Description
Book SynopsisCharts some of Modernism's key stages, from Durer, Rabelais, and Cervantes to the present, bringing together an array of artists, musicians, and writers - including Beckett, Borges, Friedrich, Cezanne, Stevens, Robbe-Grillet, Beethoven, and Wordsworth.
Trade Review"'This short, fierce book is clearly very personal... Nevertheless, I enjoyed the sinuousness and vigour of Josipovici's arguments.' (Sam Leith, Sunday Times) 'What can't be faulted is the plaintive logic running through this book. In cultural terms, we live in deeply conservative times... Yet can anyone, now, name the successful middlebrow writer of 1922 or 1915? Of course not. That alone should give Josipovici comfort.' (Tom McCarthy, The Guardian) 'Josipovici's erudite and intelligent polemic raises more questions than it answers - always a good thing.' (Tom McCarthy, Daily Telegraph) 'Now in his seventies, he is formidably cultivated... Not that he condescends. Josipovici carries his learning lightly and the meditations on Modernism which make up the body of the book are instructive and accessible... This is a book... one can't help rather enjoying.' (John Sutherland, Literary Review) '... a welcome intervention in the long debate about the difference between art and entertainment.' (James Purdon, The Observer) 'His book is similarly eloquent, besides being, in its task of charting modernism's uniqueness, ingenious, unexpected, astute and insightful. It's also - because of its passion and intelligence - readable, in a way a modernist would approve of...' (Amit Chaudhuri, The Independent) 'Entertaining as his assault is, this is a more challenging and ambitious book than simply a jeremiad on the contemporary cultural climate.' (Ronan McDonald, The London Magazine)"
