Most books have their patients, rather than their readers, no doubt. But some degree of health is postulated in the reader of this book. Its pages are not intended to supply the figurative equivalent of Kruschen Salts or an enema. Nor is it the intention of its author to open a clinic or a nursing-home, or an institute for the half-witted, nor yet a beauty-parlor. Understanding on that point with the reader at the start will be an advantage.
A book of this description is not written for an audience already there, prepared to receive it, and whose minds it will fit like a glove. There must be a good deal of stretching of the receptacle, it is to be expected. It must of necessity make its own audience; for it aims at no audience already there with which I am acquainted. I do not invent (or if that was not an invention, then I am not happy enough to know) a class of esprits libres, or 'good Europeans,' as Nietzsche did. I know none.
Wyndham Lewis, The Art of Being Ruled, 1926
Mr. Robertson:
ReplyDeleteYou might note that Wyndham Lewis was Marshall McLuhan's "mentor" on the topic of the elites who "rule" our society, along with the neo-paganism of "modern" artists.
It is also worth noting that McLuhan largely abandoned his interest in the "freemasonry of the arts" as he further developed his understanding of the Formal Causality of media.
Mark Stahlman
New York
Mark,
ReplyDeleteI came across Wyndham Lewis after reading McLuhan's essay on him in "The Medium and the Light," though I am still not very familiar with his work. This may be a difficult question to answer here, but how did Formal Causality lead McLuhan away from the "freemasonry of the arts?"
Thanks for comments.