Women's Experience of Modernity. 1875-1945 by Ann L. Ardis , Leslie W. Lewis (review)

Abstract

YES, 35, 2005 YES, 35, 2005 353 353 the United States that she had finally made her opinions about modern art accessible, so he was less successfulwith experimental texts like her TheMakingof Americans. Taking up John Dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy after he was dropped by Harper's,Harcourtwas able to allay readers'fears about his radicalismwhilejustifying the work'sexperimentalstyle. Such experimentationwould stillhave been out of place at Scribner's,a conservativeoutfitthat only inched forwardwith its signing of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Ernest Hemingway offered the firm a new challenge: how to protect its reputation while defending his sparse style and presumed profanity. Editor Maxwell PerkinsfosteredHemingway's rugged reputation,but more importantlyhe redefinedmoralityby convincing readersthat Hemingway was only being honest in his frank reflection of the modern world. Finally, Random House rode a wave of notoriety in the 1930s by printingJoyce's Ulyssesin the United States. Because a highbrow audience had already been sated by Sylvia Beach's European edition, presumably,Bennett Cerf reached out to a middlebrowAmerican audience that he was convinced could appreciatethe book. By challengingideas about literature by marketingUlysses as a puzzle, Cerf also raisedquestionsabout the nature of reading practices, themselves. While Turner has a keen eye for the visual component of bookjacket design and advertising,she shows an even greateraptitudehere for connecting the intentionsof authorsand publishers,as revealedthroughtheir correspondence,with the advertising copy she examines.Marketing Modernism Between theTwoWorldWarsthusprovides its readerswith an excellent introductionto a whole new streamof criticaldiscourse. Turner's analysisyields a convincing portrait of publishersstrugglingto maintain balance between their twentieth-centuryprofit motive and an older booksellers' idealism. Somewhere in this clash between traditionand a changing world, writers continued to seek the legitimacy and authority bestowed by an audience's acceptance . Interestingly,in their desire to reassureconsumers that modern workswere readable, publishers may have been more interested than their authors in what happened to their books once they entered people's homes. UNIVERSITYOF LETHBRIDGE,ALBERTA CRAIG MONK Women'sExperienceof Modernity.1875-945. Ed. By ANN L. ARDISand LESLIEW. LEWIS. Baltimore, MD, and London:Johns Hopkins University Press. 2003. ix + 312 pp. i16.50. ISBN:0-8018-6935-8. This collection of sixteen essays aims to extend and to diversify analysis of the nature and experience of 'modernity'.The volume can be understoodas an elaborated response to Rita Felski'squestion, from TheGender ofModernity (I995), of how 'modernity'would appear differentlyif we were to put women's experiences at its centre. It is thus fittingthat it ends with an 'Afterword'in which Felskireviewsthe state of feministscholarshipon modernityand situatesthe variousessaysin relation to this largerproject. The Introductionto the volume, by Ann L. Ardis,highlightsthe contested nature of each of its key terms: 'women'; 'experience';and 'modernity'.Recent historical, sociological, and literaryscholarshipis cited to indicate the basic instabilityof these terms, as well as their tendency to solidify contingent historicaljudgements, and thus to lend them the allureof unarguabletruths.This theoreticalscrupulousnessis the United States that she had finally made her opinions about modern art accessible, so he was less successfulwith experimental texts like her TheMakingof Americans. Taking up John Dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy after he was dropped by Harper's,Harcourtwas able to allay readers'fears about his radicalismwhilejustifying the work'sexperimentalstyle. Such experimentationwould stillhave been out of place at Scribner's,a conservativeoutfitthat only inched forwardwith its signing of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Ernest Hemingway offered the firm a new challenge: how to protect its reputation while defending his sparse style and presumed profanity. Editor Maxwell PerkinsfosteredHemingway's rugged reputation,but more importantlyhe redefinedmoralityby convincing readersthat Hemingway was only being honest in his frank reflection of the modern world. Finally, Random House rode a wave of notoriety in the 1930s by printingJoyce's Ulyssesin the United States. Because a highbrow audience had already been sated by Sylvia Beach's European edition, presumably,Bennett Cerf reached out to a middlebrowAmerican audience that he was convinced could appreciatethe book. By challengingideas about literature by marketingUlysses as a puzzle, Cerf also raisedquestionsabout the nature of reading practices, themselves. While Turner has a keen eye for the visual component of bookjacket design and advertising,she shows an even greateraptitudehere for connecting the intentionsof authorsand publishers,as revealedthroughtheir correspondence,with the advertising copy she examines...