High and low in Modernist criticism -- Old and new in Modernist art -- Poetry and rhetoric in the Modernist montage -- Hard and soft : Joyce and others -- Durable fluff : the importance of not being earnest -- Iridescent mediocrity : Dornford Yates and others -- Formulaic creativity : Simenon's Maigret novels -- Model artists in Paris : Hastings, Hammett, and Kiki -- The aesthete in the brothel : Proust and others.