BOOK NEWS: Examining the influence of Western consumerism on Chinese literature

Modernist Poetics in China: Consumerist Economics and Chinese Literary Modernism

BY TIAO WANG AND RONALD SCHLEIFER

Palgrave Macmillan, 2023

ISBN: 978-3-031-00915-0

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-00913-6

Modernist Poetics in China examines organizations of consumerist economics, which developed at the turn of the twentieth century in the West and at the turn of the twenty-first century in China, in relation to modernist poetics. Consumerist economics include the artificial “person” of the corporation, the vertical integration of production, and consumption based upon desire as well as necessity. This book assumes that poetics can be understood as a theory in practice of how a world works. 

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

Tracing the relation of economics to poetics, the book analyzes the impersonality of indirect discourse in Qian Zhongshu and James Joyce; the impressionist discourses of Mang Ke and Ezra Pound; and discursive difficulty in Mo Yan and William Faulkner.  Bringing together two notably distinct cultures and traditions, this book allows us to comprehend modernism as a theory in practice of lived experience in cultures organized around consumption. 

“In the last generation in China, we have lived through one of the most miraculous transformations of culture and experience in human history, with opportunities of enhanced well-being, knowledge, and possibilities of life open to many people throughout our country. In Modernist Poetics in China, a Chinese scholar and an American scholar, working together, trace these transformations in our poetry and fiction, notably in the work of Shi Zhi, Qian Zhongshu, and our Nobel Prize laureate Mo Yan. Written in English, the book carefully unpacks the rich meanings of our Chinese language in order to introduce Chinese literary modernism to the world.” –Yu Jianhua, senior professor, Shanghai International Studies University 

“Modernist Poetics in China is a must read for those hoping to better understand the transpacific estuary of Chinese and English Modernism, shot through with the brackish undercurrents of entrepreneurial, corporate and consumer capitalism. By revealing striking parallels between the jarring economic changes facing English modernists in the early twentieth century and Chinese poets writing in the last decades of the twentieth century, Tiao Wang and Ronald Schleifer unsettle many under-theorized dichotomies and narratives of American or Chinese exceptionalism. By doing so, they have opened a new and essential space to (re)think the global economic and material conditions of Chinese poetics today.”  –Jonathan Stalling, Newman Chair of US-China Issues and professor of international studies, University of Oklahoma

“Modernist Poetics in China fills a gap in the existing scholarship on modernism and it does so exceptionally well. The book has many strengths. The conjoining of canonic Western modernist writers and their Chinese counterparts adds an important new chapter to the evolving study of modernism as a global phenomenon. The investigation of the political economy of modernism in its cultural manifestations beyond the Euro-American focus of most scholarship opens many new avenues in our understanding of modernism in China and beyond. This demonstrates that modernism as we know it in the West is “a complex of epistemological, social, and affective engagements” in any post-traditional society that chooses the path of corporate-consumerist economics. This is a capital step forward. It not only allows us to understand the Chinese experience since Deng Xiaoping but also offers analytical ways and means for understanding any society that follows the same historical evolution.” –John Xiros Cooper, professor emeritus, University of British Columbia  

Tiao Wang is associate professor of English Language and Literature at the School of Foreign Languages, Harbin Institute of Technology, China. She has published 23 articles, 9 of which are in English, focused on American and European modernism.  She is also co-translator of Yong Bao Teng Tong (2017), a translation of Pain and Suffering by Ronald Schleifer (2014). 

Ronald Schleifer is George Lynn Cross Research Professor and adjunct professor of medicine at the University of Oklahoma.  His publications in literary modernism include Modernism and Time: The Logic of Abundance in Literature, Science, and Culture, 1880–1930  (2000), Modernism and Popular Music (2011), and A Political Economy of Modernism: Literature, Post-Classical Economics, and the Lower Middle-Class (2018). 

BOOK NEWS: The Beats' negotiations with academia

The Beats and the Academy: A Renegotiation

EDITED BY ERIK MORTENSON AND TONY TRIGILIO 

Clemson UP, 2023

ISBN: 9781638040514

https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10.3828/9781638040514

The Beats and the Academy marks the first sustained effort to train a scholarly eye on the dynamics of the relationship between Beat writers and the academic institutions in which they taught. Rather than assuming the relationship between Beat writers and institutions of higher education was only a hostile one, The Beats and the Academy begins with the premise that influence between the two flows in both directions. Beat writers' suspicion of established institutions was a significant aspect of their postwar countercultural allure. Their anti-establishment aesthetic and countercultural stance led Beat writers to be critical of postwar academic institutions that tended to dismiss them as a passing social phenomenon. Even today, Beat writing still meets resistance in an academy that questions the relevance of their writing and ideas. But this picture, like any generalization, is far too easy. 

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

The Beat relationship to the academy is one of negotiation, rather than negation. Many Beats strove for academic recognition, and quite a few received it. And despite hostility to their work both in the postwar era and today, Beat works have made it into syllabi, conference presentations, journal articles, and monographs. The Beats and the Academy deepens our understanding of this relationship by emphasizing how institutional friction between the Beats and institutions of higher education has shaped our understanding of Beat Generation literature and culture—and what this relationship between Beat writers and the academy might suggest about their legacy for future scholars.

