UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations
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UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title On Company Time: American Modernism and the Big Magazines Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2kw4094r Author Harris, Donal Frederick Publication Date 2013 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles On Company Time: American Modernism and the Big Magazines A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Donal Frederick Harris 2013 © copyright by Donal Frederick Harris 2013 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION On Company Time: American Modernism and the Big Magazines By Donal Frederick Harris Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Los Angeles, 2013 Professor Mark McGurl, Co-Chair Professor Michael North, Co-Chair On Company Time: American Modernism and the Big Magazines situates the evolution of American modernism within its capacious mass-market periodical context, and in doing so finds that hallmark modernist texts such as Willa Cather‟s The Professor’s House and T.S. Eliot‟s The Waste Land participate in a more complex and far-reaching print ecology than is often understood. I contend that reading modernist formal experimentation within, rather than against, popular print culture raises a new set of questions about how reactions to “mass civilization,” to use F.R. Leavis‟s phrase, feed back into the content of midcentury mass media. By excavating the deep institutional, economic, and aesthetic affiliations that bridge the golden days of modernism and American magazine culture, this study challenges the recent focus on little magazines and coterie circles in determining modernism‟s cultural ii circulation. Instead, through readings of Cather, Eliot, W.E.B. Du Bois, Jessie Fauset, James Agee, Kenneth Fearing, Ernest Hemingway, and others, I argue that the influence of little magazines on modernist production and circulation looks rather narrow when compared to well-funded and massively popular titles like McClure’s, Time, Life, and Esquire. Rather than simply instantiate a bland mass culture against which modernism reacts, early twentieth- century magazines comprise a heterogeneous cluster of serial publications that differentiated themselves by form, genre, and readership. This double life of modernism and magazines is equally epistemological and formal, for the authors I discuss take their ambivalences about institutional affiliation as an occasion for material and aesthetic experimentation. By simultaneously analyzing literary history, media forms, and narrative structure, I contribute to an emerging body of scholarship at the intersection of media studies, book history, and literary criticism. This study expands the material and institutional history of print culture while attending to the ways authors, genres, and literary styles can move through a literary marketplace. iii The dissertation of Donal Frederick Harris is approved. Yogita Goyal Michael Szalay Richard Yarborough Mark McGurl, Committee Co-Chair Michael North, Committee Co-Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2013 iv For my parents. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................................... viii VITA ...................................................................................................................................................... x INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1: WILLA CATHER‟S PROMISCUOUS FICTION ............................................................... 20 Promiscuous Fiction ...................................................................................................................... 33 Gentlemen, Mobs, Magazines ...................................................................................................... 39 The Genius of the System ............................................................................................................ 45 Seamstresses and Landlords ......................................................................................................... 52 CHAPTER 2: PRINTING THE COLOR LINE IN THE CRISIS ............................................................. 59 The Problem of “Plain Ink” ......................................................................................................... 68 Flattening the Picture of Race ...................................................................................................... 75 Repeating Race ............................................................................................................................... 85 CHAPTER 3: FINDING WORK: AGEE AND FEARING IN THE OFFICE ......................................... 95 Punching the Clock ...................................................................................................................... 104 Time-styles .................................................................................................................................... 115 Aestheticizing the Organization Man ....................................................................................... 122 Incorporating Modernist Authorship ....................................................................................... 126 CHAPTER 4: OUR ELIOT: MODERNISM, MASS MEDIA, AND THE AMERICAN CENTURY ....... 144 The Outside of Modernism ........................................................................................................ 151 Fashioning American Style ......................................................................................................... 158 Eliot in the Atomic Age .............................................................................................................. 162 Our Eliot ....................................................................................................................................... 170 Forgetting “Mr. Eliot”................................................................................................................. 177 CODA: RE-CIRCULATING MODERNISM ......................................................................................... 186 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………..208 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Cover, The Crisis, April 1911. ........................................................................................... 76 Figure 2: “Opinion of W.E.B. Du Bois.” The Crisis Nov 1920. .................................................. 79 Figure 3: Frank Walts, Portrait of Hazel Henley, The Crisis Oct 1919. ...................................... 81 Figure 4: Frank Walts, Cover, The Crisis Nov 1920. ...................................................................... 82 Figure 5: "Huh! I don't want to look at no pretty girl!" The Crisis Oct 1920.. .......................... 91 Figure 6. The Waste Land in Time, 1923. ........................................................................................ 155 Figure 7. The Waste Land in The Dial, 1922. .................................................................................. 155 Figure 8. The Spread of the News-Magazine Idea. Time, 1924. ................................................ 161 Figure 9. References to T.S. Eliot in Time, 1923-1964. ............................................................... 163 Figure 10. "No Middle Way Out of the Waste Land?" Time, 1950. .......................................... 171 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It‟s easy to take greatness for granted when it surrounds you, but reflecting on the collective and individual brilliance of my committee reminds me just how lucky I am. Mark McGurl guided this project from its earliest stages and his unfailing support as an advisor, critic, and model scholar will shape my work long after I lay this dissertation to rest. Michael North showed me how to think like a modernist, then he showed me how not to think like one, too. Richard Yarborough taught me to say what I mean, while making the things I say far more interesting. He also instilled in me a healthy fear of scare quotes, for which I will be forever grateful. Yogita Goyal taught me how to decide what needs to be written about, and not to be obvious. At a crucial point, Michael Szalay reminded me to write about what I like – advice that went a long way. UCLA has proven a remarkable place to be an Americanist, and I benefitted from a department heavily invested in that term. Chris Looby, Michael Cohen, Joe Dimuro, Christopher Mott, and Sarah Mesle asked the right questions when it counted. Austin Graham and Mike Devine set the bar high, and continue to do so. More than anyone else, Kate Marshall and Sam See modeled good scholarship and good citizenship, and I‟m honored to call them friends. All of those above and many more contributed to the Americanist Research Colloquium, a forum that had an incalculable effect on the way I approach intellectual community. It showed me the benefits of group thinking, and it always had great food. Brian Kim Stefans and his M/ELT group forced me to rearticulate the most basic assumptions about this project, and it is a much better dissertation because of their input. viii Audiences at the Modernist Studies Association and the American Comparative Literature Association listened patiently while I talked, and then they told me how to improve.