Popular Modernism and Its Legacies: From Pop Literature to Video Games

292 Pages·2019·11.412 MB·English

by  Scott Ortolano

Popular
Modernism and
Its Legacies

Popular
Modernism and
Its Legacies
From Pop Literature
to Video Games
Edited by
Scott Ortolano
With an Afterword by Faye Hammill
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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First published 2018
Paperback edition fi rst published 2019
Copyright © Scott Ortolano and Contributors, 2018
For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. xi constitute
an extension of this copyright page.
Cover design by Emma J. Hardy
Cover image © iStock
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For my wife and best friend, Michelle, and my daughter,
Lila, who inspire me every day to prove myself worthy
of their love.

CONTENTS
List of illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction
Of Titanics, wars, downturns, and Downtons: Popular modernism and its
legacies Scott Ortolano 1
Part 1 New Visions of Popular Modernism
1 Gentry modernism: Cultural connoisseurship and
midcentury masculinity, 1951–1957 Marsha Bryant 19
2 Modernism, operetta, and Ruritania: Ivor Novello’s
Glamorous Night Nicholas Daly 45
3 Fine art on the airwaves: Radio drama and modern(ist)
mass culture Adam Nemmers 63
4 “I’m gonna be somebody,” 1930: Gangsters and
modernist celebrity Jonathan Goldman 79
5 Charlie Chaplin, Walter Benjamin, and the redemption of
the city Barry J. Faulk 95
Part 2 Legacies of Popular Modernism
6 “Catch a wave”: Surf noir and modernist
nostalgia Kirk Curnutt 113
viii CONTENTS
7 Alien pleasures: Modernism/hybridity/science fiction
Paul March-Russell 133
8 Josephine Baker’s contemporary afterlives: Black female
identity, modernist performance, and popular legacies of
the Jazz Age Asimina Ino Nikolopoulou 149
9 A hitchhiker’s guide to modernism: The futuristic
Fordisms of Aldous Huxley, Brian O’Nolan, and Douglas
Adams Andrew V. McFeaters 165
Part 3 Resonances of Popular Modernism in the
Twenty-First Century
10 Smokescreens to smokestacks: True Detective and the
American sublime Caroline Blinder 183
11 Of modernist second acts and African-American lives:
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Wire, and the struggle against
lockdown Walter Bosse 203
12 Don Draper’s identity crisis and Mad Men’s modernist
masculinity Camelia Raghinaru 217
13 A century of reading time: From modernist novels to
contemporary comics Aimee Armande Wilson 231
14 Hemingway’s console: Memory and ethics in the
modernist video game Dustin Anderson 247
Afterword, Faye Hammill 263
Notes on contributors 267
Index 271