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| Wyndham Lewis: |
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| Time And Western Man |
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| Edited by Paul Edwards |
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| First published in 1927, this is Wyndham Lewis's most important book of criticism and philosophy. He turns against his fellow modernists, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein and James Joyce to show how they have unconsciously turned their supposedly ''revolutionary'' writing into a vehicle for ideologies that undermine real human creativity and progress. The heart of this critique is a devastating assault on metaphysical doctrines that, Lewis believed, robbed the human mind of its creative power and handed that power over to ''time'' as a vital principle animating matter. In some of Lewis's most vivid writing, Bergson, Whitehead, Russell and William James are all mercilessly attacked for their implicit fatalism: |
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If you asked the humblest of men if he would allow you to chop his head off, provided he received the assurance that his head would instantly become the sun, even he believed you had the ability to procure this advantage, he would certainly refuse with indignation. Such is human conceit! The thought of it saddens Mr. Russell. His reality is the sun (let us state it that way), and our reality is the man's head. |
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| Lewis's argument remains unsurpassed for its liveliness, peceptiveness and brilliance of expression. This new edition of what Hugh Kenner called ''one of the dozen or so most important books of the twentieth century'' comes with full textual apparatus, editorial notes, an Afterword by Paul Edwards and substantial previously unpublished material. |
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624 pages, Paperback, 6'' x 9'' (230 x 150 mm)
English
ISBN: 0-87685-878-7 |
| $ 17.50 |
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| About the Editor: |
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Paul Edwards lives in Cambridge, England. He works as an occasional part-time lecturer and supervisor at Cambridge and London Universities, and as a tutor for the Open University. He has edited several of Wyndham Lewis's books for Black Sparrow Press. He was a member of the organizing committee for the exhibition ''Wyndham Lewis: Art and War'' held at the Imperial War Museum in London by the Wyndham Lewis Memorial Trust in 1992, and is the author of the accompanieing book, 'Wyndham Lewis: Art and War' (London: Lund Humphries, 1992).
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