Examining the importance of trust as an influence on a wide range of European and American modernists " including James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, H.D., Ford Madox Ford, Samuel Beckett, Ralph Ellison and Wallace Stevens " this collection shows that the concept underwent a violent set of transformations at the turn of the twentieth century. The contributors take up a diverse set of topics related to reception, the institutions of modernism, history of authorship, representation, authenticity, genre and politics.

Introduction: Modernism, Trust and Deception, John Attridge; Part 1 Reading and Trust; Chapter 1 Modern Proliferation, Modernist Trust, Leonard Diepeveen; Chapter 2 Trusting Personality: Modernist Memoir and its Audience, Rod Rosenquist; Chapter 3 Credulous Readers: H.D. and Psychic-Research Work, Suzanne Hobson; Part 2 After Sincerity; Chapter 4 Subterranean Folkway Blues: Ralph Ellison's Mythology of Deception, Paul Sheehan; Chapter 5 Counterfeit Masterpieces: Gide, Joyce and Intertextual Deception, Scarlett Baron; Chapter 6 False Bottoms: Wyndham Lewis's The Revenge for Love and the Incredible Real, Paul Edwards; Part 3 Truth and Narrative; Chapter 7 Ford Madox Ford, Impressionism and Trust in The Good Soldier, Max Saunders; Chapter 8 Malone Lies: Veracity and Morality in Malone Dies, Samuel Cross; Chapter 9 What I May or May Not Have Done in the War: Truth, Genre and the War Books Controversy, Jessica Weare; Part 4 Trust and Society; Chapter 10 The Trust and the Mistrust: Ezra Pound in Italy, Sean Pryor; Chapter 11 Wallace Stevens's 'Drastic Community': Credit, Suretyship and the Society of Distrust, Jason Puskar; Chapter 12 Episodic Trust: Self, Society and Sociology in A la recherche du temps perdu, John Attridge; S01 Afterword: Autoimmunity, Trust and Value;