''The Crack in the Picture Window'' is a 1956 book of social criticism by the American writer

John Keats John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculo ...

Background

During the

post–World War II economic expansion The post–World War II economic expansion, also known as the postwar economic boom or the Golden Age of Capitalism, was a broad period of worldwide economic expansion beginning after World War II and ending with the 1973–1975 recession. The U ...

of the late 1940s and the 1950s, many persons from rural and urban backgrounds moved to

single-family detached home A stand-alone house (also called a single-detached dwelling, detached residence or detached house) is a free-standing residential building. It is sometimes referred to as a single-family home, as opposed to a multi-family residential dwelling ...

s in the

suburbs A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separate ...

or in horizontally developed cities. It was not uncommon for some of these homes to have a

picture window A window is an Hole, opening in a wall, door, roof, or vehicle that allows the exchange of light and may also allow the passage of sound and sometimes air. Modern windows are usually glazing (window), glazed or covered in some other transparenc ...

, in contrast to the smaller

sash window A sash window or hung sash window is made of one or more movable panels, or "sashes". The individual sashes are traditionally paned window (architecture), paned windows, but can now contain an individual sheet (or sheets, in the case of double gla ...

s typical of urban and rural housing; although many of these new suburban homes did not necessarily have picture windows, Keats in his title used the term to characterize this new housing in general, and by extension the new social forms arising from this change in how people housed themselves (as well as other social changes of the time, such as those stemming from the popular adoption of television).

Keats's thesis

Keats, in this his first book, took at dim view of the social changes brought on by the influx of population to the suburbs. According to Keats, this new mode of living entailed both physical inadequacies and psychological disadvantages. Builders of

housing development A housing estate (or sometimes housing complex or housing development) is a group of homes and other buildings built together as a single development. The exact form may vary from country to country. Popular throughout the United States ...

s offered no- down-payment options which baited people to become overly indebted for homes often poorly designed, cheaply made, and soul-numbingly identical. At the same time, the

social alienation Social alienation is a person's feeling of disconnection from a group whether friends, family, or wider society to which the individual has an affinity. Such alienation has been described as "a condition in social relationships reflected by (1) ...

of these neighborhoods, engendered by the replacement of the local markets with the

supermarket A supermarket is a self-service Retail#Types of outlets, shop offering a wide variety of food, Drink, beverages and Household goods, household products, organized into sections. This kind of store is larger and has a wider selection than earli ...

, the inward-turning impetus of the television, and other changes, takes a psychological toll on the new suburbanites. Keats' uses the travails of the fictional couple John and Mary Drone to illustrate how the segregation of young couples of similar background, income bracket, and outlooks into homogeneous neighborhoods make for a stultifying unnatural community. Surrounded by neighbors but not true friends, they try to ameliorate their plight with gadgets such as televisions—which sinks them deeper into debt—or various activities including neighborhood sex. LevittownPA

Keats critique is sometimes acerbic, as when he claims that "whole square miles of identical boxes are spreading like gangrene" across America because for nothing down "other than a simple two percent and a promise to pay, and pay, and pay until the end of your life" a person can "find a box of your own in one of the fresh-air slums" being built, "developments conceived in error, nurtured by greed, corroding everything they touch" which besides their effect to "destroy established cities and trade patterns ndpose dangerous problems for the areas they invade" also even "actually drive mad myriads of housewives shut up in them". ''The Crack in the Picture Window'' was one of several critiques of 1950s American suburbia published around this time, such as Auguste Spectorsky's ''The Exurbanites'' (1955) and Richard Yates's fictional indictment of suburbia, ''

Revolutionary Road ''Revolutionary Road'' is American author Richard Yates's debut novel about 1950s suburban life in the East Coast. It was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1962, along with ''Catch-22'' and ''The Moviegoer''. When published by Atlantic ...

'' (1961).

Ginia Bellafante Ginia Bellafante (born March 31, 1965) is an American critic and columnist for ''The New York Times''. Career Bellafante worked at ''Time'', as a senior reporter covering fashion, until 1999. She then joined ''The New York Times'' as a fashio ...

described ''The Crack in the Picture Window'' as "the book version" of the 1962 protest song "

Little Boxes "Little Boxes" is a song written and composed by Malvina Reynolds in 1962, which became a hit for her friend Pete Seeger in 1963, when he released his cover version. The song is a social satire about the development of suburbia, and associat ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Crack in the Picture Window, The 1956 non-fiction books American non-fiction books Non-fiction books about consumerism