This article explores the idea of the ocean liner in the Canadian literary imagination, asking how it has transformed from a functional machine into a powerful symbol , how it has become a focus for dreams , terrors. The research encompasses English Canadian and French Canadian novels and poems which represent the passenger experience on a liner. Beginning with narratives of emigration, the discussion moves on to travel writing in the context of empire and then to stories of shipwreck and of war, fictions of the voyage as rite of passage, evocations of the glamour of interwar liner travel, and finally to writing about holidays.

This chapter focuses on the institutions of middlebrow culture in America, exploring their role in disseminating and also critiquing modernism. The smart magazines, reprint series, and book clubs of the interwar and midcentury period worked to create new audiences for modernist writing and to make difficult texts more accessible. Yet the discourse of the middlebrow – with its emphasis on affective response and its skepticism about experiment – formed a counterpractice to modernist and New Critical formalism. Middlebrow institutions were oriented toward self-improvement and the education of taste, and debates raged about whether their effect was to democratize culture or to standardize it. The chapter considers the tastemakers of the era, ranging from Vanity Fair and The Crisis to the members of the Algonquin Round Table. It also discusses the novelists – such as Anita Loos and Sinclair Lewis - who satirized the culture of upward mobility that emerged in the US following World War I.

Reviewed by: Jet Age Hotels and the International Style 1950–1965 by Bruce Peter Faye Hammill Jet Age Hotels and the International Style 1950–1965. Bruce Peter. Ramsey: Lily Publications, 2020. Pp. 288. £30 (paper). Jet propulsion technology was developed during World War II. Cultural commentators and entrepreneurs were quick to foresee its impact on civilian society: the term "jet liner" presages the replacement of ocean liners with passenger planes, and the expected result was a dramatic expansion of overseas leisure travel. By 1948, the phrase "jet age" was in circulation. This was indeed a new age. Jet aviation had far-reaching effects, not only on the tourism and leisure industries but also on cityscapes, economies, social practices, and visual culture, as well as on international relations and diplomacy. Although regular civilian jet services were not available until 1952, the new hotels needed to accommodate air passengers started to be constructed in the later 1940s. The arrival of jet travel coincided with the international spread of architectural modernism, and the hotels of this era were mostly designed in variations of the International Style. This term was coined in the early 1930s by Alfred H. Barr, director of New York's Museum of Modern Art. Characterized by rectilinear forms, repetitive modular elements, open interior spaces, flat surfaces without ornamentation, and innovative uses of industrial materials, the International Style was promoted by MoMA as part of its wider advocacy of the Modern Movement in architecture, art, and design. As Bruce Peter observes in Jet Age Hotels and the International Style 1950–1965, "rather than the revolutionary leftist image that had characterised so much of the mainstream of modernist discourse in Europe and Russia, the version presented by MoMA for American consumption was mostly focused on modernism as a futuristic and supposedly 'functional' style", that was "essentially value-free" (10). The International Style could, in fact, be appropriated for a wide range of ideological purposes, and the designers and financial backers of major hotels therefore became caught up in crucial political as well as aesthetic debates. In recounting the history of these building projects, Peter also tells a much larger story about, as he puts it, "the development and experience of the post-war world" (8). It is an extremely compelling account: indeed, reading it was a new experience for me, since I have never before been sorry to reach the end of a book written by an academic. Two American companies, Intercontinental (owned by Pan American Airlines) and Hilton, were the main players in postwar hotel development around the world. They were influenced by [End Page 396] the older Statler chain, which had pioneered the development of efficient, standardized hospitality practices in early twentieth-century America. Statler was eventually bought by Conrad Hilton in 1954. Most of the chapters in Jet Age Hotels center on properties built or operated by Intercontinental or by Hilton and its subsidiary, Hilton International (now an independent company). One chapter, however, is devoted to individual hotels by architects with high cultural profiles. Among these are a few buildings that have been canonized as mid-twentieth-century masterpieces, such as the Scandinavian Airline System's Royal Hotel Copenhagen, opened in 1961. Arne Jacobsen was responsible not only for the architecture but for all aspects of the interior, and created his famous Egg chairs for the lobby. Featured on the front and back covers of the book, the SAS Royal Hotel is celebrated by Peter as the epitome of a distinctively Scandinavian modernism, identified by elegant detailing and understated luxury. Internally, the hotel has been extensively renovated several times, and the original unified aesthetic is now lost—except in bedroom 606. It has been retained as a kind of museum, with Jacobsen's décor carefully preserved. As Peter observes, "constant and unsentimental change reflects the character of the international hospitality industry—a sector aiming to please demanding and diverse clienteles who simultaneously expect to experience luxury, modernity, tradition, novelty, familiarity, internationalism, locality and many other not necessarily compatible traits" (6). The many photographs and promotional images included in Jet Age Hotels capture, for the most part, buildings and interiors that have now been demolished or drastically altered. However...

