{"product_id":"modern-essays-by-frank-kermode","title":"'Modern Essays' by Frank Kermode","description":"\u003ch4\u003eA great snapshot of Frank Kermode in full-ranging critic mode: moving between modernism, literature, painting, censorship, criticism and individual writers without flinching.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCollected from essays written between 1958 and 1970, \u003cem\u003eModern Essays\u003c\/em\u003e includes substantial pieces on Walter Benjamin, Robert Musil, Samuel Beckett, Sartre and the anti-novel, D. H. Lawrence, Iris Murdoch and Muriel Spark, alongside essays on modernism itself, obscenity and the public interest, and contemporary criticism.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat makes the collection useful now is Kermode’s willingness to treat “the modern” as a problem, looking at what modernism claims is new, what it quietly inherits, and what happens when artistic rebellion itself hardens into convention. The Benjamin essay is especially interesting in retrospect: Kermode is writing at the point when Benjamin’s reputation in the English-speaking literary world is rapidly expanding, trying to determine exactly what kind of critic he is and why his strange mode of reading matters. A very good book for anyone interested in twentieth-century literary culture from inside the argument rather than after the dust settled.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFontana \/ William Collins Sons \u0026amp; Co., London, 1971. First Fontana edition. Paperback. Light rubbing and shelf wear to wrappers, with minor edge and cor from what is visible; binding firm. Very good condition for age.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46052580753491,"sku":null,"price":16.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/womenintranslation_82.png?v=1787903087","url":"https:\/\/bowerbooks.com\/products\/modern-essays-by-frank-kermode","provider":"bower books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}