Category: Modernist Studies

September 26, 2013

Interview with Laura Frost, author of The Problem with Pleasure

“It’s a rare work of academic literary criticism that finds a general audience. There is still a kind of snobbery—not unlike the modernists’, actually—that if it’s not ponderous, contorted, and insular, then it’s not serious. God forbid that scholarly work...

September 25, 2013

Of Modernism and Muscle Cars, Part 2 — Laura Frost

This is second part of Laura Frost’s essay “Of Modernism and Muscle Cars” (you can read part 1 here). Laura Frost is the author of The Problem with Pleasure: Modernism and Its Discontents “Modern literature should be commemorated in all...

September 24, 2013

Of Modernism and Muscle Cars, Part 1 — A Post by Laura Frost

Laura Frost is the author of The Problem with Pleasure: Modernism and Its Discontents, our featured book of the week: “Modernism constantly puts up … resistance and, even more audaciously, it asks its viewers to value, savor, and learn to...

July 22, 2013

Laura Frost Names the 10 Best Modernist Novels in English

Publishers Weekly recently asked Laura Frost, author of The Problem with Pleasure: Modernism and Its Discontents to name The 10 Best Modernist Books (in English). For the more ambitious readers the list provides a kind of alternate beach-reading list. Frost...

February 6, 2013

Saikat Majumdar on Prose of the World

The following post is by Saikat Majumdar, author of Prose of the World: Modernism and the Banality of Empire. In the essay, Majumdar explains some of the central arguments and interventions of his book. In praise of the book, Rebecca...

August 1, 2012

Stephen Bronner, Author of Modernism at the Barricades, Takes The Page 99 Test

Recently, Stephen Bronner author of Modernism at the Barricades: Aesthetics, Politics, Utopia, took The Page 99 Test. The test, thought up by Ford Maddox Ford, posits that the 99th page of a book determines the quality of a book. Bronner...

June 19, 2012

New Book Tuesday: Modernism at the Barricades and International Poetry

Our weekly list of new titles includes Stephen Bronner’s reinterpretation of the cultural politics of modernism and several new titles from the International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong poetry series: Modernism at the Barricades: Aesthetics, Politics, Utopia Stephen Bronner To...

May 17, 2012

Gertrude Stein, Alan Dershowitz, Barbara Will, and the Controversy at the Met

The recent opening of The Steins Collect at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has ignited a controversyregarding Gertrude Stein’s fascist past. At the center of this debate is Barbara Will’s recent book Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Faÿ, and the...

October 28, 2011

Barbara Will on Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Fay, and the Vichy Dilemma

“My hope with this book is, first, to resituate Stein where I think she belongs—in the latter camp of reactionary modernism. It simplifies her work and falsifies her life to misread both in the service of our own progressive agendas....

October 11, 2011

Barry McCrea Discusses "In the Company of Strangers" on Rorotoko

Rorotoko recently published an excellent essay by Barry McCrea about his new book In the Company of Strangers: Family and Narrative in Dickens, Conan Doyle, Joyce, and Proust. In the piece, McCrea discusses how the idea of family offers new...

September 28, 2011

Gertrude Stein & Fascism: Interview with Barbara Will, author of Unlikely Collaboration

The following in an interview with Barbara Will, author of Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Faÿ, and the Vichy Dilemma Question: Why the title Unlikely Collaboration? What is the book trying to argue through this title? Barbara Will: When most...

September 6, 2011

"In the Company of Strangers," by Barry McCrea reviewed in the Irish Times

“McCrea’s work, original, well considered and detailed, offers fresh insight into vital, complex texts and brings queer theory usefully into contemporary debate when reconsidering such influential works.”—Eibhear Walshe, Irish Times The Irish Times’ recent review of Barry McCrea’s In the...