This project began at Yale and was funded by a Senior Faculty Fellowship, a Morse Fellowship in the Humanities, and a series of A. Whitney Griswold Faculty Research Grants from the Whitney Humanities Center. A semester teaching in London was felicitous in many ways, not the least of which was a marvelous Bloomsbury book collection. I am grateful to my colleagues at Yale—Michael Thurston, Elizabeth Dillon, Michael Trask, Nigel Alderman, Pericles Lewis, Tanya Agathocleous, Amy Hungerford, Sandy Welsh, Ruth Yeazell—and my students there. Rebecca Walkowitz and Doug Mao’s invitation to join their band of bad modernists was an early impetus for this project, and I thank them for their editorial input, which helped put me on the road to pleasure. John Paul Riquelme generously invited me to present parts of the book in their early stages, and those events (at the Modernist Studies Association, Modern Language Association, and Harvard Humanities Center Modernism Seminar) were also instrumental in defining the project. I am grateful to Lawrence Rainey for bringing my Anita Loos article to Modernism/modernity; Bryan Radley for his editorial skills; Gregory Robison for our exchange about cinema history; and Cari Beauchamp for sharing her knowledge of Anita Loos with me. My New School colleagues Dominic Pettman, Laura Liu, Carolyn Berman, Paul Kottman, Alex Chasin, Inessa Medhibovskaya, Oz Frankel, Michael Schober, Elaine Savory, and Jim Miller got me through the home stretch. Others read and/or inspired me along the way: Nico Israel, Sarah Cole, Clover Bachman, Yvonne McDevitt, Miranda Sherwin, Karen Gehres, Ron Rosenbaum, Chris Wiggins, Aya Horikoshi, Randi Saloman, Nancy Miller, David Damrosch, D. A. Miller, and Carol Siegel. Teri Reynolds is the kind of friend who will wake up in the middle of a jet-lagged nap to edit your paper on Gertrude Stein; she stepped in at other crucial moments. I am especially indebted to my anonymous readers at Columbia University Press, and to Philip Leventhal for his patience and intelligence in helping me shape the book. The best part of this process was writing for the members of my Modernist Ladies Auxiliary writing group, Celia Marshik and Allison Pease, whose brilliant readings are second only to their bibulous lunch camaraderie. Victoria Rosner is my constant reader and advisor; I thank her for her friendship, wit, and genius for figuring out what needs to be said. My parents’ unflagging enthusiasm and interest make academic work seem worthwhile. Finally, this book is for Chris, whose love, support, and IT triage have helped me rediscover the delights of creation and the allure of the left brain; and for Max, our in-house hedonist, whose untroubled relationship to pleasure constantly reminds me, in the words of Dr. Seuss, that:
These things are fun
And fun is good.