What Ever Happened to Modernism?

In 1958 Gabriel Josipovici attends an Oxford lecture on contemporary English literature and subsequently reads those key authors the lecturer notes, including Anthony Powell and Iris Murdoch. He is most disappointed. He writes, “They told entertaining stories wittily or darkly or with sensationalist panache, and they obviously wrote well, but theirs were not novels which touched me to the core of my being, as had those of Kafka and Proust.” Gabriel Josipovici ponders why this is the case.

He attends another lecture where a British scholar debunks and rails against Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Baudelaire and Sartre. The speaker tells the audience in so many words, “These effete ninnies were all suffering from show more oversensitivity mingled with self-regard; what they had to say was the result of their cosseted upbringing and a sharp kick up the backside was all that was needed to bring them to their senses.” Josipovici takes exception, thinking such influential European writers offer deep insight into our modern human condition. Repeat experiences with hard-line, no-nonsense Anglo speakers and the everyday realism of English and US authors propels Josipovici to probe deeper into the very roots of Modernism.

In approaching the question ‘When does Modernism begin?’ the author details quite a bit of history of literature and the arts and proposes we reach much farther back in time then the 1850-1950 timetable usually given in answer to this question. For, as he writes, “The temptation is strong to date Modernism in that hundred-year period. This is certainly when it flourished and when its manifestations were so prevalent that no-one could ignore it.”

However, as he goes on - and this is key to his entire book: “The danger in seeing it like that, though, is that Modernism is thereby turned into a style, like Mannerism or Impressionism, and into a period of art history, like the Augustan or the Victorian age, and, therefore as something that can be clearly defined and is safely behind us. I, on the other hand, want to argue that modernism needs to be understood in a completely different way, as the coming into awareness by art of its precarious status and responsibilities, and therefore as something that will, from now on, always be with us. Seen in this way, Modernism, I would suggest, becomes a response by artists to that ‘disenchantment of the world’ to which cultural historians have long been drawing our attention.”

To undergird his position, Josipovici spends the lion’s share of his book providing detailed examples, from Albrecht Durer to Cervantes and Rabelais, from Casper David Friedrich and Pablo Picasso to Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka to show how since the 1500s religion took an inward turn and the world became a progressively colder place. At one point we read, “It is no coincidence that the novel emerges at the very moment when the world is growing disenchanted.” He then quotes Walter Benjamin: “The novelist has isolated himself. The birthplace of the novel is the solitary individual.” And that’s solitary individual not only in terms of the writer of the novel but also in terms of the novel being read by a solitary reader. Indeed, an entire culture of men and women, including artist, musicians and writers living, working and creating in a kind of solitary confinement – the modern world as a very alone place with no comforting communal anchors.

Again, quite a detailed and well researched book. The above quotes along with my comments are merely a taste. Since I am not a historian or literary scholar I will not offer my own judgement on Gabriel Jasipovici’s position here; rather, I urge you to read for yourself. However, there is one important point I will note: other than Jorge Luis Borges and a passing mention of V. S. Naipaul, Jasipovici’s observations are restricted to European and American literature, art and music. There are no references to authors or artists or musicians from Latin America or Africa or the Middle East or Japan or elsewhere on the globe. Since this book was published in 2010 I can’t help thinking the author’s Eurocentric approach is a bit provincial, or, in other words, I would suggest one possible answer to the question “What Ever Happened to Modernism?” could be that it has gone global. We are now one World Culture and any complete history of literature and the arts requires a truly world view, a view that would be well to include one of the great literary artists of the late 20th century, the author in the photo below – G. Cabrera Infante. show less

One of the better books I've read on modernism, for two big reasons: first, he thinks that modernism and what you think of modernism are matters of life and death (he appears to mean this literally); and second, he's an argumentative sod who has no interest in hedging his bets. In: Proust, Beckett, Kafka, Woolf. Out: Greene, Naipaul, Roth, Morrison. He reminds me a bit of Leavis, which opinion, I suspect would either set old Jos howling at the moon in rage, or popping his collar. I liked it, in fact, despite the fact that I fundamentally disagree with his argument, which is a pretty good sign that a book is worth reading.

It's basically a polemic about literary modernism, but he spreads himself pretty thin, with discussions of painting show more (understandable, given that he thinks the best writing about modernism is by art-critics; regrettable, since he thinks that R. Krauss is one of those 'good' writers on modernism) and music (enjoyable, in that he dismisses Cage and name-drops Birtwhistle; regrettable in that he seems to fall very much on the Stravinsky half of the cliched Strav/Schoenberg divide). Sometimes this breadth is helpful, since the divisions in music and visual art are often easier to see (Cage v Ligeti, for instance, or Abstraction vs Bacon/Picasso) than those in lit; but I wish he'd spent more time on writers.

