Blasting the bombardier: another look at Lewis, Joyce, and Woolf - Wyndham Lewis, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf

Twentieth Century Literature, Fall, 1994 by Kelly Anspaugh

12 Scott also writes "In Time and Western Man (1927) Lewis has begun to challenge Joyce's feminine side. As a 'time man' Joyce was falling into the same pigeonhole as Woolf (86-88)" ("Jellyfish" 176). Scott's page reference gives the impression that in Time Lewis associates Joyce with Woolf. In fact Lewis never does this, although he does in places pair Joyce with Gertrude Stein.

13 Lewis writes his early autobiography Blasting and Bombardiering (1937), he tells his readers, in order to defend himself and his fellow "men of 1914" from the debunking kind of biography perpetrated by fiends like Lytton Strachey:

It is certain as I am lying here in this hammock that no one will take the trouble to go into the private affairs of these contemporaries of mine - examine their old laundry bills, read their boring business letters, and so on - except in order to betray them, and make them look even bigger fools than in fact they are. . . . Something has to be done about this. So here goes! (14)

14 In her afterword to the 1982 anthology Women in Joyce Heilbrun suggests that perhaps Joyce should be termed "a misogynist, a man who hates women for becoming what he has determined they should be" (cited in Scott Joyce 125-26).

15 Prostitutes also come up in Lewis's recollection of making the acquaintance of Ezra Pound:

On the first two occasions on which we met I did not speak to him: on the second occasion he addressed a few remarks to me, but I did not reply. I did not consider it necessary to do so, he seemed in fact to be addressing somebody else. I mean that what he said did not appear to be appropriate, or to have any relevance - as a remark addressed to me.

"This young man could probably tell you!" was I think what he said, with great archness, narrowing his eyes and regarding me with mischievous goodwill.

There had been some question of the whereabouts of a kidnapped or absconded prostitute. Ezra was already attributing to those he liked proclivities which he was persuaded must accompany the revolutionary intellect. (Blasting 271)

16 Joyce would also retitle Lewis's The Art of Being Ruled as the "art of being rude" (FW 167.3] - which bash Lewis would register in the title of his late autobiography Rude Assignment.

17 I say "surprisingly" because in Joyce and Feminism Scott discusses both West's critique of Joyce and Joyce's response to west in the Wake (121-24).

18 For an analysis of Joyce's response to west elsewhere in the Wake, see Halper.

19 Joyce's "rayingbogeys" recalls his comments, in a letter of 20 September 1928 to Harriet Shaw Weaver, about West's analysis: "About fifty pages of Rebecca West's book were read to me yesterday but I cannot judge until I hear the whole essay. I think that P.P. [Pomes Penyeach] had in her case the intended effect of blowing up some bogey bogus personality and that she is quite delighted with the explosion" (Selected 337; my emphasis).

20 In one of a series of scandalous letters to Nora, Joyce reminisces about a night of love: "You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole" (Selected 185).