All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity

 

All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity
All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity
by Authors: Marshall Berman
Released: June, 1988
ISBN: 0140109625
Paperback

Sales Rank: 35,821
List price: $16.00
Our price: $11.20 (You save: $4.8)
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All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity > Customer Review #1:
fluid transparency test

. The artistic project of modernity was often expressed as being singular, insular, self-referential, utopian, and dogmatic. While none of these categories are accurate representations of the project of modernity in the late 19th or early 20th century, Bermans contestations and arguments for Modernity nevertheless paint it in overly fluid, dynamic, and defensive turns. In order to deflect the criticism of modernism as a project with a singular, definitive trajectory, Berman redefines the stories and actions of modernism to be chaotic, Protean and indestructible. Bermans argument succeeds in poetically expressing the energies that are at work in modernization, which is by its nature always an unfinished process. But in using literature as a fulcrum from which to discuss the plurality and multivocality of the Modernist Project, he continually constructs characteristically dark and ambient visions of modernisms bleak toil with reality while at the same time attempting to regain and reconcile a beauty and energy within Modernity that wills it towards democratic processes and relationships. This is an often contradictory enterprise.

All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity > Customer Review #2:
Who says Modernity is dead?

When one picks up this book, as we do with all books, we ask: What is this book REALLY about? Among the choice subjects he includes Goethes Faust, the vibrance of city streets, Marx and Engels in the examination of The Communist Manifesto (treated as a literary piece), the enigmatic Crystal Palace, Baudelaire, the Czars, Nietzsche and the whole hearted destruction of the inner cities such as the Bronx. It is a sort of eclectic mix that both confuses and informs. There are however a few glitches.... Berman, devotes much space to Czarist Russia as a case of modernism with underdevelopment and somehow reduces the Soviet Regime as despotic, inquisitorial and other such reductions to the point of contradicting his thesis of creative modernity. Maybe there is some comparison that can be drawn within the framework of this analysis to put Robert Moses and Stalin as figures of great destruction as opposed to builders of grand empires. In the end, all that is solid melts into air, and we are left more cultured. For those of us who have been dropped into (much to our confusion) into a deliberately cryptic and confusing postmodern world, this piece a vibrant introduction to modernity and should be used as a prime mover for much discussion of the troubles and wonders of modernity.

Miguel Llora



All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity > Customer Review #3:
Well Written

Berman weaves an intricate tale of Marxism and modernism. His text leaves out what I feel are important views and experiences, specifically gender, but despite this his work is thought provoking and valuable in understanding Marxs project.

 
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