Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • Scholes Modernism Magazines

    Uploaded by

    Mariana Aguirre
    8 views15 pages
    scholes

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    Report this Document
    scholes

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    8 views15 pages

    Scholes Modernism Magazines

    Uploaded by

    Mariana Aguirre
    scholes

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    of 15
    Modernism in the Magazines An Introduction ROBERT SCHOLES CLIFFORD WULEMAN Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS New Haven and London ae MODERNISW's OTHER lovely real machine has taken them to this charming ream landscape. We ‘ight be looking into a scene from The Great Gatsby here, though the novel itself did not appear until seven years later, as a world that is dead ‘and gone comes alive inthis commercial image. ‘The study of advertising in magazines like Scribner's will allow us tohistoricize more thoroughly, to understand the past more fall, byen- tering that past through the door provided by digital editions that include ‘the original images and advertising in color. In these ads we can see how the mhetoric of commerce is mixed with that of politics and that of art ‘The roots of modern culture are here laid bare for studies that should ultimately help us understand ourselves and our present situation bet~ ‘er—which is the main purpose ofall historical investigation. This work —and these pleasures—are now waiting only forthe digital editions of these magazines to be made available to scholars and students every- where. And we can assure you that we are doing our best to make this happen. How to Study a Modern Magazine ‘Blackvood's Magazine has ever hada corporate life of ts own, It is nota mere medley of heterogeneous articles. Iisa single work, conducted bya single ming, fora single purpose. Charles Whibley, quoted in Finkelstein, Print Clture and the Blackwood Tradition, 1805-3930 ur epigraph is from the Centennial Issue of Blackwood’smag- azine, published in April 917 and discussed by Ezra Pound in “Studies in Contemporary Mentality.” Whibley is fas- cinating figure, admired by Joseph Conrad and T. . Eliot, ‘though not, apparently, by Pound, He was as much ofan elitist as Pound, however, though opposed to modernist experiments in art and literature and devoted to traditional values. He wrote a regular column for Black ‘wood’s for the first three decades of the twentieth century, which is as opinionated and lively as Poune’s own writing, and he shared Pound's anti-Semitism and approval of Mussolini, though he died in 1930 and never saw where fascism led, Pound in the second of his “Studies,” at- tacked Blackwood’sas the reactionary voice ofthe British Empire—which ‘was, and Whibley was the leading spokesman in that voice. We begin with this quotation, however, not for political reasons but because it 4 How To STUDY A MODERN MAGAZINE ‘makes an interesting point forthe study of modernist periodicals, urg- ing that we read one of them, atleast, asa unified text. He overstates the ‘ase, in our judgment, but he points in a useful direction, and we should keep his view in mind as we embark on the study of modernist maga- zines. We should also note that the antimodernist Blackwood’sis just as ‘much a part of the study of modernism as the anarchist and experimen- tal Litile Review, and not just because Blackwood’s published Contad’s Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. Because the study of magazines—as opposed tothe literature orart ‘that maybe in them—is arelatively new academic discipline, we wil seek in this chapter to provide a method or pattern for such study that can ‘beadapted by individuel scholars or teachers working with groups of stu- ‘dents. This isnot the only method or pattern, and it may not be the best ‘one, but itis a place to start, a way to get into the domain of periodical studies by refining the pioneering steps of Ezra Pound, taken solong ago. Pound demonstrated two things: how to read a single magazine, look- ing at everything from advertising to fiction to editorials, and how to read 4 whole set of magazines as a way of understanding the “mentality” or ‘culture represented in them. Pound, of cours, had a critical or satirical intent, based on his own set of values. Our method must be more neu- ‘ral, though it can certainly be adapted to more critical perspectives. We hope that other teachers and scholars will improve on it and share their improvements with the rest of us. In the next chapter we will look at ‘methods for reading ast of contemporary magazines. In this one we wil tse as an example the very magazine for which Pound wrote “Studies in ‘Contemporary Mentality”: The New Age ‘We know that we are not the audience thatthe magazines of mod- ‘ernism addressed, As our discussion ofadvertising in Chapters suggested, ‘wecome back to them witha historical interest. We read them to recover ‘the pat, to study the culture, the ideology, and the values of he past. And ‘his is especially important because journals, as the very word implies, ‘are meant tobe timely. They are very much oftheir moment, addzessed to the audience of that moment. Newspapers are daily, presenting the news of the day, to an audience that is usually local. Even a “national” newspaper like the New York Times turns local~and partisan —on the sports page. Magazines have a different temporality—weekly, monthly, y HOW To STUDY A MODERN MAGAZINE Ms quarterly—and are usually intended to be less local, which makes the ‘question of audience especially interesting, One of the first steps, then, in reading a magazine of century ago, isto get a sense of the readership the magazine is trying to reach, so that we can imagine ourselves as mem- bers of that group without losing our own perspectives, An attempt to ‘understand the audience of any journal will ead us to most of the other clements involved in reading a magazine from the past. In seeking to understand the audience, as in every other phase of zeading a magazine, we must remain aware of the nature of magazines in general. Magazines are more like soap operas than novels. They arein- tended to continue indefinitely, which in practice means as long as a- diences are interested in them and advertisers (or patrons) support them. “Every magazine must give the public what it wants, but different maga- zines have very different public in mind. An elite literary or artistic mag- azine must try to please sophisticated readers, which often means ad~

    You might also like