University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: January 24, 2008

By KEVIN FRYLING
Reporter Staff Writer

It’s the groundbreaking writers who sprang from the cultural and political turmoil in America following World Wars I and II—from cultural giants such as T.S. Eliot and Jack Kerouac to a long list of less-famous authors, poets and radicals—who ignite the interest of UB faculty member William Solomon.

After five years at Gettysburg College, a small liberal arts college, William Solomon says he was ready for the opportunities available at a large, public research institution like UB. He joined the English department faculty last fall as an associate professor.
PHOTO: NANCY J. PARISI

Solomon joined the Department of English this fall as an associate professor after five years as an associate professor at Gettysburg College, a private liberal arts college in rural southern Pennsylvania. Before that, he spent nearly 10 years as an assistant professor of English and American studies at Stanford University.

“I enjoyed Gettysburg a lot,” says Solomon, “but I think after five years you have to make a decision whether you’re going to keep your career focused on the issues and activities that a liberal arts college privileges or whether you want to return to the profession at large. The opportunity to get back into a university environment—with a large student body, graduate students, numerous colleagues, people coming in to present papers all the time—was very exciting to me after five years at a small college.”

Solomon, who also prefers the motivation to “publish or perish” at large research universities such as UB, says his latest book project, “Slapstick Modernism: Experimental Writing and Silent Comedy, 1909-1969,” focuses on the influence of silent-film comedy on individuals as diverse as the modernist poets of the 1920s to the Beat Generation of the 1950s and 1960s.

“I wanted to focus on silent comedy because it’s a body of work that has merit in its own right,” Solomon explains, pointing out that critics argue that filmmakers such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton explore modernist themes in their works. “I also thought it followed logically from my earlier book project,” he adds, “as well as my personal conviction that if you’re going to study 20th-century literature, it’s beneficial to think about it not only in terms of its relation to other literary periods,” but also to other forms of culture.

A scholar whose interest in modernist literature frequently intermingles with a fascination with cultural studies and vintage popular culture, including not only silent film, but also vaudeville, burlesque and underground comics, Solomon’s first book, “Literature, Amusement and Technology in the Great Depression,” published by Cambridge University Press in 2002, examines the influence of popular entertainment on several important modernist writers—John Dos Passos, Henry Miller and Nathaniel West—as well as Edward Dahlberg, a writer who Solomon argues deserves greater recognition for his works.

“The whole world of popular culture is just so important to talk about when you’re talking about literature after World War II,” Solomon explains, noting that cultural references increase significantly in literature after the Beats, who were greatly intrigued by music, especially jazz, as well as avant-garde and underground filmmaking. “I’m just fascinated by ways we can think about literature in connection to all these other phenomena,” he says.

The recipient of a bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington in 1986 and a doctorate in English from Stony Brook University in 1993, Solomon this semester is teaching a graduate seminar on cinematic postmodernism and an undergraduate course on literature from the 1950s-60s that features such major genres as science fiction and detective novels. Using examples from recent popular culture to illustrate certain theoretical principles—a clip from “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” to show the function of grotesque humor in literature or film, for example—is one of his favorite methods to interest students in some of the more difficult ideas presented in class, Solomon says.

“I’m interested in using popular cultural materials to get students engaged in texts that are resistant to immediate gratification,” he says. “I don’t want to just play to student tastes, but I also don’t want to alienate them from the field. Reading literary theory and philosophy can be excruciating sometimes, but there are great rewards as well. I often think of modernism and other difficult texts as sort of an acquired taste.”

The UB Department of English boasts a prestigious tradition in the field of cultural studies, Solomon adds, noting that Leslie Fiedler, one of the founders of the movement, was Samuel L. Clemens Professor of English at UB from 1973 until his death in 2003. He also points to a growing concentration of modernist scholars in the department, including not only himself, but also Michael Sayeau and Damian Keane, assistant professors who are experts in British and Irish modernism, respectively.

“A few more [faculty] and you will have an area in which graduate students will feel they’re being very well trained,” says Solomon. “The English department’s getting a lot of support. They’ve got a great commitment on the part of the dean to bolster numbers and hire new faculty. We’ve got about four new faculty searches going on right now.”

A native of the West Coast whose father, also an English professor, taught for many years at San Francisco State University, Solomon says coming to Buffalo has been a smooth transition, partly because of his experience with the cold-weather state as a doctoral student at Stony Brook. Solomon resides in the Elmwood Village neighborhood of Buffalo with his wife, Molly Hutton, an art historian and part-time curator with the UB Art Galleries, and their son, Eliot, 6, who recently enrolled in the Park School.

“Coming to Buffalo’s been a joy for me and my family,” Solomon says. “I enjoyed living in the country, but I grew up in an urban environment, so coming to Buffalo—a city with a history and great educational opportunities—has been remarkable. It’s just a pleasure to have restaurants and places you can take your kid again.”