Laura Frost, The Problem with Pleasure: Modernism and Its Discontents

A new title from Columbia University Press

Laura Frost, The Problem with Pleasure: Modernism and Its Discontents

From Columbia University Press:

Aldous Huxley decried “the horrors of modern ‘pleasure,’” or the proliferation of mass produced, widely accessible entertainment that could degrade or dull the mind. He and his contemporaries, including James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, D. H. Lawrence, and Jean Rhys, sought to radically redefine pleasure, constructing arduous and indirect paths to delight through their notoriously daunting work. Laura Frost follows these experiments in the art of unpleasure, connecting modernism’s signature characteristics, such as irony, allusiveness, and obscurity, to an ambitious attempt to reconfigure bliss.

In The Problem with Pleasure, Frost draws upon a wide variety of materials, linking interwar amusements, such as the talkies, romance novels, the Parisian fragrance Chanel no. 5, and the exotic confection Turkish Delight, to the artistic play of Joyce, Lawrence, Stein, Rhys, and others. She considers pop cultural phenomena and the rise of celebrities such as Rudolph Valentino and Gypsy Rose Lee against contemporary sociological, scientific, and philosophical writings on leisure and desire.

Throughout her study, Frost incorporates recent scholarship on material and visual culture and vernacular modernism, recasting the period’s high/low, elite/popular divides and formal strategies as efforts to regulate sensual and cerebral experience. Capturing the challenging tensions between these artists’ commitment to innovation and the stimulating amusements they denounced yet deployed in their writing, Frost calls attention to the central role of pleasure in shaping interwar culture. [Read More]

Find on Amazon: US | UK

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Brian Boyd, Stalking Nabokov
• David Foster Wallace: Fate, Time and Language
• Alain Badiou, The Incident at Antioch
• Peter Sloterdijk, The Art of Philosophy: Wisdom as a Practice

Odd Type Writers

Celia Blue Johnson on writers' habits

Gertrude Stein

Celia Blue Johnson shares research she has conducted for her new book, Odd Type Writers:

Poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller was very particular about his writing process. He worked mostly at night and hung red curtains in his study so sunlight never illuminated the room. If he grew tired, Schiller would dip his feet in cold water so that he could stay awake and write. His most peculiar habit, however, involved fruit. He kept a drawer full of rotten apples in his study. The spoiled food created a stench that Schiller's friend Johann Wolfgang von Goethe found repugnant. However, according to Schiller's wife, he "could not live or work without" the awful aroma.

[...]

Gertrude Stein found inspiration in the driver's seat of her Model T Ford. Stein would wait in the car while her partner, Alice B. Toklas, ran errands. She jotted down poetry and prose on scraps of paper while busy Parisian traffic zipped by. Stein owned two Fords in her lifetime: the first she dubbed Auntie after a relative who "behaved fairly well most of the time if she was properly flattered," and the second, which lacked any bells and whistles, was named Godiva, after the naked heroine.

As a young writer Virginia Woolf preferred to stand while she wrote. Her desk was three and a half feet tall. Quentin Bell, Woolf's nephew, concluded that the habit was spurred by sibling rivalry. Woolf's sister Vanessa was an artist who painted at an easel. Bell noted, "This led Virginia to feel that her own pursuit might appear less arduous than that of her sister unless she set matters on a footing of equality." Eventually Woolf transitioned from standing to sitting.

In his late twenties, James Joyce wore a white coat while he worked. He'd put it on, climb into bed, and compose his work with a blue pencil. His sister Eileen noted that the coat "gave a kind of white light" that helped him see the page. Joyce battled eye diseases throughout his life. As his sight worsened, the resourceful author magnified his entire creative process, writing intricate sentences with colored crayons on large pieces of cardboard. [Read More]

Those interested in writer routines and eccentricities might also be tempted by Mason Currey's fascinating collection, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work.

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Daily Routines of Writers and Philosophers
• David Lynch on Having a Setup
• Ten Rules for Writing Fiction
• Writers' Rooms: Siri Hustvedt
• A Day in the Life of Arthur Schopenhauer

10 Grumpiest Writers in Literary History?

Flavorwire compiles its list of favourites

Thomas Bernhard

From Flavorwire: 'Berhard is a famous ranter, constantly raising his voice against his country, the culture, life, the universe and everything. Upon being presented with an Austrian national award in 1968, Berhard shrugged, “Everything is ridiculous, when one thinks of Death,” causing some minor public outrage. In his memoir, he wrote, ”I did not want to be anything, and naturally I did not want to turn myself into a mere profession: all I ever wanted was to be myself.” That, at least, he was in spades.'

Also included among the list are Norman Mailer, Gertrude Stein, Dorothy Parker, Vladimir Nabokov, and Patricia Highsmith. [Read More]

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Writers: Thomas Bernhard
• Patricia Highsmith's Greenwich Village
• Brian Boyd, Stalking Nabokov
• Dorothy Parker Telegram