Name: The World Broke in Two
ISBN: 9780805094022

Bill Goldstein

"A literary history of the year 1922 in the lives of Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster, and T.S. Eliot"--

Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster and the Year That Changed Literature

The World Broke in Two

Emmett

Paralleling the biographies of 4 authors seem at first to serve no purpose other than to rehash previous work already done on these well-known authors; the value of that only becomes gradually clearer. This book brings into view their interactions, their experiences, writings, and personally-held theories of art speak to each other. As one struggles to write, another finds his/her big break; one hears with mixed feelings the success of another. (However appealing the concept of a sort of 'micro-history' of a single year, it is not obvious that this book had the advantage of detail compared to the usual biographies; in fact, covering four authors seems to be the reason for the book having taken up the number of pages that it has.) Particularly interesting is the intermittent focus on the publishing industry - for Woolf, running her own press, for Eliot publishing The Waste Land in a way that made him feel he was getting a good deal (a dramatic experience featuring annoyed publishers and long-suffering Ezra Pound at pains to prevent everything from bursting at the seams). This treatment can either create interest in a writer one has not met and consequently looks forward tor reading more of (E.M. Forster), or change nothing (D.H. Lawrence, whose sections I skipped because they bored me, even with his censorship controversies). The transitions from one perspective to another can be rather abrupt; one wishes they were more seamless to not feel reluctant leaving one writer behind for another just when things are warming up. Following Woolf, this reader skipped a lot of Forster and then doubled back to pick up the trail. Holding their stories, and their opinions, together, is James Joyce and Ulysses, hovering just out of the reader's sight, seen in a glass darkly through these four pairs of eyes.

A Lambda Literary Awards Finalist Named one of the best books of 2017 by NPR's Book Concierge A revelatory narrative of the intersecting lives and works of revered authors Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster and D. H. Lawrence during 1922, the birth year of modernism The World Broke in Two tells the fascinating story of the intellectual and personal journeys four legendary writers, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, and D. H. Lawrence, make over the course of one pivotal year. As 1922 begins, all four are literally at a loss for words, confronting an uncertain creative future despite success in the past. The literary ground is shifting, as Ulysses is published in February and Proust’s In Search of Lost Time begins to be published in England in the autumn. Yet, dismal as their prospects seemed in January, by the end of the year Woolf has started Mrs. Dalloway, Forster has, for the first time in nearly a decade, returned to work on the novel that will become A Passage to India, Lawrence has written Kangaroo, his unjustly neglected and most autobiographical novel, and Eliot has finished—and published to acclaim—“The Waste Land." As Willa Cather put it, “The world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts,” and what these writers were struggling with that year was in fact the invention of modernism. Based on original research, Bill Goldstein's The World Broke in Two captures both the literary breakthroughs and the intense personal dramas of these beloved writers as they strive for greatness.

Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, and the Year That Changed Literature

Nicholas Hanemann

Really solidifies the idea that books about the process of creation are far less captivating than books about the afterlives of those creations (see Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music)

The World Broke in Two Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster and the Year That Changed Literature

Reviews

Highlights