Paperback review: Constellations of Genius: – 1922: Modernism and All That Jazz, By Kevin Jackson

Eavesdropping on an extraordinary year

Jackson pitches his tent between Eliot’s The Wasteland and Joyce’s Ulysses which were both published in this year, but this historical diary isn’t defined by literary achievement alone, despite the many and fascinating activities of Hemingway, Woolf, and Lawrence on almost every other page.

This paperback edition has added “jazz” to its subtitle, perhaps in the hope of cashing in on some Gatsby referencing to emphasise its popular culture inclusions, but although it’s in 1922 that Hitchcock directed his first feature and Walt Disney released his first cartoon, it’s the political clouds looming in Germany and Russia, with violent turmoil in Ireland, that really stand out in this extraordinary year.