Constellation of Genius: A Review

Kevin Jackson has written a generous and amazingly insightful account of a year that defined a movement, and sets the benchmark for how good academic writing could be

When reviewing books I generally read up on other sites for stylistic guidance. I'm fine with my own pretensions of critique; I occasionally struggle to convey them in approachable English (that might be self-evident of course). I knew after I'd read Constellation of Genius that I wanted to talk about the success Kevin Jackson had achieved in weaving a discourse in modernism through the tapestry of characters, plots, subplots, cultural events and such that the year 1922 presented to the world.

Imagine my displeasure upon discovering Will Self had more or less done the same. What room was there now? A man whose work is itself an ode to the movement that dominated the early 20th century, I guess it now falls to me to pick up the leaves that Self has shaken from the tree. You can find the review here, incidentally.

Razor sharp elucidations aside, Self's essay does (obviously) prove a great jumping-off point for anyone wishing to know more about an era that gave us Ezra Pound, TS Eliot, James Joyce (the unholy trinity of Jackson's diary) and Virginia Woolf as well as those living through it - Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker plus dozens more. Comprehension and accessibility are not, per se, terms you typically associate with the movement, particularly if your entry point was Ulysses, discussed by numerous writers and reviewers throughout CoG.

Yet the humility constantly evident in Jackson's writing demolishes preconceptions; his generous, anonymous style has obviously been well honed in the day job (as a journalist for the BBC amongst others for the last twenty years) and although the depth and subtlety of what conjecture there is point to a writer who has thoroughly researched his subject, at no point does he intrude superfluously.

The great unrecognised ego of the academic writer is something Gore Vidal mercilessly ribbed in his heyday (app. the last half century), and if only more subjects were plucked from the dust jacket preserve with such a light touch I feel subjects as inherently interesting as this one would bear out a great deal more inspection. Jackson does have form here - his playful engagement with heavyweights like Dante and Ruskin bear the watermarks of substance through style of a mass media lexicon rather than university texts, and it all points to a lovely ambitious scope. It's also got a really nice cover - classic monochrome colour scheme and all Jazz Age fonts. Random House deserve much credit for doing their bit.

Jackson also recognises the slightly voyeuristic element present in all works documenting the perambulations of really, really famous people and ladles great dollops of backstory on many of his major players, even providing a potted history to those characters in the outer reaches of his 'constellation'. Harry Kessler, the son of an a prosperous Hamburg banker who became a patron to such luminaries of modern art as Edvard Munch was my favourite, but Jackson seasons the pot with delicious tidbits on Raymond Radiguet, Constantin Brâncuși, the former disciples of Dada, and even Charlie Chaplin.

Of equal merit is Jackson's quiet characterisation of the major players - Woolf in particular is done no disservice by the author but mere diligence and preparation of her life over the 12 months dissected lifts her off the page and presents her as a person inhabiting a sphere of intellectualism inhabited by very few, yet her temperament for her position is portrayed as almost snobbish, particularly after she reads Ulysses - or attempts to.

Constellation is a superb example of the right blend of wisdom, research, objective fact and an eye for a story coming together to chronicle a group of incredible individuals in a very human manner. 'Insanely readable' is how Self puts it in his review. He's the writer - who am I to disagree?