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Books by Rod Rosenquist

Peer-Reviewed Articles by Rod Rosenquist

Modernist Cultures, 2016

This is the introduction to a special issue of Modernist Cultures, 'Modernism in Public', explori... more This is the introduction to a special issue of Modernist Cultures, 'Modernism in Public', exploring the various conceptions of 'the public' within modernist culture. It argues that modernism gets its definition through its relationship to a public or types of public, but that its definition is also continually redefined by that public.

This article traces the parallel, though in some ways inverted, early careers of Gertrude Stein a... more This article traces the parallel, though in some ways inverted, early careers of Gertrude Stein and Helen Woodward: one a celebrated but little-read modernist author and the other a widely-read but largely anonymous copywriter. The first section draws comparisons between early twentieth-century changes in advertising copy and Stein’s literary innovations, focusing on the techniques used by Stein and copywriters like Woodward to direct attention to ordinary objects or promote branded products by appealing to the individual reader’s experience and subjectivity. The second section goes on to consider the contrasting definitions and public expectations of the author within the contexts of high modernism and modern advertising, respectively. The article concludes with brief analysis of the techniques of attribution, promotion and anonymity within the autobiographies of these two writers, suggesting that the contrast in approaches to life writing were largely due to how creative and corporate authors held highly contrasting public positions in early twentieth-century America.

With an examination of a number of memoirs by and about modernist authors and artists published d... more With an examination of a number of memoirs by and about modernist authors and artists published during the 1930s, this article raises questions about the complex relationship between the high-art subjects of these volumes and the popular forms of gossip and celebrity anecdote that make them marketable to a broad new audience for modernism. First revealing how literary life writing of the 1930s establishes its place in the historical developments of the genre, from 'table talk' to autobiography to celebrity gossip, the article then argues that a key tension at the heart of memoirs by modernist writers is between the celebrated or elevated subject matter and the ordinary or everyday approaches of the modernist aesthetic. In some memoirs, particularly those authored by celebrity modernists themselves, including Gertrude Stein, Ford Madox Ford and Wyndham Lewis, the high-art subject matter is framed by mundane matters and the daily lives of the exceptional artists, placing genius authors in the most generic situations. In other cases, as with work by Robert McAlmon and Malcolm Cowley, the celebrity figures with whom the memoir writers come into contact are made to look effectively ordinary, thereby deflating the celebrity value achieved through publicity and literary reputation based on the cultural value of the author. The combination of popular celebrity gossip and the modernist interest in daily life thus draws together the high and the low, the aesthetic and the popular, repackaging the modernist experience for a new audience.

Critical Survey, 2015

Abstract This article examines a map of the English coast surrounding Romney Marsh in 1895, hand-... more Abstract
This article examines a map of the English coast surrounding Romney Marsh in 1895, hand-drawn by Ford Madox Ford for his memoir, Return to Yesterday (1931). The map is read as a cultural reconstruction of the shifting terrain of fin-de-siècle literary reputation, representing late-Victorian English letters as a distinctly transatlantic realm. Ford’s illustration is analysed as an early incarnation of the celebrity ‘star map’: it positions authors in specific locations, while also tracing constellations of developing alliances, dividing the aesthetically minded foreigners from a defensive grouping of British institutional icons. Ford redraws the centre and the boundaries of English literature through his act of map-making, positioning his ‘alien’ literary celebrities – including transatlantic icons of the late nineteenth century, like Henry James, Stephen Crane and W.H. Hudson – along the Romney coast, a site associated with invasion, fluid boundaries, and shifting coastlines.

Literature Compass, May 30, 2013

This article takes for its subject the complex relationship between modernist literature and the ... more This article takes for its subject the complex relationship between modernist literature and the celebrity system of values arising in the late nineteenth century and hitting its ascendancy in the early twentieth century. A wide range of scholarly work in the field is surveyed, particularly those investigating modernism within contexts of celebrity, promotional culture and value. The article aims to break down the relationship between modernism and celebrity into two major component parts – first, the self-authoring and promotional side of modernism and, second, the reception of modernism within a celebrity-culture framework, whether through the institutions, the media or the audience that make modernist figures into ‘public personalities’.

