Domestic Modernism, the Interwar Novel, and E. H. Young by Chiara Briganti, Kathy Mezei

Abstract

MLR, I03. I, 2008 211 titudes held sway in (mainly lower-middle-class) Writers' Circles, which copied and endorsed established middlebrow styles. Later sections of the book show how major changes in post-war publishing, in cluding thegrowth of Penguin Books and the demise of stalwarts such as Strand and John Bull, meant a blurring of the lines between 'highbrow' and 'populist', 'seri ous' and 'entertaining'writing. The collapse ofmiddlebrow outlets helped foster less conservative, more experimental attitudes among aspirant writers. These attitudes were evident, too, in the I96os, when a burgeoning popular culture offered creative opportunities, in fashion, in photography, in the visual and plastic arts, and in rock music-and a consequent lessening of the singular prestige of literarypublication. Changes inBBC radio networks, and the emergence of regions with their own stu dios, led to an emphasis on the local identityof emergent writers. Finally, Hilliard's account of the 'newwave' writers of the late fifties and early sixties-Sillitoe, Barstow, Braine, Wesker, and the rest-argues that the impact of affluence and the lure of new opportunities outweighed theold solidarities. In sum, and forall sorts of reasons, few of thosewho exercised their talents during thedemocratization ofwriting inBritain fita radical, proletarian model. The chapter 'InMy Own Language about My Own People' reviews themost overtly political writers, those published in the thirtiesby such as Left Review, New Writing, or the (notoriously inefficient)Lawrence andWishart. Writers such as Jack Hilton, JackOverhill, George Garrett, and the miner B. L. Coombes endured stereo typical deprivations, with their literary time and space furthercramped by the time theygave todirect political activities. But even in this climate, The spokesman role thatworking-class writers adopted was not shaped exclusively by thepolitics of poverty and unemployment, but also by an impulse topresent rounded, humane pictures of 'theirpeople'. To write a story thataccurately portrayed working class life was an act of self-respect and community service. Itwas a pointwhere the two meanings of 'representation' coincide. (p. I I8) An emphasis on thedomestic, thecultural, and thepsychological aspects ofworking class life, which thework ofmany later writers and critics (including Richard Hoggart) was criticized for, was evident even here. Three caveats.While there is a sensible grasp of literary themes and genres, there is littledetailed textual analysis of the sort that reveals ideological complexities-for instance, how ambivalent new-wave writing was about affluence (but perhaps this is another book and another discipline). The account, too, could usefully be brought up to the present, to include the academicization of aspirant writing via countless Creative Writing programmes, often using the samemethods asWriters' Circles sixty and seventy years ago. Finally, in common with recent blockbuster histories of the fiftiesand sixties, To Exercise Our Talents perhaps exemplifies a kind ofNew Labour revisionism (pluralism and choice!), with nothing inour radical past quite as heroic or asmonolithic as we old lefties would like to think. MANCHESTER METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY ALF LOUVRE Domestic Modernism, theInterwar Novel, and E. H. Young. By CHIARA BRIGANTI and KATHY MEZEI. Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. 2006. Viii+2II pp. ?45. ISBN 978-o-7546-5317-2. This ground-breaking study documents the publication and reception history of eleven of E. H. Young's novels within the context ofworks by Elizabeth Bowen, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Lettice Cooper, E. M. Delafield, Stella Gibbons, Storm Jameson, 212 Reviews Rosamond Lehmann, Rose Macaulay, Katherine Mansfield, May Sinclair, Dorothy Richardson, and Virginia Woolf. Domestic Modernism isdense with names, dates, and titles-and especially with insights into the emerging interdisciplinary fieldof home culture,which examines thenarration of domestic space as a locus forthecreation and articulation of the self. 'Through their deliberate attentiveness to domestic objects, interiors, rituals and theirvalidation of the everyday,' explain theauthors, 'thesewrit ers [. . .]unveiled the extraordinary in the ordinary' (p. 2). In theirnovels, women's everyday experience isnot trivialized but rathervalued as a source of self-knowledge. Domesticity becomes a springboard to self-expression instead of a catapult to tragedy (a laBovary). Chiara Briganti and Kathy Mezei begin by tracing the social factors that led to the rise of the interwardomestic novel: mass housing projects, advertisements on home making, the 'paperback revolution', and the proliferation of women's magazines. While Jameson denounced domesticity, other writers 'articulated...