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Religion – sex – politics Benjamin Kohlmann, Committed Styles: Modernism, Politics, and Left-Wing Literature in the 1930s

Religion – sex – politics Benjamin Kohlmann, Committed Styles: Modernism, Politics, and Left-Wing... BOOK REVIEW Religion ­ Sex ­ Politics Benjamin Kohlmann, Committed Styles: Modernism, Politics, and Left-Wing Literature in the 1930s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 223pp. ISBN: 9780198715467. The `Hate Press', run from `The Trobriands' (Gloucestershire, UK), is unusual in that it issued just one book: Tom Harrisson's Letter to Oxford (1933). The Letter, as the name of its publisher suggests, is really a rant ­ at times whimsical, occasionally astute, often adolescent ­ in which the University of Oxford fares only a little better than Harrisson's real target, his recent alma mater, Cambridge. For Harrisson, just back from one of his many scientific expeditions, the culture of the old universities had lost touch with the real world. But while Oxford held out some hope for a young modernist, interested in `new conceptions of time space and speed', Cambridge was `colder, non-emotional, essentially highbrow and most exclusive'.1 Poets and literary critics were singled out for particular ire: `For a pleasant breakfast-book try Seven Types of Ambiguity by William Empson. The critics F. R. Leavis and I. A. Richards are typically Cam.'2 Though a much gentler and more scholarly read, Benjamin Kohlmann's Committed Styles does nothing to dispel the notion http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Modernist Cultures Edinburgh University Press

Religion – sex – politics Benjamin Kohlmann, Committed Styles: Modernism, Politics, and Left-Wing Literature in the 1930s

Jardine, Boris
Modernist Cultures , Volume 11 (1): 137 – Mar 1, 2016
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Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
© Edinburgh University Press 2016
Subject
Book Review; Film, Media and Cultural Studies
ISSN
2041-1022
eISSN
1753-8629
DOI
10.3366/mod.2016.0129
Publisher site
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Abstract

BOOK REVIEW Religion ­ Sex ­ Politics Benjamin Kohlmann, Committed Styles: Modernism, Politics, and Left-Wing Literature in the 1930s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 223pp. ISBN: 9780198715467. The `Hate Press', run from `The Trobriands' (Gloucestershire, UK), is unusual in that it issued just one book: Tom Harrisson's Letter to Oxford (1933). The Letter, as the name of its publisher suggests, is really a rant ­ at times whimsical, occasionally astute, often adolescent ­ in which the University of Oxford fares only a little better than Harrisson's real target, his recent alma mater, Cambridge. For Harrisson, just back from one of his many scientific expeditions, the culture of the old universities had lost touch with the real world. But while Oxford held out some hope for a young modernist, interested in `new conceptions of time space and speed', Cambridge was `colder, non-emotional, essentially highbrow and most exclusive'.1 Poets and literary critics were singled out for particular ire: `For a pleasant breakfast-book try Seven Types of Ambiguity by William Empson. The critics F. R. Leavis and I. A. Richards are typically Cam.'2 Though a much gentler and more scholarly read, Benjamin Kohlmann's Committed Styles does nothing to dispel the notion

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Modernist Cultures – Edinburgh University Press

Published: Mar 1, 2016

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