Edmund Wilson memorably characterized the later novels of Henry James as “large, loose, baggy monsters.” It might be unkind to describe historian Peter Gay’s latest book in the same way, yet Gay’s subject, modernism, itself exhibits all the symptoms—not only largeness and looseness, but also extensive baggydom and not a little monstrosity. In undertaking a six-hundred (...)
December 19, 2008
Books
Make It New
ModernismThe Lure of Heresy from Baudelaire to Beckett and BeyondPeter GayW. W. Norton, $35, 640 pp.
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