Reading 1001 discussion

Lead is Diane (not me).

Review thread: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Book Description:
The Childermass is the first volume of the unfinished epic "The Human Age" and is unarguably the most radical, outlandish, and formally experimental work in Lewis’s oeuvre. The novel follows the adventures of two Englishmen, Sattersthwaite and Pullman, presumably killed in the Great War, as they posthumously navigate a bizarre purgatorial afterlife while awaiting admission to something called The Magnetic City. Lewis in The Childermass spends a good deal of time dramatizing his theoretical, political, and aesthetic concerns. Along the way, he produces extensive parodies of the styles of both James Joyce and Gertrude Stein, while also pushing the inimitable Lewisean sentence he had developed in Tarr to its extreme limits.

Pre-reading Questions
A. Have you ever read anything by Wyndham Lewis? If so, what have you read?

B. Do you typically enjoy experimental literature? Why or why not?


Discussion Questions
1. With which character did you identify with more, Satters or Pulley? Why? Did you find them realistic?

2. It can be argued that the purgatorial landscape in this novel can also be considered a main character. Do you agree with this? Why or why not? How did the landscape affect Satters and Pulley? Do you think Lewis did a good job of building this fictional world?

3. How does this novel cross different genres? Do you think this enhances the book or does it interfere with the story line?

4. What do you think is the overall "message" of this book?

5. If you could compare this work to another work of literature, what comes to mind? How are the works similar?

6. What are your thoughts on the book. Was it enjoyable? Is it worthy of its place on the list?

I have my copy from the library but have not started yet.

A. Have you ever read anything by Wyndham Lewis? If so, what have you read?
No

B. Do you typically enjoy experimental literature? Why or why not?
Sometimes. I always want to identify with something in it, which gives me a hook to view the rest from. If I can't, it fails for me because to enjoy a book I have to find it entertaining or instructive (and preferably both).

For example, I enjoyed House of Leaves, Infinite Jest, and Exercises in Style.

I didn't enjoy Finnegans Wake where I felt I was reading randomly, untouched by anything, or Story of the Eye where I wanted to run screaming from the characters and everything they did.

Now almost halfway through, and enjoying it much more than I expected! It certainly is bizarre, and I'm sure I'm missing a lot of symbolism (and also the meanings of many unfamiliar words), but I'm happy enough wandering round in Sattersthwaite and Pullman's wake.

1. With which character did you identify with more, Satters or Pulley? Why? Did you find them realistic?
So far... I'm finding Satters too whiny and childish, so it would have to be Pullman.
It seems that their ages change, so when Satters is being childish he may be actually a child, and if that's the case they do seem fairly realistic, although not as angry as I would expect of people recently killed in war.

A. I have read Lewis' Tarr and did not love it but am still looking forward to this one. It is next up on my TBR pile.
B. I love Calvino usually and I was overwhelmed but really appreciated Infinite Jest. I just read Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition and really did not appreciate that.

It was all downhill from the halfway point, for me. The Bailiff enters the picture and begins long meandering debates with various opponents, exhibiting much racism and homophobia. The only thing I enjoyed in the second half was a short philosophical discussion with a man called Macrob. The rest I either couldn't follow or didn't want to.

I found no warmth in this book, even in the friendship between Pulley and Satters, which seemed self-serving on both sides.

Is it worthy of its place on the list?
I suppose so, because the list focuses on books that challenge or exemplify aspects of the novel in some way, not the "best books of all time".

I hope his other books on the list will not be as contorted as the second half of this one...

I am with you Rosemary. I found the first half rather enjoyable. It was a bit like a Beckett and a Pilgrims Progess mash up. However, the second half, which was more about arguments that would take place on earth regarding a dialectic against the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (or rather what little I remember of Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy) and a satirical look at egomaniacal power hungry leaders. It simply didn't make sense to me and I suspect that even if I had read Lewis' more philosophical treatises such as The Art of Being Ruled, it still would have not made sense to me.
Like you, there were moments that I could appreciate such as Macrob wanting only to truly die and the moment that the Bailiff turns to his assistant and whispers: "they think they are alive...", but overall it was not my cup of tea.

