The experience of the gangster as an experience of art is universal to Americans. There is almost nothing we understand better or react to more readily or with quicker intelligence. In ways that we do not easily or willingly define, the gangster speaks for us, expressing that part of the American psyche which rejects the qualities and the demands of modern life, which rejects Americanism itself.

The Immediate Experience: Movies, Comics, Theatre & Other Aspects of Popular Culture (ed. Harvard University Press, 1962) - ISBN: 9780674007260