Prepare for Saints - by Steven Watson (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>A cultural history of a famous collaboration, Virgil Thomson's and Gertrude Stein's making of the modernist opera, Four Saints in Three Acts. Watson explores the transatlantic, commercial, racial, gay, and artistic aspects of this story (NewYork/Paris, with Kansas City thrown in for fun; Thomson's score echoes the very American rhythms of his youth). Juicy, smart, and sophisticated writing and analysis.<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br>Perhaps the oddest and most influential collaboration in the history of American modernism was hatched in 1926, when a young Virgil Thomson knocked on Gertrude Stein's door in Paris. Eight years later, their opera <i>Four Saints in Three Acts</i> became a sensation--the longest-running opera in Broadway history to date and the most widely reported cultural event of its time. <i>Prepare for Saints</i> is Steven Watson's brilliant and absorbing account of how that revolutionary opera was born.<br /><br /><i>Four Saints</i> was proclaimed the birth of a new art form, a cellophane fantasy, "cubism on stage." It swept the public imagination, inspiring new art and new language, and defied every convention of what an opera should be. Everything about it was revolutionary: Stein's abstract text and Thomson's homespun music, the all-black cast, the costumes, and the combustible sets. Moving from the Wadsworth Atheneum to Broadway, <i>Four Saints</i> was the first popular modernist production. It brought modernism, with all its flamboyant outrage against convention, into the mainstream.<br /><br /> This is the story of how that opera came to be. It involves artists, writers, musicians, salon hostesses, and an underwear manufacturer with an appetite for publicity. The opera's success depended on a handful of Harvard-trained men who shaped America's first museums of modern art. The elaborately intertwined lives of the collaborators provide a window onto the pioneering generation that defined modern taste in America in the 1920s and 1930s.<br /> <br /> A brilliant cultural historian with a talent for bringing the past to life, Steven Watson spent ten years researching and writing this book, interviewing many of the collaborators and performers. Prepare for Saints is the first book to describe this pivotal moment in American cultural history. It does so with a spirit and irreverence worthy of its subject.<p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br>"A wide-ranging account . . . [and] presentation of a pivotal cultural moment."-- "Kirkus Reviews"<br><br>"As a cultural historian, Watson's work goes beyond the scope of libretto and music. Using "Four Saints" as his focus, he combines his commentary on the collaboration between Stein and Thomson with an exploration of the roles of the New York salon hosts and Harvard colleagues who, as friends of Thomson and advocates of modernism, helped make the opera a reality. By this means, he creates a rich portrait of the northeastern avant-garde scene, filled with quirky stories about speakeasies, drunken parties, homosexual rendezvous, and late-night trips to the Hot-Cha Bar and Grill in Harlem. . . . [Watson] tells a compelling story, one that combines the critical eye of hindsight with a sense of nostalgia for a work that, at least in the minds of its collaborators, stood for 'the best part of our lives.'"-- "American Music"<br><br>"It may seem a bit much to credit one operatic extravaganza for America's embrace of Modernism, but Watson makes a compelling argument without overstating his case. Even more importantly, he makes the complex production and the amazing cast of participants and supporters come alive in compulsively readable prose that will engage any reader."-- "Library Journal"<br><br>"Watson doesn't miss an angle on the story of how these forces came together and eventually took the show from its Hartford, Conn., premier to a smash Broadway run: Thompson's odyssey from small-town America to cosmopolitan composer; Stein's brilliant writing and imperious holding of court; the involvement of Philip Johnson and the fledgling Museum of Modern Art. Most refreshingly, Watson details the inseparability of African-American artists and culture from the opera, from the sexual stereotypes of the era and from modernism at large."-- "Publishers Weekly"<br><br>"Mr. Watson does an engaging job of conjuring up the overlapping worlds his subjects inhabited: the feud-ridden expatriate community in Paris where Thomson and Stein met in the 1920's and the trend-setting bohemia of 1930's New York, where Thomson would find the patrons and promoters who would get <i>Four Saints</i> produced."--Michiko Kakutani, "New York Times"<br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br><b>Steven Watson</b> is a cultural historian of the American avant-garde. He is the author of <i>Harlem Renaissance </i>(1995), <i>The Birth of the Beat Generation </i>(1995), and <i>Strange Bedfellows: The First American Avant-Garde </i>(1991).
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