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UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Puzzling Modernity Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3b04m0tf Author Lorhan, Laura Beth Publication Date 2016 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Puzzling Modernity A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in English by Laura Beth Lorhan 2016 © Copyright by Laura Beth Lorhan 2016 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Puzzling Modernity by Laura Beth Lorhan Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Los Angeles, 2016 Professor Michael A. North, Chair Puzzling Modernity approaches key issues in modernist scholarship, such as fractured subjectivity and modernism's notoriously vexed relationship with popular culture, from a distinctly new vantage point by situating American modernism within a previously unrecognized pattern of nationwide fascination with puzzles dating back to the 1880s. I argue that puzzles appealed to modernist authors as aesthetic models because they offer a framework for acknowledging the grim realities of modern life without sacrificing the possibility for reconnection and regaining a sense of wholeness, no matter how provisional. Yet, while puzzles offer a safe environment in which to test out solutions to life's dilemmas, they also participate in exclusionary discourses and advance regressive agendas, particularly when administered as intelligence tests. Far more than aesthetic models, then, puzzles serve modernist writers as tools for revealing and frequently subverting the rhetorical ends to which these seemingly innocent and trivial pastimes have been put. In the first chapter, I argue that the "cross-word puzzle ii school" label that detractors of modernism appended to T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound during the 1920s serves as a useful point of departure for reconsidering their poetics because it brings their abiding concern for order rooted in language into sharp focus. In part two, I contend that Djuna Barnes burlesques sexological formulations of homosexuality as a riddle to be solved through riddling prose of her own in Ladies Almanack (1928). She renders definitive statements about queer being impossible, and in so doing, restores the archaic definition of the verb "to queer" meaning to puzzle or flummox. Part three considers puzzling in relation to race. I track the convergence of degeneration theory, Positivist criminology, eugenics, and anthropology to their fixation on "abnormal" physiognomy and demonstrate how each of these disciplines encodes deviance in racial terms. Building off of this foundation, I analyze how Jean Toomer redeploys the central premise of the Changing Faces puzzle by crafting a series of portraits of African American and multiracial individuals in Cane (1923) that undercut and denaturalize the criminalization of facial features along racial lines enacted by anthropometry and eugenics. iii The dissertation of Laura Beth Lorhan is approved. Karen E. Rowe Louise Hornby Kathleen Komar Michael A. North, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2016 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract . ii List of Figures . vii Acknowledgments . ix Vita . xi Part I: Introduction . 1 Chapter One: T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and the "Cross-word Puzzle School" . .18 Part II: The Riddles of Djuna Barnes Chapter Two: "They Took to Gaming and Swapping That 'Other' of the Mystery, the Anomaly that Calls the Hidden Name" . 60 Chapter Three: "Outrunners in the Thickets of Probability" . 115 Part III: The Changing Faces of Jean Toomer Chapter Four: More Fun than a Barrel of Monkeys . .151 Chapter Five: Portrait of the Artist: Jean Toomer's Public Faces . .177 Chapter Six: Georgia Portraits . 230 Appendix . .270 Bibliography . .287 v LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1: Detail of W. E. Hill's Cartoon "Cross Word Puzzles" . .270 Fig. 2: Second Frontispiece of Ladies Almanack (1928) . 270 Fig. 3: Vignette from the title page of Ladies Almanack . 270 Fig. 4: Front and Back Wrapper of Ladies Almanack (1928) . .271 Fig. 5: Zodiac from Ladies Almanack . .271 Fig. 6: "This is the Part About Heaven that has never been told!" from Ladies Almanack . 272 Fig. 7: "November" from Ladies Almanack . .272 Fig. 8: Frontispiece to Ladies Almanack . 273 Fig. 9: Composite Photograph of Violent Criminals . 274 Fig. 10: An evolutionary spectrum of changing faces based upon Camper's facial angle . .274 Fig. 11: Camper's Facial Angle in Profile. .275 Fig. 12: Frontal View of Camper's Facial Angle . 275 Fig. 13: "Birdseye View of the Pan-American Exposition" . .276 Fig. 14: Triumphal Bridge with a view of the Electric Tower. 276 Fig. 15: Esau, "The Connecting Link" . .277 Fig. 16: Advertisement for the Changing Faces Puzzle . .277 Fig. 17: The Evolution of Love drawn by Jean Toomer (ca. 1901) . 278 Fig. 18: Jean Toomer's Scrapbook page 2 . 278 Fig. 19: Scrapbook page 3 . 279 Fig. 20: Eugen Sandow as the Farnese Hercules. Cabinet card by Sarony (1893). 