Book contents
- Decadence
- Decadence
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction Decadent Histories
- Chapter 1 Nineteenth-Century Decadence and Neoclassical Aesthetics
- Chapter 2 British Decadence and Renaissance Italy
- Chapter 3 ‘Rather a Delicate Subject’
- Chapter 4 Fighting Like Cats and Dogs
- Chapter 5 Varieties of Decadent Religion
- Chapter 6 The New Woman and Decadent Gender Politics
- Chapter 7 Decadence, Darwinism, Science and Technological Modernity
- Chapter 8 Decadence and Politics
- Chapter 9 Seeds of Discord
- Chapter 10 Decadent Poetics after Swinburne
- Chapter 11 Theatre and Decadence
- Chapter 12 ‘Restless Mystical Ardours’
- Chapter 13 Decadence in Painting
- Chapter 14 Decadent Poetry and Translation
- Chapter 15 Spanish American Literature and the Transatlantic Dimensions of Decadence
- Chapter 16 Decadent America 1890–1930
- Chapter 17 Russian and Czech Decadence
- Chapter 18 A Politics of Modernism in the Poetics of Decadence
- Chapter 19 Camp Modernism and Decadence
- Chapter 20 Making Decadence New
- Chapter 21 Writing Decadent Lives and Letters
- Chapter 22 Decadence in the Time of AIDS
- Index
Chapter 20 - Making Decadence New
Carl Van Vechten’s Cinematic Fiction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2020
- Decadence
- Decadence
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction Decadent Histories
- Chapter 1 Nineteenth-Century Decadence and Neoclassical Aesthetics
- Chapter 2 British Decadence and Renaissance Italy
- Chapter 3 ‘Rather a Delicate Subject’
- Chapter 4 Fighting Like Cats and Dogs
- Chapter 5 Varieties of Decadent Religion
- Chapter 6 The New Woman and Decadent Gender Politics
- Chapter 7 Decadence, Darwinism, Science and Technological Modernity
- Chapter 8 Decadence and Politics
- Chapter 9 Seeds of Discord
- Chapter 10 Decadent Poetics after Swinburne
- Chapter 11 Theatre and Decadence
- Chapter 12 ‘Restless Mystical Ardours’
- Chapter 13 Decadence in Painting
- Chapter 14 Decadent Poetry and Translation
- Chapter 15 Spanish American Literature and the Transatlantic Dimensions of Decadence
- Chapter 16 Decadent America 1890–1930
- Chapter 17 Russian and Czech Decadence
- Chapter 18 A Politics of Modernism in the Poetics of Decadence
- Chapter 19 Camp Modernism and Decadence
- Chapter 20 Making Decadence New
- Chapter 21 Writing Decadent Lives and Letters
- Chapter 22 Decadence in the Time of AIDS
- Index
Summary
This chapter focuses on the relationship between Decadence and cinema through a study of the novels of Carl Van Vechten. As neo-Decadence emerged in America in the 1920s writers responded to a range of new technologies largely unknown to earlier writers such as Wilde. Van Vechten embraced the new media of cinema, writing novels about and treatments for Hollywood and the cinema industry. He saw Hollywood through the eyes of a Decadent and Decadence through the lens of a movie camera. From Van Vechten’s second novel, The Blind Bow-Boy (1923), through Spider Boy: A Scenario for a Moving Picture (1928), to his final novel Parties: Scenes from Contemporary New York Life (1930) his Decadent style depicted the excesses of Hollywood while being formally shaped by the visual and narrative modes of cinema.
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- Information
- DecadenceA Literary History, pp. 361 - 376Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020