Modernism is the Literature of Celebrity is a magical book and a path-breaking study. . . . A series of stunningly prescient and apposite chapters on Wilde, Joyce, Stein, Chaplin, Rhys, Dos Passos, and Hemingway, among others, follows through on the book’s bracing, provocative, and polemical premise for the centrality of celebrity in delineating what modernist literature was, and is. The book displays Professor Goldman’s command of every aspect of literary scholarship, including his range within the genre of the novel, and his ease and substance in entering mass media forms, especially those of photography, film, and mass-mediated celebrity discourses. He brings the brio of a first-rate theorist of modernity to bear on mass culture and all its forms. . . . Each chapter explores fresh territory and original terrain: modernism will hereafter be unthinkable absent Jonathan Goldman’s critical flags and unrecognizable without this dazzling, luminous book.
~Jennifer Wicke
Modernism Is the Literature of Celebrity is an important book, in which Jonathan Goldman makes a strong case for the position taken in the book’s title, supporting it with elegant readings of texts by an interesting range of modernists. It is well informed, clearly written, and very persuasive—a real contribution to modernist studies.
~Robert Scholes
This book makes a very fresh, original, and substantial contribution to the study of both modernism and modern celebrity, and it is also a most enjoyable book to read. It is engaging in style and persuasively argued, and makes some unexpected and very insightful connections among a diverse range of authors. It is also founded on an impressive body of research. I strongly recommend it.
~Faye Hammill
Goldman's thesis is ably pursued and very useful. He situates 'celebrity' as the 'missing link' between high and low culture in modernism, and I think he has a point.
~James Joyce Quarterly