Reading Between the Lines
April 2012 |
You’ll find it near the back of most bookstores: the section promising to cure your blues or, if you’re already of the sunny disposition, help you craft a gourmet meal. Self-help books claim to offer up solutions to even the most obscure problems. Few, however, turn to modernist authors to help steer their moral compass. But in recent years, some commentators have begun to do exactly that, arguing that we should approach modernist classics like Mrs. Dalloway and Ulysses as nothing less than “self-help manuals.” Beth Blum, a doctoral student in the English department, was so intrigued by these modern literary how-to guides, she began research for her eventual dissertation, “Proverbial Modernism: Literature & the Self-Help Hermeneutic, 1880-2012.”
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