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

By Gordon Theisen

A fascinating study of Edward Hopper's iconic Nighthawks painting and its deep significance for understanding American culture. ? Staying up Much Too Late discusses the painting Nighthawks and the painter Edward Hopper and their central importance to twentieth-century American culture. Topics include individualism, New York City, Arthur "Weegee" Fellig, diners, pornography, capitalism, advertising, cigarettes, American philosophy, World War II, Gravity's Rainbow , Blade Runner , Pulp Fiction , Russ Meyer, R. Crumb, David Lynch, and film noir ? What links these together is the painting's pessimistic take on American culture, which it also seems to epitomize. Despite its desolate feel, Nighthawks has become a familiar icon, reproduced on posters and postcards, in movies and on television shows. But Nighthawks is more than just a masterful painting. It is a portal into that rarely acknowledged but pervasive dark side of the American psyche.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312333420
• ISBN13: 9780312333423
• Release Date: June 2006
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.96 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.9" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

The Underside of America

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.

Great theory

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.

Dissecting NIGHTHAWKS: A Treatise on Urban Alienation

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

One of those rare, brilliant non-fiction titles

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.