Peer-Reviewed Chapters in Books by Rod Rosenquist

Incredible Modernism: Literature, Trust and Deception, 2013

In a 1932 preface to the English translation of These Moderns: Some Parisian Close-ups, Dorothy R... more In a 1932 preface to the English translation of These Moderns: Some Parisian Close-ups, Dorothy Richardson introduces this collection of memoirs with a simple observation. 'Not so very long ago it was customary to declare that interest in a writer should stop short at his work' -a notion, we are told, that 'originated with first-class critics of first-class work'. 1 But Richardson, acknowledging that this is the ideal, also finds it impractical. 'Books are innumerable. We must perforce select. And most of us depend for our selection upon reports of friends or of the accredited astronomers of the literary firmament.' 2 These 1 Dorothy Richardson, preface to These Moderns: Some Parisian Close-ups, by F. Ribadeau Dumas (London: Humphrey Toulmin, 1932), 5.

Papers by Rod Rosenquist

Contents: Introduction: modernism, trust and deception, John Attridge Part 1 Reading and Trust: M... more Contents: Introduction: modernism, trust and deception, John Attridge Part 1 Reading and Trust: Modern proliferation, modernist trust, Leonard Diepeveen Trusting personality: modernist memoir and its audience, Rod Rosenquist Credulous readers: H.D. and psychic-research work, Suzanne Hobson. Part 2 After Sincerity: Subterranean folkway blues: Ralph Ellisona (TM)s mythology of deception, Paul Sheehan Counterfeit masterpieces: Gide, Joyce and intertextual deception, Scarlett Baron False bottoms: Wyndham Lewisa (TM)s The Revenge for Love and the incredible real, Paul Edwards. Part 3 Truth and Narrative: Ford Madox Ford, impressionism and trust in The Good Soldier, Max Saunders Malone lies: veracity and morality in Malone Dies, Samuel Cross What I may or may not have done in the war: truth, genre and the war books controversy, Jessica Weare. Part 4 Trust and Society: The trust and the mistrust: Ezra Pound in Italy, Sean Pryor Wallace Stevensa (TM)s a "drastic communitya (TM): credit...

Celebrity Authorship and Afterlives in English and American Literature, 2016

Modernist Cultures, 2016

This is the introduction to a special issue of Modernist Cultures, 'Modernism in Public', explori... more This is the introduction to a special issue of Modernist Cultures, 'Modernism in Public', exploring the various conceptions of 'the public' within modernist culture. It argues that modernism gets its definition through its relationship to a public or types of public, but that its definition is also continually redefined by that public.

This article traces the parallel, though in some ways inverted, early careers of Gertrude Stein a... more This article traces the parallel, though in some ways inverted, early careers of Gertrude Stein and Helen Woodward: one a celebrated but little-read modernist author and the other a widely-read but largely anonymous copywriter. The first section draws comparisons between early twentieth-century changes in advertising copy and Stein’s literary innovations, focusing on the techniques used by Stein and copywriters like Woodward to direct attention to ordinary objects or promote branded products by appealing to the individual reader’s experience and subjectivity. The second section goes on to consider the contrasting definitions and public expectations of the author within the contexts of high modernism and modern advertising, respectively. The article concludes with brief analysis of the techniques of attribution, promotion and anonymity within the autobiographies of these two writers, suggesting that the contrast in approaches to life writing were largely due to how creative and corporate authors held highly contrasting public positions in early twentieth-century America.

With an examination of a number of memoirs by and about modernist authors and artists published d... more With an examination of a number of memoirs by and about modernist authors and artists published during the 1930s, this article raises questions about the complex relationship between the high-art subjects of these volumes and the popular forms of gossip and celebrity anecdote that make them marketable to a broad new audience for modernism. First revealing how literary life writing of the 1930s establishes its place in the historical developments of the genre, from 'table talk' to autobiography to celebrity gossip, the article then argues that a key tension at the heart of memoirs by modernist writers is between the celebrated or elevated subject matter and the ordinary or everyday approaches of the modernist aesthetic. In some memoirs, particularly those authored by celebrity modernists themselves, including Gertrude Stein, Ford Madox Ford and Wyndham Lewis, the high-art subject matter is framed by mundane matters and the daily lives of the exceptional artists, placing genius authors in the most generic situations. In other cases, as with work by Robert McAlmon and Malcolm Cowley, the celebrity figures with whom the memoir writers come into contact are made to look effectively ordinary, thereby deflating the celebrity value achieved through publicity and literary reputation based on the cultural value of the author. The combination of popular celebrity gossip and the modernist interest in daily life thus draws together the high and the low, the aesthetic and the popular, repackaging the modernist experience for a new audience.