Jane Koustas takes a new and nuanced approach in examining the work of Robert Lepage, by exploring the relationship between the playwright and the city of Toronto. Described as an ardent Quebecer, Lepage has been welcomed and celebrated in ‘English’ Toronto (and the Rest of Canada) nonetheless; Koustas’s central thesis is that Toronto is uniquely positioned to be accepting of Lepage’s Québécois status, his use of francophone actors, bilingual and multilingual dialogue, and pushing the boundaries in redefining and blurring the meaning/s of the national ethos of multiculturalism – Lepage and the city inform and shape each other. Koustas locates Lepage’s work within the cultural exchange of French and English Canada – effectively a bridge between the proverbial two solitudes – as he and his multidisciplinary production company, Ex Machina, are based in Quebec City, while continuing to premiere original work in Toronto. At the time of this writing, his new and original collaboration with Guillaume Côté, Frame by Frame, a piece based on the life of Scottish-Canadian filmmaker and animator Norman McLaren, is to premiere at the National Ballet of Canada. Lepage arrived in Toronto in the 1980s via the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, and had already begun to earn a reputation for reflexive avant-garde theatre, in his use of multidisciplinary practices to expand and disrupt established perceptions of the stage aesthetic. The appeal of his work led to an ever-growing popularity and international demand, and he is now a highly praised world leader of the stage. Koustas follows the progression of his work chronologically, through detailed synopses and tellings of each play, and examining both popular and critical receptions of the work at the time it premiered, presenting as full a picture as possible for the reader. Koustas primarily relies on the critiques of others in her discussions of Lepage’s themes of language, culture, and geopolitics, and in doing so, she remains relatively impartial and balanced, gathering all the threads of Lepage’s complex work and responses to it, thereby allowing the reader to come to their own conclusion. In the introduction, Koustas writes that it is her hope that the scholarship presented in this book will be of particular value to those who have had limited access to or experience with Lepage’s work, due to the ‘limited availability of [Lepage’s] published texts, one of [his] trademarks’ (p. 15). As such, Koustas’s meticulous attention to the detail of each original play to date is pragmatic in providing academics, students, and casual readers with a comprehensive grasp of Lepage’s work. Moreover, in further situating and contextualising these plays and their productions, Koustas also instils in the reader a deeper understanding of Lepage, his work, and his relationship – an ongoing ‘conversation’ (p. 4) – with the Toronto stage, and by extension, the city of Toronto. Cristina Pietropaolo, Ryerson University

