Chapter 6 - Ethical Culture Fieldston School

“Mr. Sinatra Gets Rejected”
got to be that singer.” As the magazine writer who related this anecdote related,
“Probably a thousand other youngsters who heard Crosby that night painted the
same mental picture – themselves in the spotlight, thrilling millions. But Sinatra
was the one out of a thousand with the courage to chase the rainbow.” 12
Courage, certainly: there’s a lot to be said about that. But it’s also worth
considering the particular rainbow Sinatra was chasing. It had its own arc, and
one can confidently say that had be been born in a different place or time it
would have been situated – and chased – differently. As his chroniclers tirelessly
assert, Frank Sinatra was very much man of his time.
But what time was that? My answer, despite the fact that he is dead and
buried, is now.
Why is Sinatra “now,” when did “now” begin, and why hasn’t “now”
ended? To put it simply, I believe the basic texture of modern American life
emerged during Sinatra’s youth, that he embodied it with unusual clarity, and
that its contours, despite its myriad variations, remain largely in place. Far more
than extraordinary events of his childhood (like the stock market crash) or the
leading figures of his era (like the so‐called Lost Generation), there’s something
accessibly familiar about the rhythms of everyday life in the years following the
First World War, a time known by those who lived it as “The New Era.”
That familiarity is almost palpable, for example, in this description of a
day in the life of the fictional John Smith, “a typical citizen of this restless
republic,” written by an ad agency copywriter in 1928, when Sinatra was twelve
years old:
12 Long, “Sweet Dreams and Dynamite,” p. 13.
American History for Cynical Beginners
9