Research Note: Modernism

"The greatest uncertainty of the Modernist legacy is here: how can any historical sense remain relevant to a culture that has no respect for its own past? The physical restlessness of Chicago and New York, and the disappearance of so much that would be preserved in England, is a metaphor in some sense for the destruction of a whole series of past cultures. Modernism remains a radical movement because it urges what, in terms of American society, is little less than utopian."

Eric Homberger. "Chicago and New York: Two Versions of American Modernism," Modernism 1890 - 1930, Pelican guides to European literature,. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976.