The argument is that the best literature is made at the crossroads of (here's the painting analogy) abstraction and realism, where abstraction stands in for 'reflection on artistic form' and realism stands in for 'connection to the world.' So far so convincing, I've often thought the same thing. But his narrow view of literature makes this a little tendentious. Had he spent more time on writers he would have had to deal with the development of the novel more fully, rather than just writing off the nineteenth century as the century of 'realism.' The 19th c, in short, = Dickens. I can understand the polemical point here, with so many authors these days wanting the words 'Dickensian sweep' on their back covers, but it's a distortion of history. Remember Henry James ripping Trollope for breaking the illusion of realism, when he'd write things like "I'm not interested in holding you in suspense, dear reader; my heroine will never marry the villain"? This is surely at the crossroads of form and realism, but you'd never know Trollope existed from the evidence of 'Whatever Happened to Modernism?' Similarly, the only early English novelist cited is Sterne, that favorite of the abstraction/form people. But surely Fielding and Richardson, at the very least, can be read profitably at the crossroads? Fielding wrote essays to introduce each Book of Tom Jones and his preface to Joseph Andrews is fabulous. Richardson's characters spend all their time writing and he's aware of the problems with this form.

Okay. So Josipovici complains about modernism's 'false friends,' who identify modernism with realism, and fair enough. But his genealogy of modernism is just as limited as theirs: but while the false friends see modernism *as* realism, he sees it as a reaction *against* realism: modernists just are those people who come to see that there's a problem with 'realistic' depictions of reality. But realism has always been only a small part of literature. What about satire, parody, broadsides, lyric, critique, epic, essays and so on? Waugh might have complained about 'modernism,' but you'll never convince me that his jittery, ironic, absurd satires aren't modernist. He doesn't make a big deal about finding new ways to express and attack new realities, but that's what he's doing.

At the end of the day, Josipovici suggests, modernism just is coming to understand what is "no longer" possible for art: for him, that means modernism is coming to understand that realism is no longer possible. To reject that claim, given his genealogy of modernism, is to be a post-modernist who believes that everything is always possible because nothing matters. I would say against this that modernism is a fundamentally critical attitude to the world and the ways we represent it, but which holds onto traditional ideals, including that of accurately depicting the world. Jos says the most important thing about modernism is the body, and grasping that we can't come to an understanding of anything; I say it's the mind, and insisting that we can understand, although it's really hard. But really, no matter how worked up I get about this, this is a nicely written book with a clear argument about an important matter. Don't ignore it. show less

When this book was published last year, it received a surprising amount of attention from mainstream press for a work pondering the extent of modernism's reach. And this occurred, I believe, as a result of some slightly misleading marketing:

"The quality of today's literary writing arouses the strongest opinions. For novelist and critic Gabriel Josipovici, the contemporary novel in English is profoundly disappointing - a poor relation of its groundbreaking Modernist forebears. This agile and passionate book asks why."

And the press picking up on a an inflammatory section of the book that does not occur until page 174 of a 187 page book.

"Reading Barnes, like reading so many of the other English writers of his generation, Martin Amis, Ian show more McEwan, Blake Morrison, or a critic from an older generation who belongs with them, John Carey, leaves me feeling that I and the world have been made smaller and meaner. Ah, but they will say, that is just what we wanted, to free you of your illusions. But I don't believe them. I don't buy into their view of life. The irony which at first made one smile, the precision of language, which was at first so satisfying, the cynicism, which at first was used only to puncture pretension, in the end come to seem like a terrible constriction, a fear of opening oneself up to the world."

The book also quietly raised eyebrows in smaller press and in some academic circles as representing a lesser version of Josipovici's typically brilliant work because it seemed to be an unusual hybrid of academic writing and a slight examination of modernism intended to appeal to a broader audience than might typically pick up such a title. I find all of these things to be a disservice to a very engaging book that presents itself initially as "a personal book, an attempt, fifty years on, to clarify the unease I felt in those early days in Oxford, which has only grown in the intervening years. I hope, however, that it says something not just about myself but about our world, about artists, and about art," and then near the conclusion as the author's own "story," discovered as he went along, that only "art which recognises the pitfalls inherent in both realism and abstraction will be really alive."

So what actually takes up the bulk of the text before the dismissal of contemporary English authors near the very end is Josipovici's push to examine modernism not within the widely accepted hundred year window between 1850 and 1950, not confined to the conveniently organized but facile delineation in Peter Gay's The Lure of Heresy that defines modernism in two ways - "a desire to shock the bourgeoisie and a desire to express subjectivity." Josipovici instead traces the evolution of modernism from a "disenchantment" with the world beginning post-Protestant Reformation as a response against cultural uniformity builds as increasing secularism leads a formerly ordered world of community into an increasingly fragmented existence of liberal individualism.

