Inside Modernism: Relativity Theory, Cubism, Narrative

by Thomas Vargish, Mr. Delo E. Mook

In this book, a professor of literature and a physicist offer a broad, new, interdisciplinary account of Modernism. Thomas Vargish and Delo E. Mook encompass physics, the visual arts and literature in a thought-provoking analysis of the period from the 1880s to World War II. Uncovering common structures and values underlying each of these disparate fields, the authors define Modernism and its historical location between nineteenth-century intellectual conventions that preceded it and the Postmodernism that followed. Bridging boundaries that traditionally divide disciplines, Vargish and Mook create a uniquely coherent and comprehensive view of the aesthetics and intellectual values that characterize the culture of Modernism.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published May 11, 1999

Reviews

[Anna Hiller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall, not a bad analysis, but really does not completely succeed in making the case for linkages between disciplines, and I blame this mainly on the book's structure. While the chapter topics are appropriate--especially the idea of "epistemic trauma"--it takes for granted that its readers will know of other theories of "cultural matrices" and does not contribute much further towards this idea. Furthermore, all the chapters are divided in the following way: Intro, Relativity Theory, Cubism, Narrative. The "Narrative" sections are weakest, they feel like haphazard guesses at modernist literature that simply include the usual suspects: Woolf, Kafka, James, Mann, Faulkner. Unfortunate, when there's so much more to say! In the end, you get the sense that the authors wrote the book they felt obliged to write rather than the book they wanted to write. Still, a quote or two may bolster some of the arguments in my dissertation, so it's not a total loss.