* Challenges the idea that Modernism was conservative and reactionary. * Relates the modernist impulse to broader cultural and historical crises and movements. * Provides a guide to the development of Modernist literature. * Covers women writers, writers of the Harlem Renaissance and openly gay and lesbian writers.
"Challenging Fiction" is a double entendre. This unusual book argues that modernist fiction is not only difficult (or challenging) to read, it also provokes readers to challenge the fictions that they live by. To read modernist literature in a way that unlocks its humor, its discomfiting insights, and its strong emotional undercurrents, a reader must be both receptive and resistant to the author's perspective, actively challenging it with his or her own experience, knowledge, and sensibilities.
Using writers as diverse as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Djuna Barnes, Oscar Wilde, and Jean Rhys, this book demonstrates that the rewards of "challenging fiction" are considerable, and unexpected.
