The Modernist Attributes of C.L.R. James’s Minty Alley Essay -- Gender

The Modernist Attributes of C.L.R. Jamess Minty Alley Born in Trinidad and afterward expatriating himself first to capital of the United Kingdom and then the United States, C.L.R. James was a winder figure of the West Indian literary scene during the 1930s. Today he is primarily associated with his nonliterary writings in sociology and politics, and his fiction seems to have dropped from deprecative attention. Part of this shortsightedness stems from the fact that little of his fiction is readily procurable to a reading public in this country. Although a selection of his shorter induce is now available in The C.L.R. James Reader (1992), the only extant edition of James refreshed Minty Alley (1936) is published by the small London press New Beacon Books. Because of its relative inaccessibility, this significant piece of Caribbean literary productions remains absent from the immediate consciousness of American readers and critics. In part, this word is intended as a platfo rm to stage a recovery of this book, opening up a critical dialogue about the novel in order to develop a more comprehensive place about the genealogy of Caribbean fiction. The literary history of this region is too frequently thought to swallow in the 1960s with the(post)modernist work of such celebrate authors as Wilson Harrisand George Lamming, and Minty Alley provides us with a formidable example of narratival experiment antedating these more critically acclaimed works. But there is more at postal service than extending canon lists and the historical boundaries of post-realist Caribbean fiction. James formal innovations in Minty Alleyalso allow us to begin to rethink that retrospective categorization of literature which is now loosely termed modernism. In the process of recovery, then, I would lik... ...e, Joseph Allen. Libidinal Currents Sexuality and theShaping of Modernism. sugar U of Chicago P, 1998. Henry, Paget and Paul Buhle, eds. C.L.R. JamesCaribbean. Durham, NC Duke UP, 1992.James, C.L.R. Minty Alley (1936). London New Beacon,1971.Lamming, George. The Pleasure of Exile (1954). AnnArbor U of Michigan P, 1992.Levenson, Michael H. A Genealogy of Modernism A Study ofEnglish literary Doctrine 1908-1922. New York Cambridge UP,1984.Lukacs, George. The Meaning of Contemporary Realism.London Merlin, 1963.Nielsen, Aldon Lynn. C.L.R. James A CriticalIntroduction. capital of Mississippi U of Mississippi P, 1997.Ortega y Gasset, Jose. The Dehumanization of Art and OtherWritings onArt and Culture (1925). tend City, NY Doubleday &Company, 1956.Williams, Raymond. The Politics of Modernism Against theNew Conformists. New York Verso, 1989.