Major changes in media in the late 19th and early 20th centuries challenged traditional ideas about artistic representation and opened new avenues for authors working in the modernist period. Modernist authors reactions to this changing media landscape were often fraught with complications and shed light on the difficulty of negotiating, understanding, and depicting media. The author ofCompeting Stories: Modernist Authors, Newspapers, and the Movies argues that negative depictions of newspapers and movies, in modernist fiction, largely stem from worries about the competition for modern audiences and the desire for control over storytelling and reflections of the modern world. This book looks at a moment of major change in media, the dominance of mass media that began with the primarily visual media of newspapers and movies, and the ways that authors like Ernest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, James Joyce, Djuna Barnes, and others responded. The author contends that an examination of this moment may facilitate a better understanding of the relationship between media and authorship in our constantly shifting media landscape.

James Stamantis visiting assistant professor of English at Agnes Scott College.

I. Introduction: Authorial Anxiety in a Mass Media WorldII. Sherwood Anderson and the Truth that Lies BeneathIII. James Joyce and What is Hidden in the Dublin NewspaperIV. F. Scott Fitzgerald and Collaborative Movie WritingV. Ernest Hemingway and Unfulfilled Possibilities in the MoviesVI. Djuna Barnes, Sui Sin Far, Zora Neale Hurston, and Virginia Woolf: Concerns and OpportunitiesVII. Conclusion: The Future of Storytelling