Customer Reviews

Staying Up Much Too Late: Edward Hopper's Nighthawks and the Dark Side of the American Psyche

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Edward Hopper's paintings, well known to almost everyone in this country, are unique in that they convey a sense of loneliness, yearning, suggestions of dark thoughts, pessimism, and hopelessness - not exactly the moods one would want to examine on a daily basis, but certainly painterly images that cause us to pause when we encounter them in museums and collections.

Gordon Theisen is a fine writer and in this book STAYING UP MUCH TOO LATE: EDWARD HOPPOER'S 'NIGHTHAWKS' AND THE DARK SIDE OF THE AMERICAN PSYCHE he manages to successfully use the famous night diner painting of the artist to address the current mental state of affairs seeping into our consciousness. He wisely covers every aspect of the artist's life and work, giving us the necessary details of his life and his idiomatic stance in American art, spreads those ideas into his output thus assuring us that the one painting of the title is not an isolated image, and then begins to apply his ideas to our cultural status - at times not comfortable, but always creatively informative.

If Thiesen strays a bit too far from his title subject, drawing on his own interpretation of concepts he perceives as more than just legitimate diversions, then he can be forgiven by the reader who want more from an author than a term paper presentation. Thiesen indulges in reminiscing about our cultural icons such as diners, cigarettes, coffee, plastic, jazz, war, sex, film noir, and personality disintegration in a time of easy drugs AKA medications. Perhaps these are topics many would not elect to explore, but then they are bookmarks to the greater understanding of where our current culture stands.

If indeed our artists are our shamans then Hopper as Thiesen presents him is a prophet of sorts. Not that the book is depressing as the Nighthawks painting: Thiesen has the good will to engage us in the positive aspects of all of the negatives listed above. There is humor here, but it is humor with an edge. This book, along with other contemporary 'paintings as examples of current thought' books by such authors as Biel and van Hensbergen in their evaluations of Grant Woods' American Gothic and Picasso's Guernica, once again proves that art gives us more than visual delight: art gives us valuable food for thought...and change. Grady Harp, November 06

This book examines the dark underside of American life, the kind ominously represented in Nighthawks, the famous painting by Edward Hopper. Theisen quickly sets up the difference between the optimistic, sunny, daytime America and the world of night, and not even night so much as the non-mainstream undiscovered parts.

I enjoyed this book particularly much because of the disparate elements the author brings together. although to some people, talking about Pulp fiction, Weegee the photographer, and Hopper together is hard to follow, I picked up right away on his meaning and felt really interested to read a scholarly unpacking of the imagery, meaning, and themes.

I compare this book to Paul Fussell's oeuvre, books which say, "Ever notice this theme is in a lot of things?" and then go on to enlighten the reader and make you smarter and more educated than you were before.

Definitely buy this book.

At first glance, I expected this to be a heavy duty history of Hopper's painting, with copious documentation, contemporary views of the work, and lots of secondary source citations--something like reading a published dissertation. I was pleasantly surprised to find Theisen's book is not an ordinary work of scholarship. It's not so much academic art criticism as it is a comment on American culture and mores. Theisen uses Hopper's seminal work, "Nighthawks," as a jump-off point to discuss film noir, Pulp Fiction, Andy Warhol, pornography and Puritanism, the Beats, Russ Meyer, the Great Gatsby--you name it. At times, it feels overstuffed, and it contains unnecessary editorializing (about the Iraq War, for example) and some sloppy mistakes (as one amazon reviewer has noted, Theisen wrongly says Gatsby kills himself at the end of Fitzgerald's novel). But overall it is an imaginative and engrossing work that will inform those who don't know much about Hopper the man and who always found him an understudied artist. Theisen's book could have a place on a cultural studies or U.S. history shelf, and it would make interesting reading for a freshman American history survey class. An unusual, though very readable thought piece.

I found the last chapters of the book fairly8 helpful--with their discussion of the films noirs and how Hopper's works fit into that framework.
The book, for the most part, however, is disjointed. It reads like the term paper of a smart but procrastinating college student who needs to finish a term paper by a deadline and doesn't spend time polishing his thoughts or meshing them with the subject at hand.
The author gets into manifold discussions about numerous icons of American life--and loosely links them, at the end of the section, to Hopper's work. He also tosses his own biases into the discussions, mainly dealing with his opinions on George W. Bush and the War in Iraq--half baked thoughts that date the book unnecessarily. He takes for a given, for example, that Bush's tax program is aimed at aiding the rich (and screwing the poor?). One does not have to be a Bush supporter to think of other reasons behind the tax plan(monetary policy, for example?).
The author also throws in a bit too much slang into his discussions--especially sexual slang. This self-conscious "with-it-ness" diminishes the author's rhetorical power and is off-putting.
The book was fairly interesting, although I found it not to be a page turner. Instead, it was similar to sitting next to a bright undergraduate at a dinner party and listen to him ramble on until you feel you have to get up and leave the table for a while.
He has some noteworthy points to say about Hopper's life, especially his abusive relationship with Jo. For the most part, Hopper was a taciturn man. Unlike, say, Salvador Dali, who never ceased talking about himself and everything else that came to mind, Hopper was fairly much a closed box.
On the whole, however, the book seems like it was intentionally expanded from what might have been a tightly constructed essay into a "padded" long piece. From the author's other titles, it seems that he is a successful professional writer, so he certainly deserves credit for his skills. I find, however, that the art historians and critics of Taschen Books do a much better job of art of opening up this closed artist to his public.

Reading this Book made me feel like I too was Staying Up Much Too Late. Using the iconic Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, Theisesn roams into the dark parts of our conscience that typically surface during late night conversations. Having visited a retrospect of Hopper's work, I was stunned by the darkness of his vision - stunned and attracted by it. Nighthawks is emblematic of this darkness, as are masterpieces like Automat and Office at Night. Theisen ties the symbolism with Hopper's work to the darkness of the American soul in the twentieth century. His analysis is spot on and very applicable to Hopper's work. The writing is accessible and flows smoothly. If you are interested in the darker part of the American conscience, this book is a good place to live for a while.

The book was great in theory but some of the connections and referances were a little week. I recommend it because it was thought provoking and intelligent.

There are two mistakes apparent on first glance at a clever little book--the female character in Pulp Fiction is "Honey Bunny" not "Honeybunch" and Gatsby does not commit suicide in The Great Gatsby. The first mistake is a minor pop culture snag and the second is a serious error in American literature. Gatsby is murdered by George Wilson, whose wife Myrtle was having an affair with Daisy Buchannan's husband, Tom. Wilson kills himself after he shoots Gatsby who he mistakenly believes ran down his wife.

Whatever happened to editors and fact checkers?

The premise of the book is interesting and entertaining, but these errors are distracting.

...if someone like Griel Marcus had written it. I only say that because it's apparent at times that the author is making rather strained connections for some of his topics - what he claims Hopper is aiming at in Nighthawks. For example, the author imagines a sex scene between the participants of the painting - a rather interesting image but it tells us more about the author than the painter or the painting. At times, I thought this book wasn't so much about Nighthawks as much as it was about the author's feeling bad about right-wing puritanism, the War in Iraq, the Vietnam War, and various other predictably boomer observations.
Having said that, it's still worth reading. These are mainly quibbles with style and execution, but there's much to be gleaned from this book and it is a much needed appreciation of an iconic piece of American art. Anyone who likes the cinema of Russ Meyer has to be worth paying attention to.
Having said that,