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The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice Among the Literary Intelligentsia, 1880-1939. - book reviews
National Review, Nov 7, 1994 by Nick Gillespie
THIS engrossing but ultimately disappointing book documents the revulsion that late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century modernist writers felt toward "the masses." By juxtaposing artistic and intellectual fantasies about exterminating the "vile multitude" with Hitler's views on the subject, Mr.
Carey teases out the chilling implications of the elitism undergirding much of modernist discourse. However, he is less successful at proving his second--and more original--point: "The purpose of modernist writing ... [was] to preserve the intellectual's seclusion from the 'mass.'" This makes the modernists sound like the chattering New Class of our own day. But Mr. Carey's list of modernist villains--H.G. Wells, D.H. Larwence, George Orwell, Graham Greene--suggests that experimentality in literature does not necessarily entail anti-mass sentiment.
COPYRIGHT 1994 National Review, Inc.
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