Wilson Harris Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Nathaniel Mackey

Critical Essay by Nathaniel Mackey

SOURCE: Mackey, Nathaniel. “The Unruly Pivot: Wilson Harris' The Eye of the Scarecrow.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 20, no. 4 (winter 1978): 633–59.

In the following essay, Mackey discusses the novel The Eye of the Scarecrow as a pivotal work in the development of Harris's self-reflexive narrative style.

But I experienced once more the resulting chaos I knew, loss of orientation, the unruly pivot around which revolves the abstract globe in one's head.

—Wilson Harris

I

Wilson Harris must be one of the most daring authors writing in English. Born in 1921 in British Guiana (since become, with independence in 1966, Guyana) and now living in England, Harris has published—in addition to a book of poems, a book of critical essays, two books of retellings of native Caribbean myths, and scattered essays and stories—thirteen highly unusual novels.¹ The sixth of these, The Eye of the Scarecrow, can be said...
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