Wyndham Lewis

[Benny Bunter]

Just ordered The Wild Body collection of short stories, won't get to read it for a while, gotta finish Ulysses first, but I'm sure there's a few people here who've read him and like his art and I want recommendations, opinions so fire away.

BLAST mag, vorticism, short stories novels, poetry, essays...fascism???

 

[luka]

time and western man
wild body
enemy of the stars

all good

some dull novels and some that are just too baggy and too long

 

[Benny Bunter]

I was between ordering wild body and Tarr but I thought short stories would be an easier introduction.

Don't actually know very much about him and read nothing, but he seems like another important piece of the modernist puzzle and someone to go to after reading Pound, Joyce etc...

The little I've seen of BLAST looks brilliant on a purely visual level, but the only thing I've read is Pound's vorticist manifesto

 

[Benny Bunter]

Published reproductions of blast look to be out of print/ridiculously expensive unfortunately

 

[version]

Published reproductions of blast look to be out of print/ridiculously expensive unfortunately

There are scans online at least, Luke posted one a while back.

https://monoskop.org/images/c/c1/Blast_2.pdf

 

[Benny Bunter]

Ah brilliant. Just flicking through, had no idea that Eliot's Preludes was published there, that's one of his best.

Annoying to have to have to squint-read it on a mobile phone but better than nothing, thanks!

 

[luka]

been reading a bit of tarr. i'd be amazed if i finish it but i do love his descriptions of people. grotesques devoid of any sympathy.

 

[jenks]

There was a very good exhibition at the NPC of Lewis’ portraits. It endeared me to him once more. As a youngster I loved the Blast stuff, read a lot of the fiction but with diminishing returns, Huxley rather skewered him in Antic Hay with his character Lypiatt - a barely concealed version of WL.

With all these people from the 10s-20s, I’m always impressed with the sheer energy and productivity. A real sense of urgency about everything they’re doing. The exceptions are Elliot and Joyce (they took ages over a small oeuvre) and, I don’t know if that’s a coincidence, they’re the ones whose reputation has never faltered.

 

[Benny Bunter]

i do love his descriptions of people. grotesques devoid of any sympathy.

Read the first couple of stories in wild body and this is the only thing he seems to do really well, other than that it's clunky as fuck.

 

[luka]

no its not

 

[luka]

they're deliberate stylistic choices that create specific intentional results. hes not trying to write like james joyce

 

[Benny Bunter]

I did kind of suspect that cos the dialogue is so ludicrous that I thought it must be a deliberate choice. Still, can't shake the feeling that it could have been much better than it is.

I see there's a couple of essays in there, maybe they'll shed a bit of light on what he's trying to do.

 

[version]

Kenner said Lewis misread Joyce and would point out 'mistakes' which weren't at all.

 

[Benny Bunter]

This is great:

"His very large eyeballs, the small saffron ocellation in their centre, the tiny spot through which light entered the obese wilderness of his body; his bronzed bovine arms, swollen handles for a variety of indolent little ingenuities; his inflated digestive case, lent their combined expressiveness to say these things; with every tart and biting condiment that eye-fluid, flaunting of fatness (the well-filled), the insult of the comic, implications of indecency, could provide. Every variety of bottom-tapping resounded from his dumb bulk. His tongue stuck out, his lips eructated with the incredible indecorum that appears to be the monopoly of liquids, his brown arms were for the moment genitals, snakes in one massive twist beneath his mammillary slabs, gently riding on a pancreatic swell, each hair on his oil-bearing skin contributing its message of porcine affront."

 

[Benny Bunter]

You can definitely see his influence on Mark E Smith's gargoyle-like characters

 

[Benny Bunter]

Didn't know what to expect before reading - I see now it's clearly a type of pulp fiction, hence the "clunkiness" I was complaining about.

 

[version]

It's probably deliberate, but that excerpt is too much. Is it all written like that? It's like wading through treacle.

 

[Benny Bunter]

That's one of the best bits I've read so far, I really like it.

 

[Benny Bunter]

The actual stories and dialogue seem to be just vehicles for these grotesque character descriptions. They're just farcical, absurd little events and goings on in these seedy little hotels in pre-war France.

 

[craner]

The actual stories and dialogue seem to be just vehicles for these grotesque character descriptions. They're just farcical, absurd little events and goings on in these seedy little hotels in pre-war France.

Is there something wrong with this? I mean, you could argue that it never got better than goings on in seedy little hotels in pre-war France. At least, nothing outside of Petronius.