Reading Mina Loy’s Autobiographies

Sandeep Parmar is Lecturer in English at the University of Liverpool, UK. She is editor of the Collected Poems of Hope Mirrlees (2011).

Parmar’s incisive examination of Loy’s seven unpublished autobiographies both reveals the revival of critical interest in Loy and contributes to the literature on her and to the larger project of redefining modernism. In her own time, Loy (1882-1966) was seen as a marginal, if energetic, modernist, famous for her prominent friends and lovers (e.g., Gertrude Stein, F.T. Marinetti, Mabel Dodge Luhan) and a small, controversial output of avant-garde poetry. Parmar (Univ. of Cambridge, UK) argues that Loy’s prose reveals her ideas about art and her own identity throughout her career. She saw herself not as a ‘new woman’ but rather as a ‘modern’ intent on reinventing herself and open to aesthetic experiences not bounded by gender or validated by museums and galleries. ‘For Loy,’ Parmar writes, ‘being modern is a transition; it is a process rather than a reflection of a historical point in time and it defies any notion of a stable authorial unity.’ Parmar’s focus on Loy’s prose invites future scholarship on the trajectory of Loy’s career, her critique of modernist goals and strategies, her grappling with her own history and heritage, and her artistry. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.

• Introduction: Mina Loy and the Disguise of Indifference 1. The Making of a ‘Modern Woman' 2. Modern Anxiety in ‘The Child and the Parent' and ‘Islands in the Air' 3. Racial and Religious Hybridity in ‘Goy Israels' 4. Insel and the Modern Genius Conclusion Appendix: Timeline of Mina Loy's Manuscripts Bibliography Index