Scott McCracken

At the turn of the last century the public culture of Europe’s cities underwent a transformation that changed both gender relations and European fiction. Masculinities, modernist fiction and the urban public sphere charts the changing representations of masculinity in modernist fiction in the context of the four most influential cities – London, Dublin, Paris and Prague. It explores the rise of new masculinities in response to the New Woman at the end of the nineteenth century; how eating and drinking in the city were developed; and discusses the importance of teashops, cafés and restaurants to the emergence of a new literary culture at the turn of the century. Authors discussed include George Gissing, Dorothy Richardson, James Joyce and Franz Kafka. It combines urban cultural history, gender studies and critical theory to produce a startling account of the encounters that took place in the new spaces of the city and the literary forms to which they gave rise. It will be of interest to all those interested in modernist fiction, but equally to cultural historians and those working in gender and urban studies.

At the turn of the last century the public culture of Europe’s cities underwent a transformation that changed both gender relations and European fiction. Masculinities, modernist fiction and the urban public sphere charts the changing representations of masculinity in modernist fiction in the context of the four most influential cities -- London, Dublin, Paris and Prague. It explores the rise of new masculinities in response to the New Woman at the end of the nineteenth century; how eating and drinking in the city were developed; and discusses the importance of teashops, cafés and restaurants to the emergence of a new literary culture at the turn of the century. Authors discussed include George Gissing, Dorothy Richardson, James Joyce and Franz Kafka. It combines urban cultural history, gender studies and critical theory to produce a startling account of the encounters that took place in the new spaces of the city and the literary forms to which they gave rise. It will be of interest to all those interested in modernist fiction, but equally to cultural historians and those working in gender and urban studies.

The Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin’s unfinished masterpiece, is a brilliant but maddening book. Benjamin’s Arcades: an unGuided Tour looks for the method behind the madness, carefully reconstructing the intellectual and political context of the work and unpacking its numerous analogies, metaphors and conceptual gambits. Written by three literary scholars and one historian, this text is both a reading companion and a vigorous interpretation of one of the most important humanistic texts of the twentieth century. Benjamin’s Arcades is composed of 16 entries and a specially designed 'convoluted' index. Some of the entries confront Benjamin with a different reading of his own historical sources (Blanqui, Marx, Giedion), others look intensively at key themes, obsessions, and images (the gambler, commodity fetishism, the Angel of History, magic). Throughout there is discussion of the relationship of Benjamin’s work to current and past debate on topics such as modernity, Judaism, fascism, and psychoanalysis. Benjamin’s Arcades opens up Benjamin’s texts to a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives and will be an essential text for those seeking to better understand this extraordinary work.

Pulp brings together in one volume chapters on the best seller, detective fiction, popular romance, science fiction and horror. It combines a lucid and accessible account of the cultural theories that have informed the study of popular fiction with detailed readings of Jackie Collins, Jilly Cooper, Colin Dexter, William Gibson, Stephen King, Iain Banks, Terry McMillan and Walter Mosley. Scott Mc Cracken argues that popular fiction serves a vital function: it provides us with the means to construct a workable sense of self in the face of the disorientating pressures of modernity.