Glamour in Six Dimensions: Modernism and the Radiance of Form by Judith Brown

Abstract

MLR, 105.3, 2010 855 of such aminor quibble, this collection is aworthy tribute inprint and pictures to a great poet and artist. Northern Illinois University William Baker Glamour in Six Dimensions: Modernism and theRadiance of Form. By Judith Brown. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press. 2009. xv+i99pp. ?26.95. ISBN 978-0-8014-4779-2. JudithBrown's book is a stimulating contribution toNew Modernist studies, and is based upon work she did for her doctoral thesis, though in the interim she has, for example, published on Greta Garbo and also on cellophane, two of the topoi her book discusses. Glamour in Six Dimensions references post-structuralist theory, theories of race and gender, and queer theory, using these to illuminate the argument at appropriate points, and showing at all turns a restrained yet easy mastery admirable in a first monograph. This is the kind of study that isbound to spur other researchers, and the book points well beyond itself to a number of fields thatmight be developed. The six dimensions of the title refer to the Greek for six, namely hex; and by a neat sleight, this allows Brown to exploit the historical origins of glamour as a notion. One thinks here ofwitchcraft trial transcripts from an earlier age, inwhich the unfortunate accused would be charged with putting the glamour on someone's livestock, or fascinating his beasts. This notion is central to Brown's enquiry: what is the nature of the spell cast bymodern glamour, and in narrower cultural terms, what is glamour's specific relation to the fascinations ofModernism? In framing her enquiry, Brown enters upon six areas: perception, violence, photography, celebrity, primitivism, and cellophane. It is a productively eclectic approach. If it isnot immediately apparent that a connection exists between Chanel No. 5 and the poetry ofWallace Stevens, itwill be after reading Brown. She is also good on the kinds of emotional and spiritual vacuum which screen idols came to fill in theminds ofmany film-goers. For glamour 'is backed by absence, suffusedwith longing, and defined by the fantasy of distance'. As such, it cannot but foreground pure form at the expense of content; and in this it 'bears strong affinitieswith modernist literature' (p. 117). By bringing into her purview cultural manifestations both elite and popular?Josephine Baker and Bakelite along with Gertrude Stein and cellophane; or cigarettes along with T. S. Eliot's famously chemical poetic mind; or the violence inherent in Jay Gatsby's self-performance alongside something similar in aMansfield short story?she is able to render visible the deeper cultural undertow upon which those currents shift,and tomake sense ofwhat they throw up. To carry conviction, Brown's study depends on the cumulative force of its ar gumentation. In this broad aim, it succeeds. That need not mean, however, that each stage of itscumulative strategy is equally, or indeed actually, convincing. 'The reader', admits Brown, 'might find it at the very least peculiar to linkMrs. [sic] 856 Reviews Dalloway with photography (p. 71). This caution seems justified. Hence Brown tells us one could almost imagine the striking of Big Ben to be the click of a camera' (p. 75), which is a bit of a stretch. She is on stronger ground in claim ing that 'Woolf's method, while not mimicking photography, nevertheless shares attributes with the camera's product' (p. 76), namely the photograph's enshrining of the past experienced as significant present moment. Scrope Purvis's catching sight of Clarissa ismeaningful, we are told, because his name hints at voyeurism in its similarity to scope' and pervert' (p. 78). In the celebrated crocus passage, Clarissa's thoughts return to the banal, '[a]s ifrepeating the snuffingof thematch' (p. 82), an aspect of themetaphor not found in Woolf, but introduced by Brown. 'One senses that, ifpossible, Woolf would have written this book so that it took place in the course of a moment' (p. 89). Maybe so. But what one can almost imagine', and what one senses', cannot amount to argumentation, anymore than can over-reading ofmetaphor, or overdetermined reading of a minor character's name. Particularly in this interesting and important chapter, Brown tends to pro duce rhetoric instead...