Mock Modernism
An Anthology of Parodies, Travesties, Frauds
1910-1930

funded by
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Grant   2005-2009

• » Project Description
• » EXAMPLE: from Cranks, 1921
• » EXAMPLE: CUBIST ART EXHIBIT ENDS “AT THE STAKE”

 Project Description

In an age of rapidly increasing print venues, modernism attracted a stunning wealth of printed response: hoaxes, doggerel, cartoons, staged trials, mock interviews, parodies in adjacent media (such as futurist fashion shows), mock manifestos, even a special “children’s” book, The Cubies ABC, which was published in response to the New York manifestation of the Armory Show, and which began:

These burlesque readings of modernism came from a wide range of people, including august litterateurs like Stuart Sherman, professor of English at the University of Illinois, who in 1924 attempted by mechanical principles to reproduce a replica of Stein’s writing — and in a bizarre twist protested all the while that he wasn’t being parodic:

It’s not just modernism’s antagonists who perpetrated these sendups, but modernists themselves, as James Joyce did in his parody of The Waste Land, or Alfred Kreymborg, who used the pages of the New York Morning Telegraph to imagine what his home life would look like should his wife come home from a shopping expedition speaking in Steinese. Most voluminously, mock modernism extends to reporters for local newspapers, like the New York Evening Sun’s Don Marquis, as well as to their indignant readers, who occasionally sent in their own “modernist” works, as did the following reader of Marquis’ column:

Often tucked away in ephemeral locations that range from avant-garde magazines like The Little Review to major journals like the Times Literary Supplement to the New York Times to the Toledo Blade, these responses haven’t played more than an anecdotal role in histories of modernism; they haven’t become part of our understanding of how modernism was constructed, interpreted, and came to institutional power.

The responses collected in the anthology I have tentatively titled Mock Modernism aren’t just ridicule; they offer interpretations of modernism’s works and of the movement as a whole, of the social conditions that were granting it attention, and of the conditions under which someone could take such work seriously. Mock Modernism’s texts are negotiations about, and interventions into, what their source works really signified — what they meant, but also how they created meaning, how they inserted themselves into contemporary culture. Parodies, travesties, and frauds are arguments — arguments not only about the value of a work or movement, but arguments about what constitutes its relevant features, and what allows it to attract attention. These explanations were complex, for they didn’t assert just that modernism could be explained by its texts and works of art — modernism also needed to be understood through, and as, its enabling conditions. According to modernism’s skeptics, these enabling conditions reached far, to the aesthetic that spawned modernism and its works, the forms of reading that canonized them, and the kinds of people and social conditions that gave them attention. Going beyond pure parody, these skeptics also recreate a context, or a motivating aesthetic, or they burlesque the forms of interpretation that was beginning to canonize modernism. These responses, then, extend to what Gerard Genette terms the peritext; indeed, the works were so bizarre one needed a peritext to understand how they might command attention. Mock trials, fashion shows, etc., all do the interpretive work of parodies — but they move the strategies of parody have moved to the larger context.

This parodic response to modernism not only takes in a complex context, it also employs a complex attitude toward that context, often having elements of hostility, homage, and interpretation all rolled into one. The response isn’t just ridicule. The “mock” of my title points to that, “mock” being a term that points to both counterfeit and derision. When one puts the word “mock” in front of a noun, according to the OED, it amounts to “designating a person who or thing which parodies, imitates, or deceptively resembles that which the noun properly denotes.” And, of course, “mock” suggests a certain kind of imitation: “To ridicule by imitation of speech, manner, or behaviour; to parody.” Always, with its disguise, using the appearance of sincerity, mock modernism had complex work to do.

Finally, its chronological frame is important for this project; I have collected the work that was being done while modernism was still fresh, when responses still exhibited the baffled outrage of surprise. These parodies, then, are not the result of looking at an already constructed edifice, but they occur during the moment when the viability of a proposed edifice was in doubt. (Indeed, even what was being proposed was uncertain.) These responses occur at a time when modernism was in the ascendant, but also when it was still under contention, and its properties weren’t all that clear.

From Cranks, 1921.

An Anthology. Compiled by Obert, Sebert, and Ethelberta Standstill [pseud.]. London: A. H. Stockwell, 1921.

We dedicate this book to the primitive man who first said, 'owch.'

By the Compilers
With this, the fifth successive annual appearance of Cranks, has arrived the necessity of a definite and definitive statement of our position.

Already 'Standstillism' is a word upon the lips of the cognoscenti, if not yet upon those of the illiterati. Future biographers are at this moment busy gathering 'Standstillana.'

We, the 'Cranks' group, are not simply a vogue; not merely a symptom; we are more than a sign in the heavens: we are the beginning of an epoch.

None denies that the world is in a mess. We alone have observed that it is a mess of syrup. The world is drunk with honey — the cloying mead of the poets.