Josipovici admits in several instances that his choices of pivotal works and writers and artists are not the only ones which could have been utilized to illustrate the evolution of modernism as he sees it. In fact, his attachment to certain exemplars can prove down right annoying and repetitive in a few parts. Dare I mention that I thought I could see similarities between this and the children's series of books Where's Waldo? Except this would be called Where's Kierkegaard? The big K is referenced that often. But the joy of reading this is to jump into the conversation as the suggestion of examples invites you to insert ones of your own. Fundamentally, I agreed with Josipovici because, as he suggest in several instances, my world view is very similar to his own. And he recognizes the genius of Muriel Spark. And I view the insouciance, the boredom in many examples of contemporary literature with the same sigh I hear here. And this is an erudite and deeply personal and engaging invitation to value the impossible - a reconciliation of "romantic beliefs and the world's reality" so that we do not fall into the same trap as the denounced contemporary English authors here where "love is not about stars in your eyes, it is about the itch of sex; death is not a consummation devoutly to be wished but a dingy and degrading experience; art is there not to make you rejoice but to rub your nose in the dirt." This struck my forcefully. Don't laugh. It is not trite. I believe it. The world view thing. show less

I admit that I spent much time on this book. At times, I even thought I “wasted” too much time but when an authority like Gabriel Josipovici, former Weidenfeld Professor of Comparative Literature at Oxford looks back at 50 years of critical reading, makes very personal statements on the actual status of the British literary scene, redefining and explaining Modernism in Art, “en passant” listing which books are worth reading from an artistic point of view and which ones are mere entertainment, one simply has to sit up and pay attention.

Unfortunately, I needed several readings to grasp exactly what Josipovici wanted to explain. His book gets rather confusing after some chapters, for it misses on the whole a clear structure and a show more logical argumentation flow. Halfway through, the essay meanders too much and too often into broader artistic subjects. Instead of clarifying things for the readers, at moments he succeeds only in confusing us more.

On the other hand maybe the “confusion” is what it is all about and was my reaction to think deeply about literary value, the only correct reaction towards this very post – modernistic essay on Modernism.

Value

The British writers that sell well today, the novels that win literary prizes in the UK, are disappointing to Josipovici because they fail to “touch him at the core of his being” ( whatever that may mean ). They are especially unsatisfying if you contrast those actual prize winning novels with what was written in the UK before the Second World War and what was and still is written today outside of the UK. Josipovici cannot find for instance in the writings of the icons of the moment, in writers like Anthony Powell and Iris Murdoch, Julian Barnes or even Evelyn Waugh, the excitement he found in reading books by earlier writers like Woolf, Conrad or Forster or in the works of “contemporaries” from outside the UK. People like Borges, Robbe – Grillet and Saul Bellow. With the exception of a few writers, most notably Muriel Sparks and the early Golding, he cannot find the intrinsic qualities he remembered and enjoyed so much from the English writers from the turn of the century, the ones, we use to call the Modernist.

Instinctively we feel that the professor is onto something. Similar remarks about contemporary prize winning writers like Ian Mc Ewan regularly flare up in the discussions on literary social networks and between more knowledgeable readers. Interestingly, Salman Rushdie is not named in the dissertation. This is curious for he is one of the more interesting writers of these days. Maybe Josipovici does not consider him a British but an Indian writer?

What misses, continues Josipovici, is “Modernism”, (hence the title of his book), but Modernism not as it is usually understood as a style or a period of Art history, but Modernism redefined as “Art becoming aware of its precarious status and responsibility”. Modernism is not something which is safely behind us, but something which will be from now on always with us.

Understandably such elaboration raises questions for it is rather risky to try to make a point while redefining certain generally agreed definitions. But let us keep listening. Josipovici kicks off his argumentation about value rather confusingly and immediately unbolts a few givens.

Modernism, as such, is a response by Artists to the “disenchantment of the world”, a response to a crisis, which he names “the crisis of Modernism” and which he illustrates by quoting from diaries and correspondence by three writers, Mallarmé, von Hofmannsthal and Kafka. All three are toiling and even suffering over their writings because they have doubts about their authority as writers and about the way they are trying to represent reality in their works.

To explain this “disenchantment of the world”, ( a concept borrowed from Max Weber ), Josipovici nudges us to an earlier period of our cultural history, to that period where man was pushed out of the so called “Dark” Middle-ages into the blinding glare of the Enlightenment. While we have congratulated ourselves on what we won, freedom from superstition, freedom from the yoke and tyranny of the church, no one seems to realize, or is even interested Josipovici adds, in what we lost in the process. What we lost is Sacrality, we lost the numinous, the divine disappeared from our daily life as well as a sense of community, our togetherness which disappeared in favor of the so lauded individualism of the Renaissance.

