Introduction: Faire Grounds1 "Welcome to the Sixties!"2 Artisans of the Realm: Crafters at the Faire3 "Shakespeare, He's in the Alley": Performing at the Faire4 "A Place to Be Out": Playing at the Faire5 "Every Day Is Gay Day Here": Hating the Faire6 Hard Day's Knight: Faire Fiction
Rachel Lee Rubin is Professor of American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is author of Immigration and American Popular Culture (with Jeffrey Melnick, NYU Press) and Jewish Gangsters of Modern Literature, and co-editor of American Popular Music: New Approaches to the Twentieth Century and Radicalism in the South since Reconstruction.
"From Laurel Canyon to a state fairground near you, the Renaissance Faire has been an enduring but oft-dismissed facet of American counter-culture. With historical verve and ethnographic clarity, Rachel Rubin takes us past the cliched images of bodices, turkey legs, and 'men in tights' to reveal a sustained subcultural answer to an ongoing American dilemma: how to let your freak flag fly in a conformist society. Flower power may be dry and pressed, but the Renaissance Faire stages a world where utopian visions of acceptance, non-normativity, and exuberant sexuality still hold sway." -Tavia Nyong'o, New York University "Anti-modernism remains one of modernity's most significant and lasting inventions, and in Rachel Rubin's Well Met the theme finally gets its due. In the odd but telling subculture of the Renaissance Faire, Rubin finds anti-modernism intertwined with some of the most important strands of twentieth-century American culture--waning traces of vaudeville, the rise of the counterculture, shifting gender arrangements and sexual practices, a hunger for usable pasts, a rising politics of theatricality, and the culture's impressive penchant for commercialized anti-commercialism. Rubin writes with deep insight and terrific humor; and as intelligent as the book is, it also embodies a joyful appreciation for the quirky inventiveness of its protagonists. I can't wait for the movie!"-Matthew Frye Jacobson, Yale University "In its first decade, the Renaissance Faire unleashed a multi-colored sub-culture in direct revolt against the monochrome of postwar America. It was a home-grown explosion of fancy dress, Shakespearian improv, hand-made objects both useful and ornamental, and music ancient and obscure, much of it heard for the first time in the dusty lanes of the Faire. Rachel Rubin deftly reveals the impact the Faire has had on style, craft, performance, and pop culture over the past fifty years in a one-of-a-kind study that begins in the left-wing lanes of Laurel Canyon, continues through backstage conflicts and couplings, and concludes with the corporatized, commercialized Festivals and geeky Ren-fandom of today. Well Met is a must-read to revel in the true roots of 'Sixties' culture. I know. I was there."-David Ossman, member of the Firesign Theatre "A must read for anyone interested in a nonstereotypical view of the faire, its adherents, and why it retains its appeal decades after its inception."-Library Journal "Fascinating [and] forthcoming."-San Francisco Bay Guardian
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