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Wyndham Lewis's ‘Very Bad Thing’: Jazz, Inter-War Culture, and The Apes of God

Wyndham Lewis's ‘Very Bad Thing’: Jazz, Inter-War Culture, and The Apes of God Nathan Waddell The relationships between jazz and modernist writing have in recent years increasingly interested musico-literary scholars. Much of this interest centres on links between modernism, jazz, and the Harlem Renaissance, whose music and art extend `far beyond its geographic boundaries as well as beyond the relational boundaries of time'.1 As evidence of this trans-national and trans-temporal influence, especially as it applies to Anglo-American culture, writers like T. S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, and Philip Larkin, among others, have all been considered in relation to jazz and New York in the 1920s and 1930s.2 Such studies contribute to the growing significance of African-American traditions within modernist scholarship and provide increasingly nuanced pictures of jazz's impact upon literary modernism (both as creative stimulus and as `despised' phenomenon). However, these interpretations of the jazz `influence' need to be understood as more than a reductive dichotomy. For instance, Fitzgerald was attuned to the prevalence of jazz in twentieth-century modernity, and his jazz allusions `anxiously suggest that beneath the surface of [what he saw as] the music's frivolous gaiety lurks the presence of violence and chaos, which threatens to erupt at any moment.'3 Therefore, his complex representations of jazz music http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Modernist Cultures Edinburgh University Press

Wyndham Lewis's ‘Very Bad Thing’: Jazz, Inter-War Culture, and The Apes of God

Modernist Cultures , Volume 8 (1): 61 – May 1, 2013

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References (19)

Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
© Edinburgh University Press 2013
Subject
Film, Media and Cultural Studies
ISSN
2041-1022
eISSN
1753-8629
DOI
10.3366/mod.2013.0051
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Nathan Waddell The relationships between jazz and modernist writing have in recent years increasingly interested musico-literary scholars. Much of this interest centres on links between modernism, jazz, and the Harlem Renaissance, whose music and art extend `far beyond its geographic boundaries as well as beyond the relational boundaries of time'.1 As evidence of this trans-national and trans-temporal influence, especially as it applies to Anglo-American culture, writers like T. S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, and Philip Larkin, among others, have all been considered in relation to jazz and New York in the 1920s and 1930s.2 Such studies contribute to the growing significance of African-American traditions within modernist scholarship and provide increasingly nuanced pictures of jazz's impact upon literary modernism (both as creative stimulus and as `despised' phenomenon). However, these interpretations of the jazz `influence' need to be understood as more than a reductive dichotomy. For instance, Fitzgerald was attuned to the prevalence of jazz in twentieth-century modernity, and his jazz allusions `anxiously suggest that beneath the surface of [what he saw as] the music's frivolous gaiety lurks the presence of violence and chaos, which threatens to erupt at any moment.'3 Therefore, his complex representations of jazz music

Journal

Modernist CulturesEdinburgh University Press

Published: May 1, 2013

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