The Living Moment: Modernism in a Broken World

Hart's debut illuminates how Modernist writers were of a particular moment in their reactions to World Wars I and II but remain transcendently relevant to the personal and political. The author demonstrates that Eliot's The Waste Land provided the poetic crux of the Modernist movement, and Hemingway and Fitzgerald followed in crafting Dantean journeys in their prose. The early chapters cover the fascinating transatlantic literary web of Frost, Eliot, Pound, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway; readers will be encouraged to fill in the gaps in their reading of the Modernist canon while employing the attention to stylistic detail that Hart helps them hone. Hart is a natural teacher, connecting his theories to Marilynne Robinson's 2004 novel Gilead, but that chapter slows the pace and distracts from the discussion about early Modernist texts. The final chapter, on Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, concludes sturdily with commentary about the 20th century's human-made hells.