Monday, January 17, 2022

1922: The Birth of Now

Like all right thinking people, Ben and I listen to Radio 4 when we are in the car on a longish road trip (there only being so much Showaddywaddy a man can take).  As we were driving back from West Dean yesterday there was an episode of Open Book about Ulysses, by James Joyce, which was first published in full a hundred years ago.

Apparently there is a school of thought that suggests 1922 was an artistic annus mirabilis; the year that changed everything. After the Joyce show there was a plug for 1922: The Birth of Now: Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism, that have an impact today.

Crikey! Kicks off next Monday and runs five days a week for a fortnight at a quarter to two in the afternoon.

  1. The Shabolovka Tower and the Gherkin
  2. The Criterion, which published The Waste Land
  3. The True Story of Ah Q, by Lu Xun
  4. Bertolt Brecht's play Drums in the Night
  5. Louis Armstrong leaves New Orleans for Chicago
  6. The Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun, and Egyptomania
  7. Nosferatu and Modernist Horror
  8. Hōshō, the First Aircraft Carrier, and HMS Queen Elizabeth 11
  9. Pirandello's Henry IV and the Idea of Truth
  10. Einstein, relativity, time, and indigenous Australian modernism

One cannot help but admire the chutzpah; each episode being a mere quarter of an hour long.

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