Aging Moderns

Aging Moderns challenges both the modernist cult of youth and a pervasive ageism in the culture. Arriving at late modernism via the later life of modernists, Herring rewrites literary history while taking his readers on a fascinating journey through archives and community centers. A remarkable demonstration of criticism as care. -- Heather K. Love, University of Pennsylvania Scott Herring combines new archival research, interviews, and innovative literary analysis in a book that transforms the way we think about aging, modernism, and artistic production. Eloquent, witty, and lucid, Aging Moderns is also a great read. -- Rachel Adams, author of <i>Raising Henry: A Memoir of Motherhood, Disability, and Discovery</i> With groundbreaking research and fierce dedication, Scott Herring gives us a Modernism never seen before: flourishing decades after its supposed high point, featuring authors in late life unfazed by bodily afflictions. Still intensely experimental, this is a new and different avant garde, all the more stunning for being unexpected. -- Wai Chee Dimock, author of <i>Weak Planet: Literature and Assisted Survival</i> With Aging Moderns, Scott Herring recasts the credo of modernist studies and urges us instead to make it old. This magnificent book makes a compelling and urgent case for how a focus on old age and aging challenges entrenched understandings of the period and its aesthetics. Grounded in dazzling archival research, Aging Moderns is a profoundly ethical book that redefines collaboration, creativity, and ultimately, the very conception of modernism. -- Sari Edelstein, author of <i>Adulthood and Other Fictions: American Literature and the Unmaking of Age</i>