Erik Mortenson is a literary scholar, translator, writer, and English faculty member at Lake Michigan College in Benton Harbor, Michigan. After earning a PhD from Wayne State University in Detroit, Mortenson spent a year as a Fulbright Lecturer in Germany before journeying to Koç University in Istanbul to help found the English and Comparative Literature Department. Mortenson has published numerous journal articles and book chapters, as well as three books, including Capturing the Beat Moment: Cultural Politics and the Poetics of Presence (2011), Ambiguous Borderlands: Shadow Imagery in Cold War American Culture (2016), and Translating the Counterculture: The Reception of the Beats in Turkey (2018). Mortenson is also an avid translator whose work has appeared in journals such as Asymptote, Talisman, and Two Lines, and he is currently translating the work of Necmi Zekâ for a book-length project. Mortenson’s co-written memoir of his time in Detroit, Kick Out the Bottom, will appear from Cornerstone Press.

Tony Trigilio is a professor of English and Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago. He is the author and editor of fifteen books, including, most recently, Craft: A Memoir (forthcoming, Marsh Hawk Press, 2023) and Proof Something Happened, selected by Susan Howe as the winner of the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize (Marsh Hawk, 2021). His selected poems, Fuera del Taller del Cosmos, was published in Guatemala in 2018 by Editorial Poe (translated by Bony Hernández). He is the author of Allen Ginsberg's Buddhist Poetics (Southern Illinois UP, 2012 [paper] and 2007 [cloth]) and "Strange Prophecies Anew": Rereading Apocalypse in Blake, H.D., and Ginsberg (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2000). He is editor of Elise Cowen: Poems and Fragments (Ahsahta Press, 2014), and coeditor of Visions and Divisions: American Immigration Literature, 1870-1930 (Rutgers UP, 2008). He is a founding member of the Beat Studies Association.

BOOK NEWS: Subversion of convention in Irish noir fiction

Finders: Justice, Faith, and Identity in Irish Crime Fiction

BY ANJILI BABBAR

Syracuse UP, 2023

ISBN: 9780815611578

https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/5582/finders/

Some of the most iconic, hard-boiled Irish detectives in fiction insist that they are not detectives at all. Hailing from a region with a cultural history of mistrust in the criminal justice system, Irish crime writers resist many of the stereotypical devices of the genre. These writers have adroitly carved out their own individual narratives to weave firsthand perspectives of history, politics, violence, and changes in the economic and social climate together with characters who have richly detailed experiences.

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

Recognizing this achievement among Irish crime writers, Babbar shines a light on how Irish noir has established a new approach to a longstanding genre. Beginning with Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor, who rejects the detective title in favor of “finder”—a reference to Saint Anthony of Padua in the context of a traditionally secular form—Babbar examines the ways Irish authors, including John Connolly, Tana French, Alex Barclay, Adrian McKinty, Brian McGilloway, Claire McGowan, Gerard Brennan, Stuart Neville, Steve Cavanagh, and Eoin McNamee, subvert convention to reclaim their stories from a number of powerful influences: Revivalism, genre snobbery, cultural literary standards, and colonialism. These writers assert their heritage while also assuming a vital role in creating a broader vision of justice.

"Babbar's rigorous, serious, and insightful Finders is the most comprehensive study into the exciting phenomenon of Northern Irish crime fiction. A must-read for literary scholars and the casual fan of the most explosive sub genre of Celtic Noir."—Adrian McKinty, author of The Chain

"This is an astonishing achievement. . . . Historically rich and geographically expansive, Babbar’s study, in smooth, erudite prose, casts an astute eye over the complexities and distinctiveness of Irish crime fiction."—Andrew Pepper, Queen’s University Belfast

"Babbar provides a wonderfully comprehensive survey of the major authors in the contemporary Irish noir field. She accomplishes a minor miracle in synthesizing so many texts in an interesting, provocative, and engaging way."—Andrew Kincaid, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

"Babbar’s hopeful readings broaden the critical lens in distinctive and valuable ways by exploring Irish crime fiction’s acute insights about the thorniest matters of community faith and self."—Brian Cliff, coeditor of Guilt Rules All: Irish Mystery, Detective, and Crime Fiction

Anjili Babbar is associate professor of English at the Community College of Baltimore County. She has published on topics ranging from Irish crime fiction to representations of Irish folklore in popular culture.

BOOK NEWS: WWI poetry from a global perspective

 A History of World War One Poetry

EDITED BY JANE POTTER 

Cambridge UP, 2023

ISBN: 9781009100649

https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/literature/english-literature-1900-1945/history-world-war-one-poetry?format=HB

Situating First World War poetry in a truly global context, this book reaches beyond the British soldier-poet canon. A History of World War One Poetry examines popular and literary, ephemeral and enduring poems that the cataclysm of 1914-1918 inspired. 

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

Across Europe, poets wrestled with the same problem: how to represent a global conflict, dominated by modern technology, involving millions of combatants and countless civilians. For literary scholars this has meant discovering and engaging with the work of men and women writing in other languages, on other fronts, and from different national perspectives. Poems are presented in their original languages and in English translations, some for the very first time, while a Coda reflects on the study and significance of First World War poetry in the wake of the Centenary. A History of World War One Poetry offers a new perspective on the literary and human experience of 1914-1918.

• Provides examples of transnational poetic creation in time of global conflict to demonstrates how the canon of First World War Poetry, largely based around the British soldier-poetry, needs to be widened and diversified by presenting the poetry of the war in its global environment
• Analyzes a range of First World War poetry in the original language and in English translation in an accessible and scholarly manner
• Considers poetry from diverse perspectives, including artistic movements, individual poets and nations, and publishing history

Jane Potter is Reader in Arts at the Oxford International Centre for Publishing, Oxford Brookes University. Her publications include Boys in Khaki, Girls in Print: Women's Literary Responses to the Great War (2005), Wilfred Owen: An Illustrated Life (2014), and with Carol Acton, Working in a World of Hurt: Trauma and Resilience in the Narratives of Medical Personnel in War Zones (2015).