The Problem with Pleasure

Reviews / Votes

A tour de force that will be widely and passionately read. Laura Frost has panache, acuity, incisiveness, and pleasure to burn. This is an important and shimmering book, a firework in its own right. -- Jennifer Wicke, University of Virginia Strikingly original both conceptually and in its readings of a diverse array of interwar authors from Joyce and Stein to Huxley and Loos, Laura Frost's revisionary study of literary modernism's relation to the pleasures of vernacular culture changes the terms of the debate concerning modernism and the great divide between high and low culture. Yet her study's implications resonate significantly beyond modernism and are urgently relevant to understanding and assessing our contemporary response to the easy pleasures of the digital. -- John Paul Riquelme, Boston University An original and useful revision to our understanding of modernism. Publishers Weekly Fresh, invigorating, witty and profound, her book impresses on every page... This is criticism at its very best and it deserves to top any reading list on Modernism. Times Higher Education [Frost] is an irreverent, imaginative guide to modernism, and her own writing throughout this impressive study is a pleasure and a delight. -- Linda Simon Los Angeles Review of Books Passionate and provocative... Frost's study of the vicissitudes of modernist unpleasure performs its argument quite well. -- Ryan Chang Biblioklept Laura Frost's The Problem with Pleasure: Modernism and Its Discontents offers us an illuminating perspective on modernism. -- Daniel Green Open Letters Monthly With its breezy erudition and fast-flowing, abundantly pleasurable prose, [The Problem with Pleasure] should find and delight a wide audience. -- Judith Brown Novel: A Forum on Fiction Frost's book is a treasure-trove of difficult pleasures. -- Saikat Majumdar James Joyce Quarterly