Charles Henri Ford: Between Modernism and Postmodernism

Alexander Howard is Lecturer in Writing Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia.

Alexander Howard’s pathbreaking study of the life and work of the sadly neglected Charles Henri Ford is much more than a simple recuperation of lost value. It dextrously navigates the categorial coral reefs growing up over the wrecks of modernism and postmodernism both, and establishes some eye-opening passages between and among them, where the reef-fish teem and school. Howard’s Ford is a multiform experimentalist, queer icon, regional surrealist, late-modernist mentor, and sociable internationalist, who tirelessly offered his ‘torsional’ character to those movements and causes that could use his energy. His longevity turns out to be a key to the broken clocks of modernity, with which he tinkered and played in an amazing series of works to which we now have the most reliable guide.

• Introduction: Water from a Bucket or, the the Hidden Modernist Histories of Charles Henri FordChapter 1: Blues and the Belated Renovation of ModernismChapter 2: Community, Circularity, Sociability, PostcardsChapter 3: Building Up and Breaking Down: Surrealism, New York, New CriticismChapter 4: Spare Parts, or, Caught Between Pop and a Historical Hard PlaceChapter 5: Multitudes, Mirrors, Crystals, Haiku, HomeConclusion: 'I Will Be What I Am' or, the Camp Modernist Legacy of Charles Henri FordBibliographyIndex