University of Leeds
English 3012, Modern Literature
3 December 2001

"Everything is the proper stuff of fiction":
Modernist Writing and Its Material

by: Heiko Zimmermann

Modernist writing can be seen as attempt to expand the range of legitimate subject matter of fiction, poetry and drama. Only a small number of completely new subjects appear in modernist literature, but old subjects are dealt with in an entirely different manner. The most important point, therefore, is not what the new subject matter is, but how the modernist authors deal with them.

The problem in approaching the new material of modernist fiction is that one has to have a clear definition of modernist texts. Unfortunately, there is none. Perry Anderson calls Modernism “the emptiest of all cultural categories” (qtd. in Sheppard 1). Nevertheless, there seems to be a trend in modernist writing, which defines it. If one goes back to Virginia Woolf’s essay on “Modern Fiction” and looks closer at what she sees as subject for modernist writing, one will find that “for the moderns [...] the point of interest, lies very likely in the dark places of psychology” (qtd. in Richard Brown, ed., class handout, 1st session). One could ask now, if things outside psychology are of no interest and what the ‘proper stuff of fiction’ is. Woolf explains that “every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss” (ibid.).

The material modernist writing might dwell upon are the things which can be perceived and processed by the mind. An impressive example for this view is Virginia Woolf’s short story “The Mark on the Wall” in which she develops a story out of her imaginations about this tiny outer thing, which is actually a snail. The idea that everything becomes the ‘proper stuff of fiction’ is not very helpful in terms of a comparison to older literary periods. As it is now known that the mind of the author plays an important part, one only has to look closer at the author’s mind and analyse what is going on there to draw conclusions about the subject matter.

The 20th century showed a development of the world in a specific direction. There was an increasing number of ordered systems and a lower level of order (cf. Robert Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, ch. 85). An example can be the legal machinery of the state, the food production process, the military industry, mechanized warfare, etc. The First World War emphasized this development very much. As reaction to these changes, new feelings towards society evolved. If one looks at European modernist artists, one can distillate eight general directions of these feelings (cf. Sheppart 16-7).

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