The Sprawl

May 18, 2020
In this insightful work of narrative nonfiction, journalist Diamond (Searching for John Hughes) draws from personal experience, history, and media to consider the significance of the suburbs in American culture. Revisiting the Chicago-area towns in which he grew up in the 1980s, Diamond finds signs of economic decline in the familiar big-box stores and movie theaters that are now shuttered. He considers suburban conformity through stories of new arrivals who received unfriendly receptions, and describes incidents in which violence upended the presumption of the suburbs as a safe haven, recounting a 1977 murder in Long Grove, Ill., where he once lived. Throughout, he engages with writers like John Cheever, who “shaped so many of our ideas of what the suburbs were like” in the post-WWII era, and Shirley Jackson, who “explained the suburban condition better than nearly any other writer before or after,” as well as suburban-set movies—he deems the villains of the Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street horror series as particularly suburban bogeymen. Though Diamond occasionally strays into repetition with his personal reflections—such as repeated observations that he now lives in New York City and views the suburbs as an outsider—his cultural criticism is consistently astute. This is a smart, enjoyable study that will be particularly appreciated by other suburban expats.

June 26, 2020

Diamond (Searching for John Hughes) examines the American suburb through the lens of popular culture. Modern suburbs have roots in 19th-century utopian and religious groups. In 19th-century America, these communities were viewed as steps toward a better future, yet redlining excluded Black people from this future. Diamond shows how the teen movies of John Hughes reflected their absence, while the recent TV series Get Out portrayed the outsider status that Black people experience within these communities. As seen in Back to the Future, the once-promised future led to degraded towns and main streets. TV's The Twilight Zone illustrates suburbanites' paranoia and anxiety, whether kids fear haunted houses or adults gangs. The works of David Lynch depicted the darkness under the suburban surface from murder to adultery. Teen boredom and desire to escape the car-centric suburbs has been heard through the decades from Chuck Berry to Jonathan Richman. Despite the failings of the suburbs, Diamond rests in their familiarity and has hopes that these places can exist as a diverse space. VERDICT Will resonate with Generation X and older Millennials. Recommended for readers interested in popular culture or the history of the American suburbs.--Chris Wilkes, Tazewell Cty. P.L., VA

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May 15, 2020
A scion of the suburbs considers how housing shapes destiny. Suburbia was a largely postwar phenomenon, born of the need to provide homes for returning veterans eager to start families and trading on a long-standing dream that was hitherto reserved only for the rich--namely, "a place outside the city." This dream was initially reserved, too, for a special class of people: whites for whom low-cost, low-interest loans were readily available courtesy of the Federal Housing Administration. That has changed, writes Diamond, who wrote of suburban life in his 2016 book Searching for John Hughes. Now there are suburbs made up of people of diverse ethnicities, albeit usually segregated. More than half of Americans live in suburbs, a fact that may surprise young city dwellers; if the countryside is ever emptier, the rings of settlements outside the cores of places such as Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles continue to grow. Diamond is interested in demographics but not exclusively. As the narrative progresses, the author becomes increasingly eloquent about such things as pop music--for much pop is driven by suburbanites, who share a "belief that you're doing something bigger than the place you're from"--literature as written by the likes of Dave Eggers and Jonathan Lethem, and film such as, yes, John Hughes' oeuvre and Sofia Coppola's interpretation of The Virgin Suicides. Clearly, Diamond has given a lot of thought to the "faux-pastoral" nature of the suburbs and their tendency to resist the formation of true communities. If the cultural aspects of his narrative tend to be a touch repetitive, the point is well taken, as is his thought that now-dying shopping malls across North America (cue Arcade Fire) might well be converted to community centers, "making the ones that remain into places that serve a greater purpose." A literate meditation on clipped-lawn places easily taken for granted but that well deserve such reflection.

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Starred review from August 1, 2020
The American suburbs have taken on a mythical reputation: hyper-planned communities of uniformity, offering safety and security to some, suffocation to others. In this fascinating history, Diamond presents readers with a new way of viewing this ubiquitous environment. The book explores the origins of the American suburb, from early nineteenth century attempts at utopia, to post-WWII Levittowns. Diamond is clear that no matter the intentions of early suburban founders, too often, minority groups were deliberately kept out. Looking at the culture of the suburbs from the 1980s to the present, Diamond shows how much of our country's worst violence takes place in suburban areas (school shootings, police brutality), and how the suburbs are seen as stifling to creativity despite the array of music, film, literature, and art that has been produced by suburbanites. Diamond points out that by pigeonholing the suburbs as devoid of energy, Americans could be missing out on the vast potential of the people who live there. As to whether or not suburban areas will have to evolve in order to attract younger generations in droves, there is some evidence that suburban nostalgia is comforting enough to soothe a high-strung, internet-raised population. A humble and curious must-read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)