Before, Man was simply part of a watertight world of myth and ritual, of agreed-on hierarchies and implicit understandings, of embodied places and an ordered world, of community and family. Now he stands outside, looking in, aware only of what has been lost. Man and of course also the Artist, who have cast away their old Gods now fully realize that they have from now on to take responsibility for their own deeds.

And, according to Josipovici this is still a problem today.

Now, the crisis of Modernism if I understand Josopivici well, for again, never are the different points clearly linked to each other, the crisis of Modernism is a result of this disenchantment of the world. Michael Sayeau in his review of Josipovici’s book rephrases better what the professor means: “the crisis of Modernism”, which comes in the wake of the “disenchantment” is “a complex of certain perennial artistic problems and the various responses that artists down the centuries have offered to these problems”.

First, the writer has to assume, especially if he wants to write “serious books”, the responsibility this newly found authority brings about. Secondly, he has to decide what he is going to write, from which point of view and how he has to overcome certain artistically, philosophic and technical hurdles which will appear when he wants to depict reality in order to shed light on our Human condition.

The seven chapters that make up the core of Josipovici’s argumentation explain this crisis and the suffering of writers who are trying to turn their novels into Art. The hurdles and pitfalls are aplenty and not only restricted to writing Literature, but also valid for Painting, Sculpture and even Music.

If we follow Josipovici’s reasoning then “Great” books, the books that “touch him at the core of his being” are those books where we see Modernism at work, where we see the intelligent creative skills the writer – artist or craftsman displays to avoid the pitfalls and hurdles which the questions around authority and reality representation bring about.

Is this sufficient to qualify the books we read? Of course not. Would this be the case, then only experimental writings, sometimes as obscure as Finnegans wake, would make it into the canon.

It is Bakthin who reminds us that literature is more than a set of clever formal devices. In Bakthin’s view, literature should not only contain great ideas, but also discover or uncover them. A display of craftsmanship is only a part of what makes up a great book.

We should also not forget that we need a story in the Forsterian sense, a narrative that pulls us through the pages. We need a poignant entertaining narrative, uncovering a plethora of emotions, well written, with an intelligent word choice, developed characters and an exciting syntax. What would the Karamazov book be for instance without the backbone story of the parricide? What would Golding’s Inheritors mean without the clash of the species?

The “craftsmanship”, ( which comes at the expense of conventional narrative ), to which Josipovici seems to restrict high Art is according to me only a part, an important part I agree, the part that best shows the skills of the writers, but insufficient on itself as a rule to value books. It could be, and again this is not clear, that Josipovici finds a good story and a philosophical core as too evident for any book worth reading to mention it.

The crisis of Modernism

This said, the development of the topic of “the crisis of Modernism”, this “Art becoming aware of its precarious status and responsibility” which Josipovici develops subsequently is the most interesting part of the book. It is the first time I have read about this topic in such details and it made me go back to earlier readings and reviews because I got a better understanding of what is at stake.

It is interesting that Josipovici not only describes the problem, but also holds it against the light and compares it with some philosophical point of views and against other arts, like music and painting. The other Arts face the same problems.

Lets go back to how Michael Sayeau rephrased Josipovici’s words: “the crisis of Modernism”, which coming in the wake of the “disenchantment” is “a complex of certain perennial artistic problems and the various responses that artists down the centuries have offered to these problems”.

Josipovici opens his dissertation with quoting from a number of writers’ private journals and correspondence: von Hofmanstahl, Mallarme, Kafka, Becket. All these writers confess in a same way, that they intellectually suffer to the extreme, when looking for responses to the problems of authority and a depiction of realism.

Let’s start with the problem of Authority.

In a world where nobody tells you what to do, where there is no church or any other order to guide your creative urge, if in other words external Authority has been abandoned, even in the shape of genre, then where does the writer gets his authority? Evidently from inspiration or experience of the novelist himself. Who confers this authority upon him, No one but himself. And let’s not forget that the readers also have an option. They can either agree with the authority the writer has given himself or not.

Now imagine you want to write a “book with meaning” and you have nothing more than your self declared Authority, then you have two possibilities, either your Authority is undermined by self-doubt or you have no self-doubt at all and between these two extremes there is a whole spectrum of mixed levels.

Josipovici explains this with some examples. Two writers could not believe their luck when they could write whatever they wanted, but still dampened their claim to authority with humor and a wit: Cervantes and Rabelais. Cervantes already understood that without authority one was reduced to claim authority for ourselves, when we know deep down we have none. Regularly this awareness surfaces in his great book and he turns his narrative inside out as if to make sure that his readers are aware of this too. The fact that both Rabelais and Cervantes used humor to cope with the problem of authority gives them these strange modern feeling.

