ENGL 5483/7483: Modernism and Its Magazines

How is it possible to be so tired on a Monday? Good lord. Anyways, below I’ve compiled a table of 3 words per each of the 3 magazines that we read. I chose the words based on the frequency with which they occur in their respective texts (the minimum amount of times that they could recur was 10).

The Crisis: * War  * Colored  * Soldier 

 

The Egoist: * Power * New  * Modern 

 

The Little Review: * Art * Life * Body

 

The Crisis is undoubtedly the most immediately political magazine of the bunch (and incidentally the magazine that I found most intriguing). It also seemed to be the most community-based publication out of the three that we viewed - contrast the "Complain" section in The Crisis (p. 61) with the one in The Little Review (p. 64). Moreover, I was surprised to find that, while WWI is front and center in The Crisis, it's largely absent from the other two magazines. 

The Egoist, a journal "of interest to virile readers only” according to its advertisement in The Little Review (eye roll), was definitely not as accessible, with Dora Marsden's long philosophical treatise and Arthur Symons' long, flowery tribute to Debussy. Meanwhile, with The Little Review, which was less critically focused than this issue of The Egoist, it was a little harder to pin down some words that I felt spoke to an overall cohesion to the text. I might, however, be alone in this. I felt like the poetry ("Haunts" was a personal favorite) and the prose were a bit more immediate and corporeal than the largely abstract writing in The Egoist, hence the words I picked. Also, the Glossary is delightful. 

I'll be interested to hear what everyone else thought about these magazines and their relationships with each other. Overall, it was incredibly interesting to read three magazines that were so different despite being produced at the same time. 

Link

https://www.smartevals.com/login.aspx?s=utulsa

I mostly applied the program to readings of The Smart Set. I plugged any words to do with gender, from obvious ones like "men v. women" to less obvious terms like maid or butler.

It was interesting to see how engendered terms actually seemed to increase with each subsequent issue. While I couldn't see any clear pattern to whether one gender was preferred over the other, I thought was most interesting was thinking about why gendered terms became more prevalent in later issues. My assumption would be that The Smart Set, the self proclaimed magazine of cleverness, often flourished when their pieces were biting satire of social norms. As the style of the journal became more developed and focused, it was cool to see the writers taking a more vested interest in dissecting gender roles in early American culture.

What attracted me to The Smart Set specifically was it's self-proclaimed wit, the cover always subheadlined with "A Magazine of Cleverness" This kind of self-aware almost-pretentiousness, I think, is an interesting tone that most might consider to be more representative of contemporary writing. I wanted to see what kind of snobbish, high-culture wit was like back in the early 1900's.

The specific issue I picked was the 4th issue of the 50th volume, dated December of 1916. I picked this one because I wanted to get a feel for the magazine later in it's run, assumably when it's readership and subsequently the writers who submitted material would have developed a pretty consistent idea of what the journal was like stylistically.

In communications, information is seen as a resistance to the natural entropy of the world. Patterns and facts are ways that we impose order on an otherwise chaotic and shifting reality. An archive then, is a physical manifestation of this concept. Through the categorization and storage of information, we build a structure from which we can base some sort of continuous identity. But how does the accessibility of a given archive influence it's effectiveness. 

On the surface, the assumption is that the ease at which a given person can access necessary information is directly proportional to it's utility. While I'd agree, the Stolen Time Archive is special in that it is purposefully counter-intuitive and obtuse, but to what end? One might argue that the creation of archives themselves is inherently 'stealing time'. By imposing order on our naturally chaotic world, we're essentially 'stealing time' by creating long-lasting time-biased media. The whole concept of an archive is to defeat the inevitable erosion that time enacts on everything. This archive then, sort of steals time back from us. A reminder that the world isn't necessarily easily categorized and no matter how much we try to impose our version of reality, we should always be wary of connections that aren't readily apparent.

What intrigued me about the story was the descriptions of the author's home street. It's particularly interesting to me how a geographical location, like a street, can seem so foreign to me but be the center of routine for someone else. I wanted to focus on how the it looks today, and what has survived since then. So I plotted out the areas surrounding the street, attaching pictures and descriptions of what those places are like now.

I was mostly surprised to find that the school mentioned, established in the early 1800's, is still operating today. So even though the city itself has changed, the people have changed, Joyce's description of a street that is quiet for most of the day except for when school gets out, is still applicable today. Things like infrastructure, buildings, etc, these are all things we assume to be the most robust over long periods of time. So it's interesting that even though the buildings and the street itself might look different, that moment, the concept of excitied children rushing out as school ends, is the most timeless aspect of North Richmond Street.

 

I began by looking at this old map of Dublin, and I found Richmond Street on it. I found myself intrigued by the space makring out "Croke Park". I noticed that Croke Park does not exist in the present day. Indeed, it seems to overlap with a way in which the street has been extended. I intend to check up on what is going on here, and what happened to the park, and whether the Araby area is in fact smaller than today we suppose, based on the possiibility of a shorter street.

 

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=zP3fg78jTS4s.k845hG2mnrcM

Attached is my basic map

Attached is my Araby map. I mapped the basic locations discussed in the story. I spent most of my time using the street view and familiarizing myself with the streets of Dublin.I really struggled to find a solid theme that I felt inspired to map for the story. It must just be the struggle of the end of the semester, but I was having a lot of trouble feeling inspired by the story. 

So instead I decided to do some research on literary maps in general. I found some incredible visual examples of famous literary maps in London and other famous literary locations. Rather than just a map of the places in the stories, some of these presented a visual representation of different characters that I found to be a lot more aesthetically pleasing. It was so cool to see all of the different types of literary representation there is out there, apart from what we have learned in this class. Attached is my favorite map that I found. It depicts various literary characters in London. 

I apologoize for this being a little off topic. Also I could only get the links of these to post for whatever reason. 

http://ebookfriendly.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Literary-London-map.jpg

It is a very good thing that I am not trying to go to the market or else this story would have a different ending, probably of me getting lost somewhere in Dublin and never being heard from again. Good for the kid for finding his way through Dublin.