Cruising Modernism: Class and Sexuality in American Literature and Social Thought

Modern society, Michael Trask argues in this incisive and original book, chose to couch class difference in terms of illicit sexuality. Trask demonstrates how sexual science's concept of erotic perversion mediated the writing of both literary figures and social theorists when it came to the innovative and unsettling social arrangements of the early twentieth century.

Trask focuses on the James brothers in a critique of pragmatism and anti-immigrant sentiment, shows the influence of behavior...