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1922: The Birth Of Modernism (2011)

by Kevin Jackson(Favorite Author)

3.91 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1605981206 (ISBN13: 9781605981208)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Pegasus

review 1: This 2013 book is an almanac calendar of the annus mirabilis 1922.Many important events happened in historical, cultural, and scientificareas. It is an exciting compilation of the highlights of that year.The Wasteland and Ulysses were both published; the BBC was founded;Mussolini, Stalin, and Hitler were on the rise much to the world'schagrin. The first Disney animation was produced and Albert Einsteinwas awarded the Nobel in Physics. It is a fascinating excursion throughhistory.
review 2: Constellation of Genius is one of those brilliantly simple ideas that seem so obvious once someone else has come up with it: it's an almanac of the peak year of Modernism, 1922, the year of The Waste Land and Ulysses. The year is reported chronologically, arranged in twelve ... more(obviously) chapters, with an introductory scene-setting account of the state of play at the start of the year, and a fascinating 'Aftermath' section which deals with the post-1922 careers of the main players, and many of the minor ones too. Each month chronicles the events in the lives of the artists, writers, composers, film-makers, and others who might loosely be said to have formed the avant-garde of the time. Although the focus is mainly on the Anglo-American modernists, with Joyce and Eliot dominating, the scope is very broad, with datelines (also in violet) ranging from New York to Prague, Moscow to Cairo, Tokyo to Granada. Across this global stage strut a dazzling array of characters, vividly portrayed by Jackson: just a few of the figures covered are Eliot, Pound, Joyce, Woolf, Lawrence, Lorca, Hemingway, Forster, Proust in literature; Chaplin, Fairbanks, Eisenstein, Murnau, von Stroheim, Lang in film; Wittgenstein, Russell, Bateson in philosophy; Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Gershwin, Louis Armstrong in music; Dali, Breton, Picasso, Matisse, Man Ray in art; an astonishingly diverse supporting cast, as well as cameos from the major political figures of the time, from Lloyd George to Mussolini, with peripheral appearances by Ho Chi Minh, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler.The ambition of this book is to be commended, and Kevin Jackson has fulfilled that ambition brilliantly, producing a narrative that really manages to convey the flavour of that extraordinary year. The diary format works to his advantage, allowing the reader to discover the development of a particular event in stages, such as Eliot's efforts to launch the Criterion, juxtaposed with often completely contrasting threads, but all of which contribute to the accumulated sense of an incredibly rich artistic milieu. What really struck me, though, was the domestic detail, often about money - Pound's efforts to get people to subscribe to a fund to support Eliot, Woolf hoping she could sell her copy of Ulysses for £4.10s, Hemingway marvelling at how luxuriously he could live in Paris because of the exchange rate after the war, Joyce forever seeking patronage. The interconnections between the artists are mapped meticulously, often giving rise to some highly entertaining accounts of chance encounters - Proust and Joyce failing to agree about truffles, or Forster trying to prevent Hardy doing his "Grand Old Man of English Letters" shtick. One method used repeatedly is to give very precise details of the whereabouts of the participants - Woolf isn't bitching about Katherine Mansfield in Bloomsbury, she's in a bed that's been moved to the lounge at Hogarth House; Cocteau isn't holding court at a Paris night club, he's at Le Boeuf sur le Toit.This is a really excellent piece of work, which should be devoured by anyone with an interest in twentieth century culture. less

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