279 Fig. 21: Eugen Sandow as Hercules. Photograph by Napoleon Sarony (c. 1893) . .280 Fig. 22: Cabinet Card of Bernarr Macfadden as Michelangelo's David (c.1905). .280 vi Fig. 23: Annette Kellermann in her controversial one-piece bathing suit . 281 Fig. 24: Annette Kellermann, detail from Jean Toomer's Scrapbook page 13 . .281 Fig. 25: Promotional Postcard for Neptune's Daughter (c. 1914) . 281 Fig. 26: Ruth Roland . .282 Fig. 27: Jean Toomer's Scrapbook page 12 . 282 Fig. 28: Jean Toomer, detail from Scrapbook page 12. 282 Fig. 29: Scrapbook page 15. Jean Toomer second from right. .282 Fig. 30: Scrapbook, detail from page 16. Jean Toomer at left. .283 Fig. 31: Advertisement for Strongfortism (1922) . .283 Fig. 32: Peter Jackson in Billy Edwards's Gladiators of the Ring (1894) . 283 Fig. 33: The Black Prince Toomer . .284 Fig. 34: Jean Toomer (1921) by May Howard Jackson (Three-quarter profile view) . .284 Fig. 35: Photograph of May Howard Jackson (ca. 1912) . .284 Fig. 36: Jean Toomer (1921) by May Howard Jackson (profile view) . 284 Fig. 37: Jean Toomer (1921) by May Howard Jackson . .285 Fig. 38: Jackson's signature on the pedestal . .285 Fig. 39: Jean Toomer (1925) by Winold Reiss . 286 Fig. 40: Alain Locke (1925) by Winold Reiss . 286 vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to those who believed in me and without whose material support this project would not have been possible. I offer my sincerest thanks to the UCLA Graduate Division for awarding me the Dissertation Year Fellowship that funded my work on Jean Toomer. The generosity of the English Department, to which I am indebted for both emotional and material support throughout my graduate studies, has been a source of inspiration. I would like to thank The Alfred Longueil Scholarship Fund and The James and Geneva Phillips Fund for endowing the English Departmental Dissertation Fellowship that gave me the time and breathing space necessary for completing this project. Thanks are also due to The Grace M. Hunt English Library and Reading Room Fund, which furnished a travel grant for me to photograph May Howard Jackson's portrait bust of Jean Toomer at the Johnston Memorial Library on the campus of Virginia State University. The fruits of my visit to their Special Collections division appear in Chapter Five. I would also like to thank the Friends of English, whose tireless efforts have facilitated the important work that our department has done and continues to do. I gratefully acknowledge permission to reproduce images and quote from unpublished materials granted by the following individuals and institutions: the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library; Special Collections and University Archives, Johnston Memorial Library, Virginia State University; The Authors League Fund and St. Bride’s Church, as joint literary executors of the Estate of Djuna Barnes; University College London Library, Special Collections; and Renate Reiss. I have been extremely lucky to know and work with wonderful professors over the years. Thank you to all of the instructors who have helped to shape my academic interests and mold me viii into the scholar that I am today. I would like to express special thanks to the members of my committee: Michael North, Karen Rowe, Louise Hornby, and Kathleen Komar, whose comments at every stage of this project have helped me to clarify my thinking and helped me to avoid getting bogged down in the details. Thank you to Louise Hornby for reading between the lines and knowing whenever I needed help; her constructive criticism and practical advice have aided me greatly. I would like to thank Karen Rowe for her unwavering support, thoroughness, and dedication. I have benefitted from her generosity in numerous ways: as a student, research assistant, reader, and friend. I would like to thank my committee chair, Michael North, for being honest and direct in his critiques; bringing a healthy dose of skepticism to bear on a project having to do with puzzles; holding me to his high standards and believing that I can achieve them; and for the benefit of his example. He has set the bar very high, indeed, by publishing inspiring work while teaching, engaging in departmental service, and ushering a gaggle of graduate students through their doctoral training. Thank you for allowing me to be one of them. To my friends and family, thank you for your support and patience as I endured the highs and lows of graduate school. To Deb, my fiercest supporter, thank you for being there for me at every step along the way. To Dad, who never doubted that I would finish this project, thank you for your love, prayers, and sharing your birthday with your Cookie girl. To Marshall, who should by all rights have received an honorary English degree by now, thank you for letting me bounce ideas off of you when you were tired; for listening patiently to convoluted academic sentences and helping me to refine them; and for the love that you show me each and every day.
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