Unbuttoning America: A Biography of Peyton Place Audiobook

Published in 1956, Peyton Place became a bestseller and a literary phenomenon. A lurid and gripping story of murder, incest, female desire, and social injustice, it was consumed as avidly by readers as it was condemned by critics and the clergy. Its author, Grace Metalious, a housewife who grew up in poverty in a New Hampshire mill town and had aspired to be a writer from childhood, loosely based the novel's setting, characters, and incidents on real-life places, people, and events. The novel sold more than thirty million copies in hardcover and paperback, and it was adapted into a hit Hollywood film in 1957 and a popular television series that aired from 1964 to 1969. More than half a century later, the term "Peyton Place" is still in circulation as a code for a community harboring sordid secrets.

In Unbuttoning America, Ardis Cameron mines extensive interviews, fan letters, and archival materials, including contemporary cartoons and cover images from film posters and foreign editions, to tell how the story of a patricide in a small New England village circulated over time and became a cultural phenomenon. She argues that Peyton Place, with its frank discussions of poverty, sexuality, class and ethnic discrimination, and small-town hypocrisy, was more than a tawdry potboiler. Metalious's depiction of how her three central female characters come to terms with their identity as women and sexual beings anticipated second-wave feminism. More broadly, the novel was also part of a larger postwar struggle over belonging and recognition. Fictionalizing contemporary realities, Metalious pushed to the surface the hidden talk and secret rebellions of a generation no longer willing to ignore the disparities and domestic constraints of Cold War America.

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"UnbuttoningAmerica is a wonderful book about a fascinating and historicallysignificant topic: Grace Metalious, her novel Peyton Place, and her readers. It is clearly argued, stronglyresearched, impressively structured, and beautifully written. The consistentuse of readers’ fan letters, combined with quotes from Metalious and herpersonal and professional contemporaries, provides a thorough analysis andvivid sense of the production and reception of this literary blockbuster. Theenergetic writing, with Ardis Cameron’s voice coming through on every page,makes the book lively. Cameron’s rich historical contextualization allows thereader to grasp the full meaning and significance of Peyton Place and its cultural work.”

— Jennifer Frost, University of Auckland, author of Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood: Celebrity Gossip and American Conservatism