Imitations of Life: Fannie Hurst’s Gaslight Sonatas
- ISBN-10
- 0809386631
- ISBN-13
- 9780809386635
- Category
- Literary Criticism
- Pages
- 216
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2009-03-10
- Publisher
- SIU Press
- Author
- Abe C. Ravitz
Description
In the early 1920s, Fannie Hurst’s enormous popularity made her the highest-paid writer in America. She conquered the literary scene at the same time the silent movie industry began to emerge as a tremendously profitable and popular form of entertainment. Abe C. Ravitz parallels Hurst’s growing acclaim with the evolution of silent films, from which she borrowed ideas and techniques that furthered her career. Ravitz notes that Hurst was amazingly adept at anticipating what the public wanted. Sensing that the national interest was shifting from rural to urban subjects, Hurst set her immigrant tales and her "woiking goil" tales in urban America. In her early stories, she tried to bridge the gap between Old World and New World citizens, each somewhat fearful and suspicious of the other. She wrote of love and ethnicity—bringing the Jewish Mother to prominence—of race relations and prejudice, of the woman alone in her quest for selfhood. Ravitz argues, in fact, that her socially oriented tales and her portraits of women in the city clearly identify her as a forerunner of contemporary feminism. Ravitz brings to life the popular culture from 1910 through the 1920s, tracing the meteoric rise of Hurst and depicting the colorful cast of characters surrounding her. He reproduces for the first time the Hurst correspondence with Theodore Dreiser, Charles and Kathleen Norris, and Gertrude Atherton. Fellow writers Rex Beach and Vachel Lindsay also play important roles in Ravitz’s portrait of Hurst, as does Zora Neale Hurston, who awakened Hurst’s interest in the Harlem Renaissance and in race relations, as shown in Hurst’s novel Imitation of Life.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2002-03-29
- 338 pages
- Paperback
- Duke University Press
-
- 2002-03-08
- 351 pages
- Ebook
- Duke University Press
-
- 1991
- 619 pages
- Paperback
- Wayne State University Press
Similar books
-
Virginia Woolf and the Great War
By Karen L. LevenbackI owe special thanks to Bruce Martin and Evelyn Timberlake ( at the Library of Congress ) ; Philip Milato and Steve Crook ( at the Berg Collection ) ...
-
In Search of Elena Ferrante: The Novels and the Question of Authorship
By Karen Bojar... Alice: “In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens” 157 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 38 Wertenbaker, Timberlake 21 Wilson, Emily (trans.
-
Native American Verbal Art: Texts and Contexts
By William M. ClementsHENRY TIMBERLAKE'S CHEROKEE WAR SONG 1. That Timberlake's memoir contains the first English translation of the words of a Native American song seems to have ...
-
Playing in the Shadows: Fictions of Race and Blackness in Postwar Japanese Literature
By William H Bridges“Justin Timberlake, 'The 20/20 Experience': Is There a Visual Preference for Whiteness?” Interview with Marc Lamont Hill. HuffPost Live, 27 March 2013.
-
Shakespeare's Edward III
By William ShakespeareThompson , E . in Pollard 1923 . Thompson , J . Shakespeare and the Classics , 1952 . Tillyard , E . Shakespeare ' s History Plays , 1944 . Timberlake , P ...
-
The Problem with Pleasure: Modernism and Its Discontents
By Laura FrostIn The Problem with Pleasure, Frost draws upon a wide variety of materials, linking interwar amusements, such as the talkies, romance novels, the Parisian fragrance Chanel no. 5, and the exotic confection Turkish Delight, to the artistic ...
-
The Alice Books and the Contested Ground of the Natural World
By Laura WhiteSimilarly, he deplored the picturestories of A. B. Frost in his Stuff and Nonsense ... When he'd eaten eighteen, He turned perfectly green, Upon which he ...
-
Fables of Modernity: Literature and Culture in the English Eighteenth Century
By Laura BrownRenew'd by ordure's sympathetic force, As oil'd with magic juices for the course, ... William Frost (1953; reprint, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, ...
-
Questions of Authority: Italian and Australian Travel Narratives of the Long Nineteenth Century
By Laura OlcelliD'Albertis, Luigi. New Guinea: What I Did and What I Saw. 2 vols. London: S. Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1881. First published 1880.
-
A Concordance to Conrad's The Arrow of Gold
By Paul L. Gaston, Todd K. Bender... i ge 3 let S deal ing ge a lings ge at t Joe a f J & at n ce at h-ced ge at hly ue to 3 sec ge is a te debit de cap it a t e u ge c e it ful ge c e i ve ...