"Main Currents of American Thought" is a work of short fiction by Irwin Shaw, originally appearing in The New Yorker in 1939 and first collected in Welcome to the City and Other Stories (1942) by Random House.
[1] The story is an autobiographical rendering of Shaw’s early literary career, during which he had penned numerous episodes for radio dramas and comedies, among these Dick Tracy.
Paid by the number of words that comprise each story and its dialogue, his meager wages are spent entirely in supporting his mother, his younger sister and his father.
"[15] New York Times critic Herbert Mitgang observes that Shaw, though a successful novelist and playwright, "was most admired for his short stories of the 1930's and 40's, which served as a model for an entire generation of writers.
"[17] Critic Bart Barnes in The Washington Post calls "Main Currents of (sic) American Thought" one of Shaw's "finest stories.
[19] Critic James R. Giles writes: "[T]he irony is that, at least on one level, the radio serials are a more realistic reflection of American mentality than Parrington’s influential book.
[21]Literary critic Chester E. Eisinger offers "Main Currents in American Thought" as an example of Shaw's latent longing for economic security and his fascination with "metropolitan sophistication.
Eisinger writes: "The pressures imposed by money, which Shaw felt as a result of the depression, were expressed in the forties as the multifarious demands of middle-class life.
"[23][24] Compared to the genuine desperation experienced by the American poor in the 1930s, the autobiographical radio writer's obsession with providing the accouterments of social status—"expensive piano lessons and party dresses" for his sister—seem unwarranted.