1. With which character did you identify with more, Satters or Pulley? Why? Did you find them realistic?
I did not truly identify with either one although there were aspects of each that I did identify with: Pully's need for order and rational explanations in the face of a very plastic universe is something I understood while Satters out and out fear is certainly where I would be under the same circumstances.
They were written very realistically I thought, although again, it was not a realistic situation.

2. It can be argued that the purgatorial landscape in this novel can also be considered a main character. Do you agree with this? Why or why not? How did the landscape affect Satters and Pulley? Do you think Lewis did a good job of building this fictional world?
As I mentioned above, I thought this was a great aspect of the book. The landscape was without earth's laws of physics underpinnings and Pulley and Satters did not know if they were in a diorama or in a plastic world of time and space. It really did remind me of the journey in Pilgrim's Progress where our pilgrim doesn't know where he is or what he will encounter but he has a general idea of where he is going. Pulley always seemed to think he knew where he was, even if he did not.


3. How does this novel cross different genres? Do you think this enhances the book or does it interfere with the story line?
What is the story line? I don't think it interfered with the story line because there was no story line to interfere with. It isn't as if Pulley and Satters have a revelation about the nature of purgatory, nor do they progress in any way toward the magnetic city. Also, this reader, didn't progress toward any understanding.

4. What do you think is the overall "message" of this book?
If I am to believe other more informed reviewers, the message was a satirical jab at current English philosophers of the time who were arguing process/change/interior versus elements that could be intuited from one's senses (or something like that). I think that there was also a message about the nature of populist egomaniacal leaders.

5. If you could compare this work to another work of literature, what comes to mind? How are the works similar?
For me, again, it was Pilgrim's Progress without the Christianity. I thought it was interesting that we were reading a book about purgatory and there was very little religion in it. The Bailiff spends more time on Thor and Loki than on The Deity. We are told the Deity lies on ice, that he is "hot blooded" and that we are all one big family but one suspects that is nothing other than an earthly rationale for the unknown, i.e. that the Bailiff is only slightly more knowledgeable than anyone else.
Also, Lewis does a nice take off on James Joyce in the middle, which I found largely unreadable.

6. What are your thoughts on the book. Was it enjoyable? Is it worthy of its place on the list?
Well, it was certainly radical for the time and even for today so I suppose it may belong on the list.

One last thing on the role of homosexuals in the book; the book is full of homosexual references and imagery. There are no women in the book except a few caught in space/time. The camp is without women as they have their own gate. The two main characters are dependent on each other in a relationship that is, while not sexual, closer to a homosexual relationship than just two buddies on a journey together. There is an argument about the place of homosexuals in society with Alectryon stating: "...it is a private matter for each to adjust himself to according to his inclination". Lewis seems to hate everyone and treat everyone with a great deal of prejudice, class, ethnically, nationalistically etc. but I thought that the book seemed surprisingly supportive in a very funny way of homosexuals given their prominent place in the book and the argument for tolerance published in 1928. However, I just read Amanda's review and I have misunderstood the satire here. Sigh.

Yes, his image was very artistic and effeminate in his youth but then I am viewing his images from my own cultural prejudices.

Gail wrote: "Yes, his image was very artistic and effeminate in his youth but then I am viewing his images from my own cultural prejudices."

Yeah that's funny but true. I feel like at the time that sort of 'dandy' image just made him seem dashing and artistic but reads differently now. Given he did kind of look like Oscar Wilde, but homophobic and with a mustache, its like he's his evil twin (or evil mirrorverse version of him by star trek tropes lol).

And honestly, it's easy to miss his intent in this book because of that intentionally obscure way he writes, but I started to clue in when the casual and shamelessly homosexual characters/bits take place in his version of hell. I then did do a bunch of review and background reading to fully get the book, and yeah, that's where I mostly got a lot of the info about his misogyny and homophobia, and sympathy for fascism, which makes the book make more sense, but not in a good way.