Septic-tank failures symbolized suburban baseness in 1950s cultural criticism

Evidence

The cultural critics of suburbia also attacked the septic tank. In the antisuburban literature of the 1950s, the crud of septic-tank failure often symbolized the baseness of life in mass-produced tracts. The suburbs oozed waste. Everywhere, you had to be careful not to step in “it.” — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 395

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Septic effluent saturated shale and triggered a mass landslide at Portuguese Bend — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 393; American wartime propaganda defined suburbia itself as what the war was fought for — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 140; Suburban septic tanks threatened to reverse a century of urban sewer reform — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 389