On the other side you have writers who notoriously have no doubt at all about their authority. People like Dickens, Balzac and Victor Hugo. While enormously successful as entrepreneurs, they are never able to question what it is they are doing. That is the reason, according to Josipovici, that these books however entertaining that they are still have an aftertaste of being naïve and hollow.

Josipovici at this level introduces Soren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard says that in our age, we confuse a genius or a great writer, with an apostle, someone who speaks with true authority. Strangely, while I would think there are no Apostles left after the “disenchantment”, Josipovici finds but does not explain why, that both Shakespeare and Dante can claim true authority.

More interesting in Kierkegaard, is his theory of the “last part”.

By writing a last part of a novel, a conclusion, the novelist gives his work and live a meaning, a meaning real life has not. He makes by this an error because, says Kierkegaard “ though it is indeed by writing that one justifies the claim to be an author ( with authority ), it is strangely enough by writing that one virtually renounces this claim”. Great writers must be aware of the inappropriateness of a concluding ending.

The adagio “Si tacuisset, philosophus manisset”( had he kept quite he would have remained a philosopher) brings to mind my review of Gogol’s “ The Government Inspector”. Gogol, unhappy by the unforeseen political mess his play had caused, tried to explain and rewrite his work. In this case his authority was not accepted. It was Bielinski who in his famous letter voiced the general opinion: “Gogol should have remained a Genius – Artist instead of the “Thinker” he was not prepared to be…”. Bielinski, with these words, saved both this theatrical masterpiece for posterity as well as the reputation of the writer.

Are not all great novels open ended? Is it not a blessing that neither Dostoievski nor Gogol could write a sequel to their masterpieces? Is not the strength of the Magic Mountain the the question about the lesson of life remains open? That there are no conclusions to be made?

Says Kierkegaard: “To find the conclusion it is necessary first of all to observe that it is lacking and then in turn feel quite vividly the lack of it”.

Besides the problem of authority, there is another important challenge for the Modernist writer: How to render reality, how to bring real life into the pages of the novel? Real life, with its unpredictability, its lack of meaning, its butterfly-effectish string of occurrences. It is, Josipovici shows us, a never-ending quest. There comes a moment when Artist grasp that their writings are not mirrors reflecting real life but that what they are producing, are mere signs of emblems of the external world.

In five chapters Josipovici makes a tour of the artists who have been probing the extremes of what is possible in their Art. Josipovici switches for several chapters to a discussion about the works of artists like Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon and the great Marcel Duchamp. He does not analyze their works himself but he relies on the writings of Art-critics he trusts: Rosalind Krauss for Picasso and Thierry de Duve for Duchamp. While all this is very interesting, Josipovici, is in fact unnecessarily straying from his subject. Fortunately he comes back to his topic and presents us extracts of writers who are sticking to that redefined Modernism and who have explored the limits of what can be done in literature: Alain Robbe-Grillet, Malarmé, Nathalie Sarraute, Raymond Roussel, Marguarite Duras and Claude Simon. None of them British… Modernism concludes Josipovici, is not a consequence of the crisis of the Bourgeoisie, but it may be a product of the general European rootlessness in the wake of the French and industrial revolution.

The Scandal

In the last two chapters, as if he too suddenly realizes how far he has led his readers astray, Josipovici comes back to the central subject. It is these last chapters that have caught the attention of the media. Thanks to a misunderstanding by a journalist in the Guardian, the book’s final reception will be that of a rant against contemporary writers. Josipovici finds himself suddenly in the role of “l’enfant terrible” of British literature.

What does he say?

“Reading Barnes, like reading so many of the other writers of his generation, Martin Amis, Ian Mc Ewan, Blake Morisson, or a critic from an older generation who belongs with them, John Carey, leaves me feeling that I and the world have been made smaller and meaner”.

The fear of opening itself to the world has effectively cut the British literary community from the foreign, especially the European influences which could have kept British literature at the level where Golding and Sparks left it.

Josipovici identifies three reasons for this barrier: First, fear and distrust towards what is not British, has turned the public's opinion from an earlier healthy pragmatism into a general suspiciousness of things of the mind in Art and Literature. General philistinism is the result. Secondly, while people seem to be suspicious of intellectual pretentiousness, they love the so called “serious and profound”. Historical novels about Rwanda and Bosnia are more worthy of attention than for example a Woodehouse and Pinget. Finally High art and Fashion have married in a new spirit of commercialism. Books and the whole circus around it is nothing more than business.

And who is to blame?

