Sensational modernism : experimental fiction and photography in thirties America / by Joseph B. Entin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Entin, Joseph B.

Series:

Cultural studies of the United States

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

American fiction.

Experimental fiction, American--History and criticism.

Experimental fiction, American.

Art and literature--United States--History--20th century.

Art and literature.

Mass media and art.

United States.

History.

Documentary photography--United States--History--20th century.

Documentary photography.

Mass media and art--United States.

Modernism (Literature)--United States.

Modernism (Literature).

Visual perception in literature.

Social problems in literature.

Poverty in literature.

Poor in literature.

Physical Description:

xi, 325 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2007]

Summary:

Challenging the conventional wisdom that the 1930s were dominated by literary and photographic realism, Sensational Modernism uncovers a rich vein of experimental work by politically progressive artists. Examining images by photographers such as Weegee and Aaron Siskind and fiction by writers such as William Carlos Williams, Richard Wright. Tillie Olsen, and Pietro di Donato, Joseph Entin argues that these artists drew attention to the country's most vulnerable residents by using what he calls an "aesthetic of astonishment," focused on startling, graphic images of pain, injury, and prejudice.

Traditional portrayals of the poor depicted stoic, passive figures of sentimental suffering or degraded but potentially threatening figures in need of supervision. Sensational modernists sought to shock middle-class audiences into new ways of seeing the nation's impoverished and outcast populations. The striking images these artists created, often taking the form of contorted or disfigured bodies drawn from the realm of the tabloids, pulp magazines, and cinema, represented a bold, experimental form of social aesthetics. Entin argues that these artists created a willfully unorthodox brand of vernacular modernism in which formal avant-garde innovations were used to delineate the conditions, contradictions, and pressures of life on the nation's fringes.

Contents:

1 Scrutiny, Sentiment, Sensation: American Modernism and the Bodies of the Dispossessed 35

2 Sensational Contact: William Carlos Williams's Short Fiction and the Bodies of New Immigrants 76

3 Modernist Documentary: Aaron Siskind's Harlem Document 107

4 A Piece of the Body Torn Out by the Roots: James Agee, Tillie Olsen, William Faulkner, and the Contingencies of Working-Class Representation 141

5 Monstrous Modernism: Laboring Bodies, Wounded Workers, and Narrative Heterogeneity in Pietro di Donato's Christ in Concrete 181

6 No Man's Land: Richard Wright, Stereotype, and the Racial Politics of Sensational Modernism 215

Conclusion: Modernism, Poverty, and the Politics of Seeing 257.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [265]-310) and index.

ISBN:

9780807831366

0807831360

9780807858349

080785834X

OCLC:

83609678