Death & Modernism

BOOK REVIEWS lengthy "disputatious" letters which were in existence at the time of Wells's death; his son Anthony West sent them to Richardson to secure her permission for quotation. Yet in an interview with Fromm, West denied ever seeing the letters. Fromm is too discreet, only politely hinting at what appears to be a serious case of modern literary suppression . It is to be hoped that the publication of the correspondence marks the beginning of a new availability of Richardson materials. Fromm's biography was reprinted by University of Georgia Press in 1994, and A Reader's Guide to Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage' is forthcoming of ELT Press (March 1996). However, three of the four volumes oÃ- Pilgrimage are out of print (only volume one is available from University of Illinois Press, 1979), as is her collection of short stories, Journey To Paradise, published by Virago (London, 1989). Although some of her essays, edited and introduced by Diane F. Gillespie, are printed in Bonnie Kime Scott's The Gender of Modernism (Indiana University Press, 1990), one would like to see a volume including all of her essays, particularly those which respond to the infancy of cinema in Bryher's magazine Close Up. In its subjective depiction of a era—what Fromm calls "cultural autobiography"—in giving voice to the creator oÃ- Pilgrimage , and in providing a behind-the-scenes look at the early days of modernism, the published correspondence provides an essential resource . Lynette Felber Indiana University-Purdue University Death & Modernism Alan Warren Friedman. Fictional Death and the Modernist Enterprise. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. xiii + 339 pp. $54.95 ALAN FRIEDMAN'S Fictional Death and the Modernist Enterprise is an ambitious, intelligent work with a far broader scope than its title suggests. Drawing upon an array of canonical works throughout Western literature as well as a trove of extra-literary materials, Friedman provides a rich and informative context for evaluating the treatment of death, or the absence of treatment, in modernist literature. At the heart of Friedman's "enterprise" is the contention that "More than any other manifestation, narratives of death and dying reflect a culture's symbolic and mythic truths." Whether we accept this premise with Friedman's assurance or not, the evidence and arguments assembled on 77 ELT 39 :1 1996 its behalf convincingly attest that narratives of death and dying can prove as valuable as cultural artifacts as the ancient burial sites exhumed by archaeologists. In the modernist period, Friedman argues, death in Western culture and literature differs radically from what it was before and after. Prior to the twentieth century, death was "climactic, definitive, familiar, and imminent," the obverse of how it has been thought of throughout most of our own century: "No longer natural and culturally acceptable, fictional death [in the modernist period] became attenuated, denied, or horrific: initiatory or evaded rather than climactic. Subverting suspense , modern novels became circular and self-reflexive, returning repeatedly and ultimately to terminal events they rarely confront or transcend. Modernists elide the dying process-----" The reasons posited for this transformation are varied and complex, as well as central to an understanding of the transition years generally: the "massive, manmade death" of World War I, the loss of faith in God and other foundational beliefs, and the depersonalization resulting from an increasingly positivist view of man. Keeping these and other important cultural developments before one while considering how significant literary works of the period engage these same issues, as Friedman does, requires a "cultural literacy" of the highest order. As is probably clear by now, Friedman is not a New Critical or Formalist critic. Indeed, his semiotic code-breaking often leads him far from familiar literary texts and into rather distant, occasionally exotic areas: e.g., the funerary rites of the Lodagaa of West Africa and the psychological ramifications of vaginal versus Caesarean birth. In his eclecticism—at one time or another the "findings" of archaeologists, cosmologists and thanatologists are drawn upon—Friedman most clearly, and impressively, demonstrates his postmodernist credentials. For the most part this sort of intellectual foraging enriches the discussion of literary texts, though at times Friedman lingers rather didactically upon subjects far removed...