“ Writers of course only do what they can”, he says condescendingly. The problem is the middlemen, the critics, the academics, the people in the prize – discerning committees. “Critics and cultural analysts have to do better”, for they are the ones who are knowledgeable enough to separate art from the mere entertaining and they have the responsibility to say so. It is only they who can nudge the interested readers to better prose. It is only they who can lift the quality standards to higher levels.

Conclusion

In his analysis of what is wrong with the books that get the attention nowadays, Josipovici embarks on a cultural grand tour, identifies the symptoms, uncovers the root of the problems, redefines Modernism and points to the culprits. His essay tackles much more than just Modernism, it is a also a reflection on his general unease with many contemporary writers, but most of all it is a statement on Artists and Art.

Polemical as he sounds in his opinions about good and less good books, fine and not so fine writers, intelligent and less intelligent literary reviewers and art critics, Josipovici warns the reader that his opinion is just an opinion and its validity worth no more but certainly no less than any other opinion on good and bad books.

However his definition of value might be too narrow according to me, I appreciated his development and explanation of the “Crisis of the Modernist Artist”, the problems of authority and realism.

These “aspects of the novel” will certainly help me to better formulate my own opinions on what I admire and what not. I might even go back to my earlier reviews and rewrite some parts. It certainly will sharpen my choice in what I want and do not want to read and I am certainly going to review my TBR list.

While it is a main shortcoming that Josipovici does not point to which promising contemporary authors, one should look, interesting titles from post WWII writers litter the book. While, Josipovici utters not a word about American post-modernism, Asian writers or even Salman Rushdie, the books he advises us not to forget are plenty.

As far as I am concerned, Gabriel Josipovici’s “What ever happened to Modernism” is an interesting book. True, maybe not for everybody, but for those, like you and me, who are curious about what makes certain novels compulsive reading and others just simply entertaining. show less

Books of criticism can oftentimes be rather obscure and abstruse enterprises, and this one by Professor Josipovici is no exception as it seems on first reading to wander all over the place before it comes to anything resembling a conclusion, much less an answer to the question posed in the title. Lest one should get the impression that this will be a negative review, let me hasten to say emphatically that that will not be the case. In fact, this book provides a philosophical and historical understanding of certain characteristics of Modern art and literature. So this review will attempt to highlight some important issues that the book deals with and thereby give the reader a clearer idea of where the author was trying to go. As he said, show more "we have to try and see Modernism not from without, as . . . the post-Modernists choose to see it, but from within. That is the task of this book."

First, it should be understood that the title of the book is What Ever Happened to Modernism? and not merely "Whatever happened to modern literature?" The scope of the book is much broader than mere literary criticism, although the author was a professor of literature at Oxford. Those of us with an interest in literature and the arts have at least a vague understanding of "Modernism" as applying generally to the post-Medieval period when all types of authoritarian regimes — whether heavenly or earthly — began to be openly questioned and scrutinized and even overthrown. Yet we understand that the period of so-called Modern Art had its inception in a very specific event that can be pinned down exactly to the opening of the Salon des Refusés in Paris in 1863. It turns out that "modern" is one of those words the application of which seems to perpetually move forward with the times. So in the year 2011, we view as old fashioned that exhilarating period of Modern Art between 1863 and the 1970s, when the tide turned enough to call for the naming of a new era — Postmodernism. So supposedly we now exist in a postmodern world, yet we still think of ourselves as modern. And just to put this into further perspective, let us remember that the term "modern" comes from the Latin modernus, which derived from modo, meaning "just now," dates from the fifth century and was originally meant to differentiate the "modern" Christian era from the "ancient" Pagan era. Thus, the moving sidewalk of history has carried the notion of "modern" forward with each passing year.

So we have ended up with two meanings of the word "modern," a general meaning that always is associated with the present, and a more specific meaning that relates to the period between 1863 and around 1970 which I shall refer to hereafter as "the period of Modern Art" to distinguish it from Modernism in general. Of course, Modern Art has always been a highly intellectually driven movement, and so the literary arts, including fiction, poetry, drama and criticism, all reflected many of the ideas that were engendered by the Modern visual and tactile arts. And that is the first point I want to make clear: Professor Josipovici is actually addressing both aspects of Modernism in order to help us fully understand the question raised by the title. We aren't merely being schooled in the elements of a style or the characteristics of a period in art and literary history. Being aware of this from the outset will be useful to the reader.

The second point is that in telling the reader what was going on literarily in the period of Modern Art, Josipovici cites many examples by quoting selected authors which help to illustrate his points. But he also presents enlightening discussions of the aims of painters and other visual artists and even composers during this period in order to inform his discussion of the contemporary literature. Writers and artists were on the same wavelength in terms of the abstract goals and standards they set out for themselves, and so it is fascinating to see how artists and writers and critics, each in their own way, interpreted the intellectual framework within which they were all operating. In effect, there was constant cross-pollination going on among them.

