Reading 1922 A Return to the Scene of the Modern [Paperback]

This engaging study returns to a truly remarkable year, the year in which bothUlyssesandThe Waste Landwere published, in whichThe Great Gatsbywas set, and during which the Fascisti took over in Italy, the Irish Free State was born, the Harlem Renaissance reached its peak, Charlie Chaplin's popularity crested, and King Tutankhamen's tomb was discovered. In short, the year which not only in hindsight became the primal scene of literary modernism but which served as the cradle for a host of major political and aesthetic transformations resonating around the globe.

In his previous study, the acclaimedDialect of Modernism(OUP, 1994), Michael North looked at the racial and linguistic struggles over the English language which gave birth to the many strains of modernism. Here, he expands his vision to encompass the global stage, and tells the story of how books changed the future of the world as we know it in one unforgettable year.

Excellent.... Rightly challenges the common critical assertion, most influentially argued by Andreas Huyssen, that there is a deep antipathy between modernism and mass culture.... A nuanced description of 1922 that deepens our understanding of the reception of modernism as a wider cultural movement expressed both in great works of literature and in a diverse set of contemporaneous cultural works. --Christianity and Literature

Reading 1922is without a doubt the best book on Modernism to come along in a long time. --Jesse Matz,Comparative Literature Studies

Well documented, nicely illustrated, and written in up-to-the-minute clinical language, this book is a smooth sail, recommended for upper-division undergraduates and above. --Choice

Enlightening.... Making innovative use of material from such (apparently) diverse sources as anthropology, linguistics, travel literature and cinema, North's brisk but densely researched book moveslsH