Constellation Of Genius

Product Description

Ezra Pound referred to 1922 as Year One of a new era. It was the year in which a skinny shabby Irishman & a natty quietly sinister American entered the cultural landscape hell-bent on exploding everything that realistic fiction & Georgian poetry held dear. It was the year which began with the publication of Ulysses & ended with the publication of The Waste Land": the most influential English-language novel & poem of the century. Despite several revolutions in taste these two works remain the twin towers at the beginning of modern literature; some would say of modernity itself. & it was the generous indefatigable discerning Ezra Pound who played a significant part in the launch of both writers careers. " Constellation of Genius" puts the accomplishments of Eliot & Joyce in the context of the world in which their works appeared
- a year of remarkable firsts births & foundations. The passing of an old world: the collapse of the Ottoman Empire the end of British Liberalism with the crushing defeat by the Conservatives at the General Election the thwarting of Marcus Garveys dreams for a new Africa. Dada was put to rest Proust died & Hollywood transformed the nature of fame making Charlie Chaplin the most recognisable man on the planet. Hitchcock directed his first feature Kandinsky & Klee joined the Bauhaus & Louis Armstrong took the train from New Orleans to Chicago heralding the beginning of modern jazz. Gloriously entertaining erudite & idiosyncratic this is a biography of a year a journey through the diaries of the anthropologists actors artists dancers designers film-makers philosophers playwrights politicians & scientists whose lives & works collided over twelve months creating a frenzy of innovation which broke the world in two."