Modernist Star Maps

Reviews / Votes

'These essays trace startling, often luminous connections stretching from Garbo to Gatsby, from Orlando to Elvis, and from Paris through Harlem to the Tobacco Road. More than just local readings of familiar texts, this collection draws unlikely constellations between the stars of the early twentieth century's cultural firmament in order to divine from them the shape of a modernity decisively shaped by the enigma of celebrity. The result is a compelling study of modernism as itself a part of celebrity culture: an elegant thesis that dares us to move beyond the tired dialectics of high and low art. This book makes an important contribution to the New Modernist Studies while simultaneously challenging us to rethink the phantom concept of modernism itself.' Sean Latham, University of Tulsa, USA 'Modernist Star Maps marks 2010 as a moment when the critical dialogue surrounding celebrity took an enormous leap forward....By approaching the topic of celebrity from the particular perspective of modernist literary scholarship, [Goldman and Jaffe] expand the scope of the discussion of celebrity to include literary celebrity and what they call the literature of celebrity's moment.' English Studies in Canada 'Celebrity serves as the scintillating subject of this essay collection, which correlates modernist innovation, celebrity representation, and cultural transformation in the early twentieth century and beyond...Modernist Star Maps productively explores the tension between intimacy and impersonality that inheres both in modernist authorship and in celebrity culture.' Modernism/Modernity