Poesy in the past has crushed sweetness from the babble of tongues. It has distilled a honey-dew from the waves set up by the vibrations of the vocal chords. The clean cold ice of speech has been melted into slush: the crush of sound watered to pap.

We are truth made manifest, reality incarnate, life naked. We are words dignified but unadorned; speech sane but simple.

To say we are obscure is a lie. We are the apotheosis of clarity. Only the fuddled find us fuddled.

The poetry of the past touched and reached one in a hundred. We touch everybody. Moreover, (and in this lies our vitality), not only can everyone read, and revel in, 'Standstillism,' but everyone can write it. That is why we are a new epoch.

Only two weeks ago our little nephew, Peveril Standstill, came to pay us a first visit. The boy, who is only four years of age, had spent the whole of his short life at Ballybunion in Kerry. After two days and a night in our atmosphere he produced the following poem.

Is there anything else to be said? We are content to stand or fall by this youthful effort. We place it on our banner. Let it be the test of our truth, and the measure of our achievement.

E.S. O.S S.S.
London, Jan, 1st, 1921

A Neo-Neo-Trio

by Obert, Sebert, and Ethelberta Standstill

Omnes:
Out of one womb we came,
One—two—three;
We,
The three
Incomprehensibles;
Three
Monstrous births.
None understandeth us;
We
Do not understand
Ourselves.

Obert:
There was no poesy
Before us.
When I clung
Clamourous to my mother's breast —

Ethelberta: (interrupting)
Cease the syrup!

Obert: (hanging his head)
When I hung
Shrieking to the dugs of my dam —
/

Sebert:
And I,
When I yowled and howled,
Mewed, puked, snuffled, spat,
Drooled,
Hic —
Cupped —

Omnes:
When we were weaned,
Poesy leapt to life:
Keats there had been,
And Shelley,
Milton, and a few
Others we knew;
But they

Sebert:
Were sugar and slops,
Cinnamon,
Spices,
Dutch Drops —
Ugh!

Ethelberta:
With us
Came words
Of wood:
Oak words, beech words, pine words, ash words, willow words;
/
Wooden words
Of wood —
Utterly wooden.

Omnes:
We
Do not write for the living;
We
Write for the dead;
Because
They are in coffins
Of wood.

Chicago Record-Herald — April 17, 1913

CUBIST ART EXHIBIT ENDS “AT THE STAKE”.

Students, Futuristically Burlesquing, Burn Effigy of H. O’Hair Mattress.

FUNERAL SERMON PREACHED.

Text Taken From the “Second Chapter of Anatomy.”

Cubist art passed into the great beyond, a beyond of fire and jeers, and its sponsors, compositely typified by one cowering inartistic figure, were condemned to death yesterday and solemnly executed.

Post-impressionistically speaking, all this was true. Students of the Art Institute, futuristically burlesquing, burned the artless art and ended the life of a cubist effigy. Several thousand persons laughed at the show.

Literally speaking, the most startling of art exhibits closed in Chicago last night. Today the gorgeous smears of noisy colors will be boxed for shipment to Boston, where the promoters believe there is sufficient aesthetic temperament to assure appreciation.

“MOURNERS” WEAR FREAK GARBS.

Dime museum music — the Streets of Cairo kind — was played for the cubist “funeral.” More than a score of students, in freakish garbs of every kind, from gaudy bath robes to paint-smeared aprons, formed the cortege. Hennery O’Hair Mattress (Oliver Rainville) was the cubist artist. He was dragged in chains out of the institute and to the south end of the building.

“In the name of the pure food laws and the committee on streets and alleys,” cried “Judge” Lance Hart, pushing aside the hood of his bathrobe, “I accuse you of artistic murder, pictorial arson, total degeneracy of color sense, artistic rapine, criminal abuse of title and general aesthetic abortion. Here are the examples.”

Cries of “Kill him,” “Burn him,” followed as three cartoons of well-known cubist pictures — “Luxury,” “The Gold Fish” and “The Blue Lady” were waved.

“My one regret,” cried the judge, “is that you have but one life to give for your principles.” PRISONER MAKES ESCAPE

Then followed the death march. When the north end of the institute was reached the prisoner had disappeared. In his stead appeared a stuffed “dummy.”

Ray Mammes “preached” the funeral sermon, taking for his text “The second chapter of the Book of Anatomy.”

Following a burlesque oration by Henry Klefer, president of the Art Students’ League, the pictures were thrown together and a match touched the funeral pyre.

After the show it was explained that officials had objected to the effigy burning. Walter Pach, last of the exhibition authorities to remain with the exhibit, asserted that more than 200,000 persons had witnessed it in Chicago. And he offered the opinion that students who yesterday burlesqued and criticized and satirized would, unless they change their ideas, spend the remainder of their days “eating crow.”