Built around concepts of liberal humanism and the tensions of modernism, Willa Cather and E. M. Forster: Transatlantic Transcendence traces the parallels between these novelists, one American, one English. Blackstock (Utah State Univ.) avoids the pitfalls of finding merely random similarities or of torturing texts in unearthing arbitrary influences. Instead he locates "the boundary between liberal humanism and modernism" (p. 7) as it developed throughout the 20th century. Complex, philosophically astute, and penetrating, the book recognizes many threads of the modernist perspective: Romanticism, transcendentalism, Platonism, religious epiphany, religious doubt, sexual awakening, gender awareness, and so much more. In explicating key works by Forster and Cather, Blackstock produces the kind of fresh, enlightening, and necessary analysis of the literature that makes one want to revisit the texts, or to read them for the first time. Blackstock might have referenced D. H. Lawrence in the title, so superbly does he discuss that writer in the context of modernism, mysticism, and liberal humanism. Then again, every topic in this study reflects the interpretive and scholarly skill of its author. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.

Choice Reviews