Introduction: Toward a Theory of Vernacular Modernism
1. "The Steady Reaching Out for New and Vivid Forms": H. L. Mencken and the American Revolution of the Word
2. "Never mind the comical stuff... They ain't no joke about this!": Ring Lardner, Anita Loos, and the Comic Orgins of Vernacular Modernism
3. "I didn't understand the words, but my voice was like dynamite": Anzia Yezierska, Mike Gold, and the Jewish-American Break with Realism
4. "Say It With Lead": Carroll John Daly, Dashiell Hammett, and Modernism's Underworld Vernacular
5. "The Necromancy of Language": Realist Uplift and Urban Vernacular in Rudolph Fisher and Claude McKay
Conclusion: Modernism's Familial Relations