My triumphant return to reading

[Benny Bunter]

Brilliant how he gets across the alienating strangeness of the new technology these poor kids had to get to grips with, something that marked out the first world war from other wars before it, "the complex paraphernalia of their trade"

And the terrifying dehumanising conformity they so quickly succumb to through conditioning and ritual - "the immediacy, the nowness, the pressure of sudden, modifying circumstance..." "The used formulae of command" "some systemed task, transilient, regularly spaced, at kept intervals..."

 

[jenks]

I really rate Jones. You should check his art work as well. I’m loathe to say too much about him as I know there are a few genuine experts on him here - suffice it to say that both In Parenthesis and Anathemata are essential modernist texts.

 

[Benny Bunter]

The last page of chapter 2 with the description of the first shell that lands right next to them is absolutely stunning writing wow

"- an on-rushing pervasion, saturating all existence; with exactitude, logarithmic, dial-timed, millesimal - of calculated velocity, some mean chemist's contrivance, a stinking physicist's destroying toy."

 

[Benny Bunter]

This bit in chapter 3 describing the trench dredgers, incredible:

"Appear more Lazarus figures, where water gleamed between dilapidated breastworks, blue slime coated, ladling with wooden ladels; rising, bending, at their trench-dredging. They speak low. Cold gurgling followed their labours. They lift things, and a bundle-thing out; its shapelessness sags.
From this muck-raking are singular stenches, long decay leavened; compounding this clay, with that more precious, patient of baptism; chemical-corrupted once-bodies. They've served him barbarously - poor Johnny - you wouldn't desire him, you wouldn't know him for any other. Not you who knew him by fire-light, nor any of you cold-earth watchers, now searchers under the flares.
Each night freshly degraded like traitor-corpse, where his heavies flog and violate; each day unfathoms yesterday unkindness; dung-making Holy Ghost temples.
They bright-whiten all this sepulchre with powdered chloride of lime. It's a perfectly sanitary war."

 

[Benny Bunter]

I really rate Jones. You should check his art work as well. I’m loathe to say too much about him as I know there are a few genuine experts on him here - suffice it to say that both In Parenthesis and Anathemata are essential modernist texts.

I was only very faintly aware he was a painter as well and reading a bit about him on the net today, he's obviously a lot more well known than I thought he was, though probably still massively underrated all round. Amazing that he hadn't really done any writing before and he produced this epic masterpiece as his first book, it must have seemed like it had come out of nowhere at the time.

I suppose the other thing is that he wasn't easily anthologised, there weren't any shorter poems to serve as an introduction.

 

[Benny Bunter]

I really rate Jones. You should check his art work as well. I’m loathe to say too much about him as I know there are a few genuine experts on him here - suffice it to say that both In Parenthesis and Anathemata are essential modernist texts.

Who are the genuine experts on here? I'm obviously very late to the party. I think I probably did first hear about him on this board at some point but it was @WashYourHands that prompted me to finally get round to checking him out

 

[Benny Bunter]

He's better than Joyce and Hemingway, probably as good as Eliot and Pound and Wilfred Owen. Massively impressed.

 

[woops]

i think @Mr. Tea s Mrs has a PhD in David Jones don't think she posts on dissensus though

 

[Mr. Tea]

i think @Mr. Tea s Mrs has a PhD in David Jones don't think she posts on dissensus though

She does, and she doesn't. The latter is probably for the best, all things considered.

 

[catalog]

i had a look at his paintings after seeing this thread.

Some good stuff definitely, but i can also see why no-one has heard of him as an artist.

Cos it's basically very similar to a lot of other stuff from the time that's a bit better.

bit vorticist but not as much precision as lewis? nice figures but nowhere as interesting as spencer? his trees are good but maybe not as good as eg paul nash?

the watercolours are where it's at with him but they are pesky when reproduced... i love watercolours if you can see em in a gallery cos you see the shining and all the different tones, but doesn't tend to work so well on a screen. would love to see this in the original, bet the colours are amazing

his wartime sketches are also really good

good heads up @jenks - will check him out if i see he's in a gallery anywhere.

can't comment on the poetry, i struggle reading poetry.

 

[jenks]

i had a look at his paintings after seeing this thread.

Some good stuff definitely, but i can also see why no-one has heard of him as an artist.

Cos it's basically very similar to a lot of other stuff from the time that's a bit better.

bit vorticist but not as much precision as lewis? nice figures but nowhere as interesting as spencer? his trees are good but maybe not as good as eg paul nash?

the watercolours are where it's at with him but they are pesky when reproduced... i love watercolours if you can see em in a gallery cos you see the shining and all the different tones, but doesn't tend to work so well on a screen. would love to see this in the original, bet the colours are amazing

his wartime sketches are also really good

good heads up @jenks - will check him out if i see he's in a gallery anywhere.

can't comment on the poetry, i struggle reading poetry.

I saw a lot of his stuff down at Ditchling - also some lovely engravings and carving too.

 

[catalog]

I saw a lot of his stuff down at Ditchling - also some lovely engravings and carving too.

probably everyone in the 7 and 5 society that he was a member of warrants a look https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_and_Five_Society

cos they had that whole modernist ideal of doing everything all at once. such a lot of diversity within and between.

there's a few famous names but plenty i've not heard of. these are random googles for images from the ones i've not heard of

Jessica Dismorr:

Claude Flight

Sidney Hunt:

Canal (2) - watercolour by Sidney Hunt : in Artwork - an illustrated quarterly, 1924/5 by mikeyashworth, on Flickr

Christopher Wood:

 

[woops]

:

 

[jenks]

Yep. I’m very fond of the interwar period - recent book by Frances Spalding - The Real and the Romantic plus Alexandra Harris’ Romantic Moderns as well Christopher Neve’s Unquiet Landscape are all very illuminating especially about some of those who may dropped from the common consciousness

 

[catalog]

yeah a lot of her other stuff is good too - and pretty diverse. never heard of her before.

 

[catalog]

Yep. I’m very fond of the interwar period - recent book by Frances Spalding - The Real and the Romantic plus Alexandra Harris’ Romantic Moderns as well Christopher Neve’s Unquiet Landscape are all very illuminating especially about some of those who may dropped from the common consciousness

eileen agar and ithell Colquhoun my top ones, but cheers on those books. might look em up.

 

[luka]

david jones draws like a little girl

 

[luka]

you wouldnt understand the poetry its too hard for you.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Was thinking it might be worth starting a thread on him. In parenthesis doesn't seem all that hard on first read but I've a feeling I might need quite a lot of help with Anathemata when I start that.

I know fuck all about painting but all those inscriptions he did in Welsh and Latin look good.

Jenks said there a few genuine experts on here but tea's missus doesn't count. Who are they?

 

[catalog]

If you start a thread on him I'll try and read one of the books when I've finished dostoyevsky. It's taking me ages tho