On Company Time alters forever an old story about literary modernism by showing that writers did not just take a paycheck from the big magazines. This rich and substantial consideration of the complex relations between major writers and mass-market publications shows how several modern styles were developed in collaboration by the magazines and the writers they employed. Donal Harris's account ... Read moreof this collaboration expands our notions of what American writing is and changes the history of how it came to be.
Michael North, author of Novelty: A History of the New Writing in response to both classic and recent scholarship that represents modernism as an insulated coterie endeavor, Harris convincingly and compellingly establishes that modernist authors were engaged with and appeared in mainstream magazines from the start. On Company Time enriches and expands our understanding of the dialectic between modernism and mass culture, revealing that what has frequently been seen as an antagonistic relationship was really a close collaboration that determined both the career arcs of major modernist authors and the design of mainstream magazines. Elegantly written and exhaustively researched, On Company Time is an eminent example of the new modernist studies.
Loren Glass, author of Counterculture Colophon: Grove Press, the Evergreen Review, and the Incorporation of the Avant-Garde Harris's fascinating On Company Time is the book we have been waiting for to help us think through the significance of the commercially popular 'big magazines' that dominated the print-cultural landscape of modernity. Guiding us through magazine offices and showing us print technologies, publishing strategies, and periodical styles along the way, Harris deftly traces the mutual influence of modernism and the commercial magazines. Compelling, imaginative, and entertaining, this book provides an exhilarating new view of modern print culture.
Barbara Green, University of Notre Dame, coeditor of the Journal of Modern Periodical Studies Drawing our attention to a set of major institutions that have until now remained hidden in plain sight of recent cultural history, On Company Time makes an extraordinarily rich and persuasive contribution to the study of American literary modernism. It is also a work of relentlessly lively intelligence and writerly charm.
Mark McGurl, author of The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing Highly recommended. Choice Show Less