The Politics of Irony in American Modernism

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments The shortcomings of this book are exclusively mine, but whatever is of value can be traced to a large group of people to whom I am most sincerely grateful. This has been true since the night when Jacques Lezra suggested I “historicize what Americans mean when they say that irony has a politics .” By the time I realized that his advice represented equal parts morbid curiosity and sadistic humor, it was too late to turn back; I therefore thank him first and foremost for seeing the joke through to the end. Thomas H. Schaub never failed as interlocutor and comrade, casting a friendly but ruthless critical eye over too many abstract propositions and forcing me to rethink basic assumptions by sharing his encyclopedic knowledge of U.S. literary, cultural, and political histories. Russ Castronovo, Gerhard Richter, and Rob Nixon gave powerful feedback when it was sorely needed. My understanding of irony and of my own argument was immeasurably improved by prolonged engagement with interlocutors from many disciplines, areas of expertise, institutions, and states: Todd Shepard, Jack Opel, Thomas H. Crofts, and Matthew Hussey never once asked me to shut up and were instrumental in helping me work through generals and particulars. Helen Tartar, Tom Lay, and my readers at Fordham University Press were thorough, smart, sensitive, generous, and invariably correct. Thanks to Yale University Art Gallery for the Mabel Dwight lithograph on the cover and to Pete Mueller for permission to reproduce his cartoon. I am also grateful to the Office of Research and the Division of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies at UC Davis: a Faculty Development Award and a Publication Assistance Grant gave me valuable time, money, and ultimately an index. x / acknowledgments When the topic of irony seemed impossibly, even foolishly, large—as it frequently does—I would not have persisted without advice, encouragement , and friendship from those who were under no obligation to provide it: Rebecca Walkowitz, Susanne Wofford, Henry Turner, John Tiedemann, Stephen Bernstein, Tom Foster, Eric Rauchway, Jonathan Freedman, Cristanne Miller, Elizabeth Rivlin, Dave Junker, Rich Hamerla, Catherine E. Kelly, Michael Alexander, Paul Jones, Beth Quitslund , Kevin Haworth, and Joyce Wexler helped more than they probably realize. Jonathan Greenberg went out of his way to share his invaluable Modernism, Satire, and the Novel when I really needed it. Librarians at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, the Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan, Pennsylvania State University Libraries , and the Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division of the New York Public Library did much more than fetch cartons and make copies. Special thanks are owed to two scholars whose intellectual companionship improved every page, who generously read and commented on portions of the manuscript, and who never hesitated to cry foul and argue the finer points late into the night: Andrew Escobedo and Michael LeMahieu. I am surrounded by an astonishing group of people in the English Department at the University of California, Davis. They represent the very best combination of brilliance and kind decency that one could hope to find in any community; as the campus confronted discouraging , shocking events over the past few years, I learned that they are also admirably brave, and I am deeply proud to count them as friends and colleagues. John Marx not only asked all the right questions and dissuaded me from some wrong answers but read chapters and shared insights and advice galore. Within a few days of our first meeting, Margaret Ferguson subjected my argument to thirty minutes of the most pitiless interrogation it had seen, making me all the more grateful for the years of friendship and sage advice since then. Nathan Brown took special pains with one chapter in particular while introducing me to entirely new levels of agonistic friendship. The book as a whole is far better for my exchanges with Nathan, Kathleen Frederickson, and especially David Simpson, who offered game-changing feedback at several critical junctures. Colin Milburn steered me over one particularly jarring bump in the process, while Seeta Chaganti, Gregory Dobbins, Alessa Johns, Claire Waters, Joshua Clover, and Christopher Loar helped me negotiate many other hurdles along the way. I am particularly lucky to be surrounded by a peerless group of Americanists, who continue to share their precious time, expertise, and friendship: Hsuan Hsu, Mark Jerng, acknowledgments / xi Evan Watkins, Desirée Martín, Danielle Heard, and especially Elizabeth Freeman and Michael Ziser. My...