Ezra Pound referred to 1922 as year one of a new era. It was the year
that began with the publication of James Joyce's Ulysses and ended
with the publication of TS Eliot's The Waste Land, two works that were
arguably 'the sun and moon' of modernist literature, some would say of
modernity itself.
In Constellation of Genius, Kevin Jackson puts the titanic
achievements of Joyce and Eliot in the context of the world in which
their works first appeared. As Jackson writes in his introduction, 'On
all sides, and in every field, there was a frenzy of innovation.' It is
in 1922 that Hitchcock directs his first feature; Kandinsky and Klee
join the Bauhaus; the first AM radio station is launched; Walt Disney
releases his first animated shorts; and Louis Armstrong takes a train
from New Orleans to Chicago, heralding the age of modern jazz. On other
fronts, Einstein wins the Nobel Prize in Physics, insulin is introduced
to treat diabetes and the tomb of Tutankhamun is discovered. As Jackson
writes, the sky was 'blazing with a "constellation of genius" of a kind
that had never been known before, and has never since been rivaled'.
Constellation of Genius traces an unforgettable journey through the
diaries of the actors, anthropologists, artists, dancers, designers,
filmmakers, philosophers, playwrights, politicians and scientists whose
lives and works - over the course of 12 months - brought a seismic shift
in the way we think, splitting the cultural world in two. Was this a
matter of inevitability or of coincidence? That is for the listener of
this romp, this hugely entertaining chronicle, to decide.
