Published as part of the prestigious “Twayne’s United States Authors Series,” this is the first book devoted to the work of Josephine Herbst, one of the most significant American women writers of the first half of the Twentieth Century. Although I discuss all of her fiction, I give extended attention to her major achievement of the 1930s, the Trexler-Wendel trilogy, reading it as an important example of Radical Modernism. The modernism of the work is expressed in its non-linear chronology, emphasis on the subjectivity of the characters, its decentralized structure, its heteroglossic style, and its resistance to closure. In its ideological orientation and in some of its formal strategies, the trilogy is also related to the politically-conscious radical novel of the early Twentieth Century. Finally, the trilogy is notable for its emphasis on the female experience of socio-political crises. During the 1960s, Herbst engaged in a thoughtful reassessment of the cultural and socio-political history of the period between the two world wars in memoirs and essays about the consequences of the resurgence of leftist sympathies among American intellectuals at the onset of the Depression and about her experiences as a journalist during the Spanish Civil War.
Josephine Herbst
FARRANT, Winifred
1985-01-01
Abstract
Published as part of the prestigious “Twayne’s United States Authors Series,” this is the first book devoted to the work of Josephine Herbst, one of the most significant American women writers of the first half of the Twentieth Century. Although I discuss all of her fiction, I give extended attention to her major achievement of the 1930s, the Trexler-Wendel trilogy, reading it as an important example of Radical Modernism. The modernism of the work is expressed in its non-linear chronology, emphasis on the subjectivity of the characters, its decentralized structure, its heteroglossic style, and its resistance to closure. In its ideological orientation and in some of its formal strategies, the trilogy is also related to the politically-conscious radical novel of the early Twentieth Century. Finally, the trilogy is notable for its emphasis on the female experience of socio-political crises. During the 1960s, Herbst engaged in a thoughtful reassessment of the cultural and socio-political history of the period between the two world wars in memoirs and essays about the consequences of the resurgence of leftist sympathies among American intellectuals at the onset of the Depression and about her experiences as a journalist during the Spanish Civil War.
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