In considering the question of whatever happened to Modernism, Josipovici addresses both of these points at once. He isn't just asking, "By the way, whatever happened to Joe Smith?" in the sense that Joe Smith seems to have gone the way of the dodo bird, which the period of Modern Art eventually did in succumbing to Postmodernism. But he is actually giving us a blow-by-blow as though it were a prizefight, naming names, and explaining the progress of Modernism focusing mostly on the period since Cubism — i.e., the early twentieth century.

Two interrelated issues that Josipovici spent a good deal of time on concern a) the writer's "authority" in the context of the increasingly prevalent notion that "God is dead"; and b) the privileging of craftsmanship over the narrative and ethical or spiritual aspects of fiction. The argument goes that once there was no higher authority underpinning a writer or artist — i.e., through faith in God and church — a crisis of consciousness developed, referred to in general terms as a "disenchantment of the world." Suddenly the artist looked in the mirror and realized he carried the burden alone of the authority of his writing and in fact, perhaps he had no authority at all. The apparent conclusion of all this was in turn to question those very aspects of literature and art that had characterized novels and poetry — and art — before this earth-shattering crisis occurred. The consequence was that novelists such as Robbe-Grillet, Pinget and Claude Simon intentionally worked to strip away any vestiges of narrative and emotional content from their novels, thereby privileging craftsmanship, in the belief that by doing so they would be able to present a truer reality and "a genuine understanding of the human condition": Josipovici tells us: "What is at issue is reality itself, what it is and how an art which of necessity renounces all claims to contact with the transcendent can relate to it, and, if it cannot, what possible reason it can have for existing."

The effect produced by this Modern type of fiction was brilliant, but empty; impressionistic, but it had no soul. The novelist's concern was for "events, not with characters or ethics . . . [or] the plots devised by traditional novelists." And looking back, Modern authors and critics viewed traditional novelists as naïve and their writing style passé. By way of explaining this Josipovici writes:

"Not having doubts is a blessed state, but it is not the same thing as having genuine authority. There is something hollow about Balzac, Dickens and Verdi compared with Dante or Shakespeare, but even compared with their older contemporaries, Beethoven and Wordsworth. It doesn't rest on their frequent clumsiness, for that is to be found in Beethoven and Wordsworth. It rests more on the very thing that is the root of their strength as artists and their enormous success as entrepreneurs: their inability to question what it is they are doing. In that sense they are the first modern best-sellers and in their work one can see the beginnings of that split between popularity and artistic depth which is to become the hallmark of modern culture."

The tension between "commercial" and "artistic" continues to this day.

A further service that Josipovici renders for the reader is to demonstrate through many examples how different Modern fiction is from the literature of the past through a brief examination of older literature from Cervantes and Rabelais all the way back to Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. As he said, "Seeing the art of the twentieth century in the light of the [past] can help us to understand many things."

Eventually it becomes clear that Josipovici is writing with the British reader in mind, and he has looked at the British reading public today and finds it wanting. He gives European readers much more credit for being aware of Modernism's subtleties. He thinks British readers — and by extension its "younger" (historically speaking) American cohorts — are woefully naïve. He even labels the whole lot of us as Philistines because we don't relish a steady diet of the rather arid and contrived output of the Modern purists. Josipovici seems to want us to accept the Robbe-Grillet–Pinget–Simon school of writing as the inevitable direction that quality fiction will continue to take — even in this postmodern era.

So, what happened to Modernism? It gradually adopted the view, not only that "living and telling are not the same thing at all," and "though we as readers and viewers looking back inevitably lack the sense of what it was like to live certain moments, the historian can work to counter that, as indeed the best ones do, and when dealing with works of art we can, if we are good enough critics, get close enough to them to convey something of what their making involved for their makers and first viewers."

This raises an interesting question: By stripping narrative from fiction, did this open the door for criticism to step into the vacuum? It certainly signaled the ascendency of the critic and criticism — and theory — as almost more important than the literature or arts it was purporting to criticize. While craftsmanship was revered at the expense of narrative, technique ran the risk of being seen as "a kind of shame." The circularity and self-contradictory aspects of this wordplay are obvious. But Josipovici points out that "argument and disagreement will never end" regarding the various ways Modernism can be interpreted, and "though we might feel that they were misguided we should think twice before presuming to tell them they were wrong."

Josipovici's report to us is a very personal one, and this review only scratches the surface by attempting to cut through all the diversions in order to ferret out the main thrust of Josipovici's argument. He has strong opinions and shares them freely, calling this group Philistines and that group positivist and another group naïve, as though his is the last word, which is all very charming and amusing, unless you happen to be one or the other! Yet he admits in the end that there cannot "be a definitive 'story' of Modernism. We cannot step outside it, much as we would like to, and pronounce with authority on it." There are too many divergent points of view. He concludes by asking:

" . . . are we to see our own history, that which makes us what we are, as something which blinkers us or which sharpens our vision? This is, in itself, of course, a very Modernist question."

