ABSTRACT
The early twentieth-century American writers Gertrude Stein, Janet Flanner, and Dorothy Parker criticized the pretensions of high modernism as they made modernist literary ideas accessible to a culturally ambitious middlebrow audience. In books and magazines marketed particularly toward American cultural aspirants, Stein, Flanner, and Parker wrote popular criticism for middlebrow readers receptive to the democratization of modernist elitism and the glamorization of bohemian subcultures in Europe and America. These three writers often admired but at times questioned the form and content of high modernist discourses. While their writing functions as journalism about literature and art, its fusion of reportage and satire also marks it as a distinctive form of literary journalism. When performing for their implied readers, the three writers often evaluate modern art and literature as objects of intellectual fashion or what the author terms “modernist chic.” As critics influenced by journalistic objectivity, they aimed to steer their readers away from the allure of modernist chic by guiding them to perceive high cultural trends with a clarity of vision.
