Sensational Modernism: Experimental Fiction and Photography in Thirties America
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Challenging the conventional wisdom that the 1930s were dominated by literary and photographic realism, Entin uncovers a rich vein of experimental work by politically progressive artists. Examining images by photographers such as Weegee and Aaron Siskind and fiction by writers such as William Carlos Williams, Richard Wright, Tillie Olsen, and Pietro di Donato, he argues that these artists drew attention to the country's most vulnerable residents by using what he calls an "aesthetic of astonishment," focused on startling, graphic images of pain, injury, and prejudice.
Acknowledgments ixIntroduction 1Scrutiny, Sentiment, Sensation: American Modernism and the Bodies of the Dispossessed 35Sensational Contact: William Carlos Williams's Short Fiction and the Bodies of New Immigrants 76Modernist Documentary: Aaron Siskind's Harlem Document 107A Piece of the Body Torn Out by the Roots: James Agee, Tillie Olsen, William Faulkner, and the Contingencies of Working-Class Representation 141Monstrous Modernism: Laboring Bodies, Wounded Workers, and Narrative Heterogeneity in Pietro di Donato's Christ in Concrete 181No Man's Land: Richard Wright, Stereotype, and the Racial Politics of Sensational Modernism 215Conclusion: Modernism, Poverty, and the Politics of Seeing 257Notes 265Index 311
