Product Description
Jameson’s controversial reading of one of the great twentieth-century writers.

The novels of Wyndham Lewis have generally been associated with the work ofthe great modernists – Joyce, Pound, Eliot, Yeats – who were his sometimefriends and collaborators. Lewis’s originality, however, can only be fullygrasped when it is understood that, unlike those writers, he was essentially apolitical novelist.

In this now classic study, Fredric Jameson proposes a framework in whichLewis's explosive language practice - utterly unlike any other English orAmerican modernism - can be grasped as a political and symbolic act. He doesnot, however, ask us to admire the energy of Lewis's style without confrontingthe inescapable and often scandalous ideological content of Lewis's works: theaggressivity and sexism, the predilection for racial and national categories,the brief flirtation with fascism, and the inveterate and crankyoppositionalism that informs his powerful polemics against virtually all thepolitical and countercultural tendencies of his time.

Fables of Aggression draws on the methods of narrative analysis andsemiotics, psychoanalysis, and ideological analysis to construct a dynamicmodel of the contradictions from which Lewis's incomparable narrative corpus isgenerated, and of which it offers so many varying symbolic resolutions.

Customer Reviews (1)

Look into the shadows
For that's where Wyndham Lewis is, due to his political beliefs in the 1930s, his quick temper and pugilistic behaviour, and in part because as a painter, polemicist, satirist, commentator and novelist he skewered everyone and everything, from T.S. Eliot to Pound to Joyce to the Sitwells.Without mercy.

So, why read such a book, by such a man?Because in _Rude Assignment_ Lewis, to a degree, explains himself, and defines his position, and evolution, in a sharp, often witty manner, without an apologetic air.His description of satire, his defence against an attack by Orwell, are alone worth reading.His opinions still ruffle, yet if we only read those who were well-bred (presuming we could agree on who would get on such a list) we would never understand much of what goes on in any time or country.Lewis is, in some respects, that dreadful uncle who was involved in who knows what with _those_ people, visiting on family occasions with a little too much bile and bite for polite conversation, livening things up considerably before flying out the door again and leaving behind red faces and higher blood pressures, and a string of arguments in people's mouths.

The english novel needed a tonic, and Lewis provided it.He is a missing link in english letters, and this book - which one would normally come to via the novels - captures nicely the spirit of the man in his last years.Just remember, it's called "rude" to indicate something not well-formed like a traditional autobiographical work, and also because of the opinions expressed.It isn't on the same level as his excellent novel _The Apes of God_, but it is well worth reading and thinking about, even as one disagrees. ... Read more

Product Description
Wyndham Lewis can claim to be one of a tiny handful of British artists who had a European reach and ambition. Creator with Ezra Pound of Vorticism, editor, designer and author of the great art manifesto "Blast", a great painter and portraitist, novelist, polemicist and hater of the Bloomsbury movement, through a long life Lewis remained controversial, belligerent and very funny. With Joyce, Eliot and Pound (all of whose definitive portraits he painted) he stood for a heroic engagement with art and literature - and his ultimate (and unique) achievement was to be both a spectacular novelist and a spectacular painter. "The Wild Body" showcases his most original, daring and entertaining short fiction, mainly written around the time of "Blast". In amazing contrast with so much feeble British writing of the period, it shows the heady delight of modernism at full tilt. ... Read more

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1929. Lewis writes that the contents of this book, then, are in the nature of marginal notes and sketches to the chronicle of Louis' time. Contents: Preliminary; Contemplation of a Skull: The Trampled Lilies; The Splendid House; Monsieur Louis De France: the Child; The Tired Heart; The Apprentice, 1436-1461; The Craftsman, 1461-1483; Some Letters of Louis XI; Three Familiars: Messire Philippe De Commynes; Master Olivier Le Daim, Barber-Surgeon; Dr. Jacques Coictier; Three Ecclesiastics: Cardinal Jehan Balue; Bishop Thomas Basin; Friar Olivier Maillard; Three Artists: Jehan Van Ockeghem, Musician; Arnoul Greban, Dramatist; Francois Villon, Poet; Appendices: Our Lady of Clery; The Rosebush of War; and Principal Sources. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing. ... Read more