Reviewed by: Clever Girls and the Literature of Women’s Upward Mobility by Mary Eagleton Faye Hammill CLEVER GIRLS AND THE LITERATURE OF WOMEN’S UPWARD MOBILITY, by Mary Eagleton. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 208 pp. $99.99 cloth; $99.99 paper; $79.99 ebook. In Clever Girls and the Literature of Women’s Upward Mobility, Mary Eagleton explores the figure of “the scholarship girl, the clever girl, the professional woman or, in some guises, the ‘superwoman’ who ‘has it all’” in a wide range of texts published between the 1960s and the present (p. 2). This figure is referred to “in her millennium and post-millenium incarnations [as] the ‘future girl’ or the ‘top girl’” (p. 2). She has frequently been the protagonist of novels, memoirs, and plays by British women, and the authors Eagleton examines include Hilary Mantel, Margaret Drabble, A. S. Byatt, Janice Galloway, Caryl Churchill, Zadie Smith, and Linda [End Page 467] Grant. Eagleton uses their novels primarily as social documents, in order to explore changing attitudes towards women’s education and careers in Britain since World War II. Eagleton tells a story about class mobility, but it is a story that now belongs largely to the past. In the postwar decades, scholarships and grants enabled British children from less privileged backgrounds to access higher education and improve their prospects. But from the 1980s onwards, state support began to be withdrawn, as a “neoliberal ethic of self-making” took hold (p. 3). As a result, Eagleton points out, “the dominance of people from privileged backgrounds has become more pronounced over the last thirty years rather than less” (p. 3), and it is harder for a child born in poverty to achieve a higher socioeconomic status in the twenty-first century than at any other point since the 1950s (p. 167). On the other hand, many of the barriers to women’s achievement have been removed. In 1961, nine girls out of ten left school before the age of eighteen. Today, by contrast, women students outnumber men in British universities, although black and ethnic minority groups are still seriously underrepresented in the student body (p. 3). While the word “intersectionality” does not appear until a late point, Eagleton’s book is, nevertheless, all about intersections among gender, class, and (to a lesser extent) race. A fascinating aspect of Clever Girls and the Literature of Women’s Upward Mobility is its sustained discussion of the discourse of mobility—the ideologically charged vocabulary of chance and choice, of merit and opportunity. As Eagleton observes, “the literary writer enjoys turning a critical eye on this language” (p. 4). Through her close readings, Eagleton examines the complexity of terms such as “meritocracy.” Apparently describing a society in which anyone with talent and dedication can succeed, “meritocracy” actually curtails equality; it endorses a hierarchical system and deems those who do not rise in the hierarchy to be undeserving. The clever girls who feature in Eagleton’s chosen texts have to buy into the discourse of merit in order to succeed, and since upward mobility often involves leaving friends and family behind, this generates conflict and guilt. Eagleton includes a telling quotation from Patricia Beer’s 1983 poem, “The Lost Woman,” in which a mother says to a daughter: “I showed you the way to rise above me / And you took it” (p. 39). Eagleton’s impassioned introduction, together with the final coda, are the most powerful parts of her book. They offer an eloquent account of the damaging effects of neoliberal individualism. This argument is illustrated, in the six main chapters, with examples from the literature. Some of the chapters are more compelling than others. The first three, focusing mainly on Mantel, Byatt, and Drabble, rely heavily on biographical and character-based interpretation and do not really offer the kind of oppositional readings that the introduction promises. The remaining three chapters, exploring [End Page 468] the work of a later generation of women writers, are more thoroughly analytical and will be especially stimulating for scholars interested in the future of feminism in a neoliberal world. The book as a whole is based on an impressive body of research (cited, however, in...

ABSTRACT This article explores the circulation of periodical material between metropolitan and regional locations in early twentieth-century North America. It asks how the globalized consumer technology of the household magazine was being taken up outside of cosmopolitan centers through the framework of local, regional, or national concerns. For example, mainstream Canadian monthlies such as The Western Home Monthly and Maclean's frequently engaged with, or re-used, content and formats taken from New York publications. To understand these transnational publishing dynamics, we argue, it is crucial to attend to the material practices of magazines. The article analyzes several such practices, including both editorial and sales strategies. We look at the reprinting or reframing of complete features and of excerpts from other periodicals. We examine the simultaneous serialization of novels in American and Canadian publications, using a case study of Martha Ostenso's Wild Geese. And we offer the first critical discussion of “bundling,” whereby US and Canadian titles were packaged together as a single subscription. It argues that the affordances of seriality, particularly timeliness and increased circulation through decreasing prices, allowed editors to redeploy metropolitan print materials for a regional readership eager to imagine themselves as participants in the new project of modernity.