Playing smart
Subtitle: New York women writers and modern magazine culture
By: Catherine Keyser.
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: New Brunswick, N.J
Language: eng
Number of pages: 225
ISBN-13: 9780813547862
Subjects: American literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism; American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Journalism and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century; American periodicals -- History -- 20th century; Literature and society -- United States -- History -- 20th century; Modernism (Literature) -- United States
Description: "Smart women, sophisticated ladies, savvy writers . . . Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, Anita Loos, Lois Long, Jessie Fauset, Dawn Powell, Mary McCarthy and others imagined New York as a place where they could claim professional status, define urban independence, and shrug off confining feminine roles. It might be said that during the 1920s and 1930s these literary artists painted the town red on the pages of magazines like Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. . . Through humor writing, this "smart set" expressed both sides of the story - promoting their urbanity and wit while using irony and caricature to challenge feminine stereotypes. Their fiction raised questions about what it meant to be a woman in the public eye, how gender roles would change because men and women were working together, and how the growth of the magazine industry would affect women's relationships to their bodies and minds." -- book jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: Thoroughly modern Millay and her middlebrow masquerades; title: "This unfortunate exterior": Dorothy Parker, the female body, and strategic doubling; title: "First aid to laughter": Jessie Fauset and the racial politics of smartness; title: The indestructible glamour girl: Dawn Powell, celebrity, and counterpublics; title: "Scratch a socialist and you find a snob": Mary McCarthy, irony, and politics; title: Conclusion.