{"product_id":"modernisms-whims-9780198950721","title":"Modernism's Whims","description":"Thomas Hardy asks of the ghost stalking him: 'Whither, O whither will your whim now draw me?' Immediately tripping up on its own laid-out comma, then pausing to howl theatrically, and hedging its bets with a stuttering, archaic 'whither' that sceptically hovers between 'where' and 'whether', this line has already begun to worry about where it is going or being 'whim-drawn.' On the other hand, it enjoys its worry, over-performs the conundrum. It is a whim addressing a whim. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBeci Carver's \u003cem\u003eModernism's Whims\u003c\/em\u003e is a book about whims; their tyrannies, arbitrariness, ultimate frivolity: how they may feel urgent for all their lightness, while still letting you play, letting you go, letting you off the hook. The book is at once a meditation on the whim as a phenomenon and an endeavour to track the specific (albeit necessarily intangible) literary whims of four modernist writers: Hardy, T. S. Eliot, William Empson, Elsie Elizabeth Phare. Moving counter to the otherwise professionalised spirit of modernism, these literary whims and their author sponsors are imagined to occupy a fugitive position within the broader movement, their progress dangerously silly. Carver situates modernism after whim's Golden Age in the mid-nineteenth century, at a literary-historical moment when authors were expected to know what they were about. Hardy's stalker ghost is on the run.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Beci Carver\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Oxford University Press (UK)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 03\/03\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 198\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.50d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780198950721","brand":"Oxford University Press (UK)","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46814543839369,"sku":"9780198950721","price":100.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0636\/9240\/6921\/files\/img_2ad89779-3b79-4966-82d5-b59af230efbc.jpg?v=1779826502","url":"https:\/\/sonsanddaughtersbooks.com\/products\/modernisms-whims-9780198950721","provider":"Sons and Daughters Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}