Critical Survey, 2015

Abstract This article examines a map of the English coast surrounding Romney Marsh in 1895, hand-... more Abstract
This article examines a map of the English coast surrounding Romney Marsh in 1895, hand-drawn by Ford Madox Ford for his memoir, Return to Yesterday (1931). The map is read as a cultural reconstruction of the shifting terrain of fin-de-siècle literary reputation, representing late-Victorian English letters as a distinctly transatlantic realm. Ford’s illustration is analysed as an early incarnation of the celebrity ‘star map’: it positions authors in specific locations, while also tracing constellations of developing alliances, dividing the aesthetically minded foreigners from a defensive grouping of British institutional icons. Ford redraws the centre and the boundaries of English literature through his act of map-making, positioning his ‘alien’ literary celebrities – including transatlantic icons of the late nineteenth century, like Henry James, Stephen Crane and W.H. Hudson – along the Romney coast, a site associated with invasion, fluid boundaries, and shifting coastlines.

Literature Compass, May 30, 2013

This article takes for its subject the complex relationship between modernist literature and the ... more This article takes for its subject the complex relationship between modernist literature and the celebrity system of values arising in the late nineteenth century and hitting its ascendancy in the early twentieth century. A wide range of scholarly work in the field is surveyed, particularly those investigating modernism within contexts of celebrity, promotional culture and value. The article aims to break down the relationship between modernism and celebrity into two major component parts – first, the self-authoring and promotional side of modernism and, second, the reception of modernism within a celebrity-culture framework, whether through the institutions, the media or the audience that make modernist figures into ‘public personalities’.

Incredible Modernism: Literature, Trust and Deception, 2013

In a 1932 preface to the English translation of These Moderns: Some Parisian Close-ups, Dorothy R... more In a 1932 preface to the English translation of These Moderns: Some Parisian Close-ups, Dorothy Richardson introduces this collection of memoirs with a simple observation. 'Not so very long ago it was customary to declare that interest in a writer should stop short at his work' -a notion, we are told, that 'originated with first-class critics of first-class work'. 1 But Richardson, acknowledging that this is the ideal, also finds it impractical. 'Books are innumerable. We must perforce select. And most of us depend for our selection upon reports of friends or of the accredited astronomers of the literary firmament.' 2 These 1 Dorothy Richardson, preface to These Moderns: Some Parisian Close-ups, by F. Ribadeau Dumas (London: Humphrey Toulmin, 1932), 5.

Contents: Introduction: modernism, trust and deception, John Attridge Part 1 Reading and Trust: M... more Contents: Introduction: modernism, trust and deception, John Attridge Part 1 Reading and Trust: Modern proliferation, modernist trust, Leonard Diepeveen Trusting personality: modernist memoir and its audience, Rod Rosenquist Credulous readers: H.D. and psychic-research work, Suzanne Hobson. Part 2 After Sincerity: Subterranean folkway blues: Ralph Ellisona (TM)s mythology of deception, Paul Sheehan Counterfeit masterpieces: Gide, Joyce and intertextual deception, Scarlett Baron False bottoms: Wyndham Lewisa (TM)s The Revenge for Love and the incredible real, Paul Edwards. Part 3 Truth and Narrative: Ford Madox Ford, impressionism and trust in The Good Soldier, Max Saunders Malone lies: veracity and morality in Malone Dies, Samuel Cross What I may or may not have done in the war: truth, genre and the war books controversy, Jessica Weare. Part 4 Trust and Society: The trust and the mistrust: Ezra Pound in Italy, Sean Pryor Wallace Stevensa (TM)s a "drastic communitya (TM): credit...

Celebrity Authorship and Afterlives in English and American Literature, 2016