SOURCE: “Wyndham Lewis's Narrative of Origins: ‘The Death of the Ankou,’” in The Modern Language Review, Vol. 92, January, 1997, pp. 22-35.

In the following excerpt, Edwards declares Lewis more successful as a visual artist, and explores Lewis's short story “The Death of the Ankou.”

The least manageable of modernist writers, aggressive, almost baroque in the intricacy of his mannered but slapdash prose, and apparently an enemy not just of sentimentality but of humanity itself, Wyndham Lewis made himself more unmanageable yet by his parallel role as an innovator in the visual arts. As a painter, Lewis is no more heartwarming than as a writer, but his standing is higher. One reason is simply that (as Lewis himself pointed out) a painting can be seen all at once, while a book takes time to read. A satirical painting of a pair of simpletons in blue suits, topped with brick-red faces...