The digressions — so long as you can keep your eye on the argument — are wonderfully rich and vividly informative about important books, music and the arts in the context of Modern literary and art history. He may assert that one writer is better than another, but he will back it up with quotations and analysis. One can disagree with his conclusions about the relative merits of this artist or that writer, or one reading public or another, but one comes away from this stroll through the brief history of Modernism with a whole new understanding of what the heck it was all about.

Studying this book will inevitably leave the reader or viewer better prepared for Modern literature or Modern art. I say "studying" because it really must be read twice in order to put it all together. On balance, however, I give it 4½ stars. show less

In 1958 Gabriel Josipovici attends an Oxford lecture on contemporary English literature and subsequently reads those key authors the lecturer notes, including Anthony Powell and Iris Murdoch. He is most disappointed. He writes, “They told entertaining stories wittily or darkly or with sensationalist panache, and they obviously wrote well, but theirs were not novels which touched me to the core of my being, as had those of Kafka and Proust.” Gabriel Josipovici ponders why this is the case.

He attends another lecture where a British scholar debunks and rails against Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Baudelaire and Sartre. The speaker tells the audience in so many words, “These effete ninnies were all suffering from show more oversensitivity mingled with self-regard; what they had to say was the result of their cosseted upbringing and a sharp kick up the backside was all that was needed to bring them to their senses.” Josipovici takes exception, thinking such influential European writers offer deep insight into our modern human condition. Repeat experiences with hard-line, no-nonsense Anglo speakers and the everyday realism of English and US authors propels Josipovici to probe deeper into the very roots of Modernism.

In approaching the question ‘When does Modernism begin?’ the author details quite a bit of history of literature and the arts and proposes we reach much farther back in time then the 1850-1950 timetable usually given in answer to this question. For, as he writes, “The temptation is strong to date Modernism in that hundred-year period. This is certainly when it flourished and when its manifestations were so prevalent that no-one could ignore it.”

However, as he goes on - and this is key to his entire book: “The danger in seeing it like that, though, is that Modernism is thereby turned into a style, like Mannerism or Impressionism, and into a period of art history, like the Augustan or the Victorian age, and, therefore as something that can be clearly defined and is safely behind us. I, on the other hand, want to argue that modernism needs to be understood in a completely different way, as the coming into awareness by art of its precarious status and responsibilities, and therefore as something that will, from now on, always be with us. Seen in this way, Modernism, I would suggest, becomes a response by artists to that ‘disenchantment of the world’ to which cultural historians have long been drawing our attention.”

To undergird his position, Josipovici spends the lion’s share of his book providing detailed examples, from Albrecht Durer to Cervantes and Rabelais, from Casper David Friedrich and Pablo Picasso to Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka to show how since the 1500s religion took an inward turn and the world became a progressively colder place. At one point we read, “It is no coincidence that the novel emerges at the very moment when the world is growing disenchanted.” He then quotes Walter Benjamin: “The novelist has isolated himself. The birthplace of the novel is the solitary individual.” And that’s solitary individual not only in terms of the writer of the novel but also in terms of the novel being read by a solitary reader. Indeed, an entire culture of men and women, including artist, musicians and writers living, working and creating in a kind of solitary confinement – the modern world as a very alone place with no comforting communal anchors.

Again, quite a detailed and well researched book. The above quotes along with my comments are merely a taste. Since I am not a historian or literary scholar I will not offer my own judgement on Gabriel Jasipovici’s position here; rather, I urge you to read for yourself. However, there is one important point I will note: other than Jorge Luis Borges and a passing mention of V. S. Naipaul, Jasipovici’s observations are restricted to European and American literature, art and music. There are no references to authors or artists or musicians from Latin America or Africa or the Middle East or Japan or elsewhere on the globe. Since this book was published in 2010 I can’t help thinking the author’s Eurocentric approach is a bit provincial, or, in other words, I would suggest one possible answer to the question “What Ever Happened to Modernism?” could be that it has gone global. We are now one World Culture and any complete history of literature and the arts requires a truly world view, a view that would be well to include many great late twentieth century literary artists from around the globe, including the author in the photo below – G. Cabrera Infante. show less

Modernism discussed in the most thoughtful way, defined and exemplified in a sustained argument for its permanent relevance. Whether or not one agrees with when it begins, or who does or does not conform to the given definition, or whether the current writers mentioned are or aren't good in one's views, What Ever Happened to Modernism? will change the way you regard fiction -- and it's a pleasure to read just for its style.