BETWEEN OLD AND NEW: WYNDHAM LEWIS'S MODERNIST 'JOINT'

Wyndham Lewis spent much of the early 1920s writing an ambitious prose fiction work entitled 'Joint'. Abandoned by its author at the drafting stage, it remains largely forgotten, even by scholars of Lewis. This article seeks to introduce readers to 'Joint' and argues for its larger significance. Examination of the manuscript complicates dominant readings of Lewis and demonstrates the need for revisions to our understanding of both the chronology and the character of his oeuvre in relation to modernism. The article begins by exploring the literary contexts and compositional history of the project. It then works to show the salient features of the narrative and their interconnections with contemporaneous texts by Eliot, Joyce, and Pound. It closes with an investigation of an obscure, yet arresting passage from the work that sheds greater light on Lewis's satirical theories and on modernist satire.