Cruising modernism : class and sexuality in American literature and social thought / Michael Trask.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Trask, Michael, 1967-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--20th century--History and criticism.

American literature.

Modernism (Literature)--United States.

Modernism (Literature).

Sex customs.

History.

Social classes.

Social sciences.

United States.

Literature and society--United States--History--20th century.

Literature and society.

Social sciences--United States--History--20th century.

Social classes--United States--History--20th century.

Sex customs--United States--History--20th century.

Social classes in literature.

Sex in literature.

United States--Social conditions--20th century.

Social conditions.

Physical Description:

viii, 222 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 2003.

Summary:

Modern society, Michael Trask argues in this incisive and original book, chose to couch class difference in terms of illicit sexuality. Trask demonstrates how sexual science's concept of erotic perversion mediated the writing of both literary figures and social theorists when it came to the innovative and unsettling social arrangements of the early twentieth century. Trask focuses on the James brothers in a critique of pragmatism and anti-immigrant sentiment, shows the influence of behavioral psychology on Gertrude Stein's work, uncovers a sustained reflection on casual labor in Hart Crane's lyric poetry, and traces the identification of working-class Catholics with deviant passions in Willa Cather's fiction. Finally, Trask examines how literary leftists borrowed the antiprostitution rhetoric of Progressive-era reformers to protest the ascendence of consumerism in the 1920s. Viewing class as a restless and unstable category, Trask contends, American modernist writers appropriated sexology's concept of evasive, unmoored desire to account for the seismic shift in social relations during the Progressive era and beyond. Looking closely at the fraught ideological space between real and perceived class differences, "Cruising Modernism discloses there a pervasive representation of sexuality as well.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Pervert Modernism: American Social Thought 1900-1930 15

Chapter 2 Chance, Choice, and The Wings of the Dove 44

Chapter 3 Making Do with Gertrude Stein 74

Chapter 4 Hart Crane's Epic of Anonymity 108

Chapter 5 Willa Cather's Catechism 142

Chapter 6 Merging with the Masses 166.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 197-215) and index.

ISBN:

0801441706

OCLC:

52182534