Lindbergh and 20th-Century American Culture

FAIN: FB-55028-10

Brian Horrigan
Historical Society of Minnesota (St. Paul, MN 55102-1903)

A book-length study of Charles A. Lindbergh (1902-74) and American cultural history. Lindbergh's writings, and the way they collectively reveal the self that he meticulously constructed for nearly half of the twentieth century, are the starting points of my investigation. To an extent matched by few others in his time, Lindbergh sought to be the teller of his own tale. From 1927 to the last months of his life, he was constantly writing, eventually publishing six autobiographical works and leaving unpublished more than a thousand pages of memoir. My intent, however, is to go beyond the writings, indeed beyond the man himself, to understand how this fabled life was--and continues to be--narrated in the public arena. Because of his fame and the complexities of his character, Lindbergh becomes a prismatic figure through whom is refracted the interplay between self and celebrity, between a private life and a public reputation, between history and memory.