47
Case Studies: Adaptations to Veblenism     50
"The Normal Man"     54
Capitol of Best Intentions     58
The Perfect Republic: Comparative Perspectives     58
Creation Ab Ova: How Washington, D.C. Came About (1783-1790)     64
The Southern Factor     66
Celebratory Histories: Old and New Style     70
Republican Virtue on Display     75
Waiting for Greatness to Happen (1820-1860)     81
From a National Aesthetic to Nationalist Art     88
The Washington Problem     93
Reacting to Rome et al.     100
A History of One's Choosing     108
Montgomery Meigs and the Remaking of Washington, D.C.     115
America's "Freedom"/Venice's "Justice"     120
The New Washington, D.C.     129
The White City     136
The Unbearable Lightness of the Void     140
Aesthetics of Death: The Mall and Beyond     145
Washington by Moonlight     160
Paraphrases of the Ideal/Allegories of the Real     165
Aesthetic Lives: The Literary Approach     177
Beyond the Terrace     177
Math and Emotion     178
Bifurcated Minds     182
Pride of Knowledge     184
Costs of Knowing     186
Theories Incarnate/Forms Divine     190
Les Objets d'Art     196
Aesthetics of Fellowship     202
Create, Decay, and Destroy     206
Fatal Muses     212
Rivals to the Death     216
Piercing the Wall     220
Notes     229
Index     302