The Naked Truth

Historians of sexuality will be particularly impressed with George's departure from historiography's focus on high culture in modernism and her success at incorporating a rich array of sources into the intricate sexual matrix of the fin de siecle in order to illuminate the bodies of the Other, of the Self, of working-class women, and of war-torn men. This approach will make her study valuable to historians of sexuality who wish to explore the centrality of the body in fin-de-siecle modernisms of other regions of Europe, as well as North America. More generally, the sheer musicality of George's voice in The Naked Truth will delight any artist of the written word. * Journal of the History of Sexuality * In her pioneering book, George paints a new picture - with the body at the center - of a much-studied and often misunderstood epoch without shrinking from the dark sides and the 'naked truth'. Therefore George presents the body - and thus Vienna - as a place of pain and oppression, but also as a place of pleasure and promise. To use a Musil term, she exposes the body's sense of possibility. * Austrian Broadcasting Corporation * Eloquent writing throughout. . . . [The Naked Truth] not only expands our view of Vienna 1900, but speaks to the broader importance of body culture in Western modernity. * German History * The Naked Truth stands out for its pathbreaking interdisciplinarity unifying developments in the 'high' arts and culture (spanning literature and visual arts) with developments in popular culture, including film, photography, mass media, and exhibitions, reflecting a preoccupation with the physical body. The book tethers a reexamination of canonical figures in Viennese modernism-a familiar cast of characters, including Arthur Schnitzler, Egon Schiele, Peter Altenberg, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and others-to relative unknowns, including writer and physician Marie Pappenheim, painter Carry Hauser, and modern dancers like Grete Wiesenthal and Gertrud Bodenwieser, disparate figures bound together thematically through the tropes of medicine, the body, and postmortem examination. The book impresses due to its true interdisciplinary breadth and innovative chronology stressing cultural continuity between the fin-de-siecle and interwar periods. * H-Net * George musters an impressive array of written and visual sources in this endeavor, which will interest readers in literary studies, history of science, art history, dance studies, and beyond. She brings canonical figures such as Hugo von Hofmannsthal, OEdoen von Horvath, and Vicki Baum into conversation with neglected but nonetheless fascinating writers who offer insights into matters such as autopsies (Marie Pappenheim) and childbirth (Ilka Maria Ungar). It is a pleasure to have the provocative voices of female modernists added to this conversation, and the grounds for their inclusion are completely convincing. . . . George deftly and authoritatively weaves together disparate facets of Viennese social life, and her lucid prose is a pleasure to read. * German Studies Review * This extraordinary volume is a long-over-due revision of Carl Schorske's Fin-de-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture (Knopf 1980). What a revision it is! George analyzes the centrality of the body for Vienna's modernist artists and writers, while creatively expanding the chronology of the Viennese fin de siecle from the late nineteenth century through 1938. In so doing, her work also demonstrates interwar Austria's cultural vitality, implicitly rejecting the notion that the republic was nonviable. . . . In this beautifully illustrated, multivalent monograph, George considers numerous forms of high- and low-cultural production, among them dance, exhibitions, film, literature, and various visual arts. . . . The Naked Truth is an erudite and original contribution to the dis-course on Vienna circa 1900. . . . This book should interest anyone who cares about the fin de siecle; Habsburg Central Europe; or Vienna, in any shape or form. This delightful interdisciplinary volume will be the standard by which all subsequent analysis of Viennese modernism is measured. * History: Reviews of New Books * In drawing our attention so concertedly to the corporeal, at all stages of life and health, this book will undoubtedly prove generative not only for scholarship on Vienna and modernism, but as a model of body-centered scholarship that might help us reimagine the history of other times and places as well. * Central European History * A sweeping survey of the primacy of the body in the Vienna modern, The Naked Truth demands a reorientation of our assumptions. This book will make a difference. * Scott Spector, University of Michigan * The Naked Truth offers a brilliant challenge to popular myths about fin-de-siecle Vienna. In its cross-disciplinary focus on the dissected, gendered, classed, and moving body in Viennese culture, it reads Gustav Klimt's famous icon Nuda Veritas as a purloined image: always in plain sight but consistently overlooked. By including noncanonical women and expanding the frame beyond the political divide of 1918, George gives us a supplemental and alternative genealogy of Viennese modernism. * Andreas Huyssen, Columbia University * In this finely written and meticulously researched book, George expands our definition of Viennese modernism. Ranging across various art forms and media, she brings the high modernist narrative from earlier scholarship into dialogue with popular culture. We readers stand to profit from this enriched conversation, learning about an age no less biopolitical than our own. * Fatima Naqvi, Yale University * A thoughtful and intelligent overview of the role of the body in Viennese science and culture of the fin-de-siecle and modern periods. * Alexanderadamsart blog * Alys George, a scholar of Austrian literature, art, film, and culture, has written a sweeping study of the body in Vienna in the era of 1890-1930 that saw an unusual collection of creative minds in arts, literature, and sciences. The book casts a wide net over several fields of cultural production and by doing so challenges the understanding of Vienna as the site of 'homo psychologicus [psychological man] as the emblematic manifestation of Viennese culture,' launched by Carl Schorske in his classic studies from the 1960s and 1970. * Austrian History Yearbook *