Re-Covering Modernism: Pulps, Paperbacks, and the Prejudice of Form

by David M. Earle

In the first half of the twentieth century, modernist works appeared not only in obscure little magazines and books published by tiny exclusive presses but also in literary reprint magazines of the 1920s, tawdry pulp magazines of the 1930s, and lurid paperbacks of the 1940s. In his nuanced exploration of the publishing and marketing of modernist works, David M. Earle questions how and why modernist literature came to be viewed as the exclusive purview of a cultural elite given its availability in such popular forums. As he examines sensational and popular manifestations of modernism, as well as their reception by critics and readers, Earle provides a methodology for reconciling formerly separate or contradictory materialist, cultural, visual, and modernist approaches to avant-garde literature. Central to Earle's innovative approach is his consideration of the physical aspects of the books and magazines - covers, dust wrappers, illustrations, cost - which become texts in their own right. Richly illustrated and accessibly written, Earle's study shows that modernism emerged in a publishing ecosystem that was both richer and more complex than has been previously documented.

Genres: Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2009

Reviews

[Trevor Williamson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure the book ever truly lives up to its title, but it is an interesting take on what constitutes (or should constitute) the modernist canon, grappling with all of the inconsistencies of trying to codify literature of diverse backgrounds as one monolithic entity, incapable of multivalent cultural use. As a text attempting to review and revise modernist studies in academia, it's an excellent piece of work.

[Joshua Buhs · Rating 2 out of 5]

The point is: modernist prose appeared in a variety of popular forms, from pulpish magazines in the 1920s and 1930s to racy paperbacks in the 1940s and 1950s. Which accounts for its spread. But this has been ignored because pulps and paperbacks are seen as disposable. Instead, scholars have bought into the myth of modernism-against-the-market.

Earle wants to set the record straight.

That's it.

Which is a good point, and I learned some. He had an extended riff on Mencken and the "Smart Sets" limnal place in modernism, for example.I liked his bit on Harry Stephen Keeler, and how his super-elaborate plots--think of James Ellroy, but even more confounding--ended up reproducing certain modernist tropes.

Earle knows a lot and read a lot. That's not the problem.

The problem is, that's pretty much the entirety of his point, and what he mostly does is repeat it, again and again, sometimes in the same words, sometimes dragging in lit-crit-favored theorists such as Bourdieu and Foucault to make the point for him. Sometimes his claim is stronger--the way we conceive of modernism, and the entire scholarly project around modernism is wrong, academic branding gone awry--and sometimes weaker--pulps and paperbacks were indeed shoddy, but it's worth noting that modernist works appeared in them.

He picks some needless fights--Erin Smith's work really got under his skin, for some reason--and wants the reader to know that pulps were more than hardboiled detective magazines. Lots of women read them, and middle class people, and probably African Americans. He goes on extended discussions of Romance pulps and science fiction, drifting so far away from his thesis that it is invisible on the horizon. We get an long section on the social conscience of pulps, for example, that seems ill-placed.

The book is really short--just over 200 pages, but with relatively large text, quite a few blank pages, and lots and lots of images, that are interesting but serve no real purpose--and probably could have bene an essay of judiciously pared of the repetition (and the redundancy and the repetition) as well as the long tangents. But the book seems long, and the organization is . . . odd. There are only three chapters here.

It reads like an even longer dissertation--especially the introduction and its endless name dropping--that has been mutilated to fit into a monograph. The prejudice of form!