Bob, thanks for posting the reviews to the list. Margaret Fisher On 11/12/2013 8:12 PM, Bob Dobbs wrote: > 1. THE BIRTH OF MODERNISM > > Dark Horse Retrieved in Our Time > > > In an era when young people inevitably acquire a familiarity with conspiracy > theory because it is a popular topic on the Web, > Prof. Surette's 20-year old research into the history of "conspiracy memes" > is invaluable for university curricula today - perhaps even for seniors in > high school. > > And his book is especially important because he shows the encyclopedic > posture in modernism - the interplay between high brow and low brow, the > pedestrian and the esoteric. Once this avant-garde non-univocal technique is > grasped by the student of Pound, Eliot, Yeats - and I would add Joyce and > Lewis - then "elitist" literature opens up, reveals new vistas, and exposes > the fallacy of the hardening of the categories modern and postmodern > criticism wallowed in. > > Surette's work may have been ignored these past two decades but luckily he > was just ahead of his time. Let's not hold it against him. > > > 2. DREAMS OF A TOTALITARIAN UTOPIA > > Dark Horse is Really the Linnaeus of Modernist Scholars > > > Prof. Surette continues his talent for providing useful overviews for the > student and connoisseur of an increasingly remote modernist literature. > > Surette is so clear-headed in his approach to Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, and > T. S. Eliot that one could be forgiven for wondering why one should read > such muddle-headed idiots as these three. What Marshall McLuhan once said > (albeit in a movie) applies to these three "antennae": "How you ever got to > teach a course in anything is totally amazing!" > > But Surette is also fair-headed and does his best in balancing off our > disgust by actually showing how the three Magi fared quite prophetic for > their respective constituencies when one considers how confused Western > society became under the onslaught of the techno-storm of the Thirties. > > Surprisingly, Lewis becomes the most relevant for the drifting global > citizen today with his political maxim: > > "Now disregarding if you can whatever your political views may be (and mine > are partly communist and partly fascist, with a distinct streak of > monarchism in my marxism, but at bottom anarchist with a healthy passion for > order)... " - Wyndham Lewis, THE ENEMY, Vol.3, p.70, 1929 > > There's not an informed person who couldn't use the above quotation as an > all-purpose alibi for the cross-pressures rampant today in our ridiculously > complex habitat. > > Above all, this new work proves Surette is an expert at evoking new > questions about old answers to the mystery of the creative process. He > actually aids us in marvelling anew at how art becomes charismatic. > > > 3. ART IN THE AGE OF THE MACHINE > > They Used to be Giants > > > The subtitle of Leon Surette's third entry into what has turned into a > trilogy should be: They Used to Be Giants. > > "Art in the Age of the Machine" is a prodigious inventory of all the > thinkers, scientists, philosophers, and artists who once made an impact and > drew attention to themselves as they wrestled with the unpredictable > juggernaut of human creativity in the industrial phase of cultural (d)evolution. > > Again, I can't stress more that, like his previous two works, Surette proves > once again to be a real live Noah who preserves the 200-year old history of > arguments and varieties of response to technoculture in order to inspire a > general perspective that none of our present institutions of learning have a > clue as to how to engender. > > Young minds require this book. It should be mandatory reading in all > locations of higher education. Since the present fashion is to reject the > Western Canon, then we should experience and understand ONE MORE TIME (or > perhaps, for the first time) what we are increasingly amnesiac concerning > what is the UR question: "When is a human not a human?" > > Surette's mosaic is to be recommended just for the sheer audacity of his > choices. Any work that includes the thinker a recent BBC TV broadcast > declared "one of the most poisonous minds of the 20th century" - Wyndham > Lewis - has the edginess that will attract the natural curiosity of coming > generations who always can sniff out where the crux of the biscuit is. > > > Bob Dobbs >