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WYNDHAM LEWIS by Hugh Kenner

WYNDHAM LEWIS

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Pub Date: Aug. 23rd, 1954
Publisher: New Directions

In the Makers of Modern Literature Series, this portrait of that enigmatic and eccentric figure and his satiric art to which he brought an ""unexampled energy"" is an interesting interpretation and evaluation. Introduced, in 1909, by Ford Madox Ford, to a literary world, Lewis went on with Ezra Pound to edit the magazine Blast which with its vorticist prose inaugurated a movement. His novels, his philosophic discussions and his polemics (with their campaigns against impressionists, behaviorists, squeakdolls, etc.) and to a lesser degree- his paintings- are appraised here. Specializing in unreality, Kenner presses and points up the bizarrerie of Lewis' creative vision, concerned as it was ""with groups of people engaged in explicating by their actions some theorem in the Metaphysic of the Void"", but, as you can see, does not make it more accessible for a contemporary audience. His book, therefore, predicates an established interest in the man and his work which is directed at a highly intellectual level.