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| Wyndham Lewis: |
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| The Art of Being Ruled |
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Edited with Afterword & Notes by Reed Way Dasenbrock
Illustrations by Wyndham Lewis |
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In The Art of Being Ruled, first published in 1926, Wyndham Lewis attempted to propose a viable alternative to the Bloomsbury liberalism and ''bourgeois'' democracy he so abhorred. It was a risky undertaking. His later reputation as a right wing thinker is founded largely on a superficial reading of this provocative book. In truth, as it reveals, his politics are not so simplistic or easy to pin down. To contemporary readers one thing will be clear: Lewis was a frustrated idealist, with a brilliant ability to identify the errors and evils of the modern world.
As a social critic, intellectual artist, and self-styled ''independent observer,'' Lewis was appalled by the post-war European scene. ''We are in the midst of a frenzied evolutionary war of the machines,'' he warns in 'The Art of Being Ruled'. A prophetic aspect of this book is his analysis of the tendency of machines to bring destruction. With the ''unruffled optimism'' and ''humanitarianism'' of liberal England rendered obsolete in a Brave New Mechanical Age, ''the Public,'' as Lewis saw it, had been reduced to a herd of ''animals in a vast Zoo,'' near-comatose ''automata'' easily exploited by capitalist cartels and controlled by the popular press. ''Democracy'' thus became a mere tool of big business, manipulated for profit into world wars.
Far preferable to Lewis was the (sadly impossible) idea of authoritative leaders who would ''assume responsibility for the ignorant millions.'' Replacing the exploitation of ''the weaknesses of the Many'' with ''the exploitation of the intelligence of the Few'' proved as difficult in practical terms in Lewis' days as in our own. However, his real subject here, the plight of the creative thinker and of the artist in a mass-produced, robot-standardized, anti-intellectual culture, remains as significant and pertinent as ever. |
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264 pages, 6'' x 9'' (230 x 150 mm)
14 b/w illustrations, English |
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| Paperback |
ISBN: 0-87685-753-5 |
$ 15.00 |
| Cloth Trade |
ISBN: 0-87685-754-3 |
$ 25.00 |
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| About the Editor: |
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Reed Way Dasenbrock is an Associate Professor of English at New Mexico State University, where he has taught since completing his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins in 1981. He is the author of 'The Literary Vorticism of Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis: Towards the Condition of Painting' (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985). He has also published essays on Wyndham Lewis in 'Blast 3' and 'Enemy News'. His current projects include a book of interviews with world writers in English and a book on the politics of modernism.
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