CLR JAMES ON TS ELIOT [Re: further reflections]

[Ralph Dumain <rdumain@xxxxxxx>]

Dammit, I don't have my own copy of this article, so I had to make a
long-distance call to get the 411 (reversed metaphor?), but this is it (see
below dotted line).  The abstract is copyrighted material, thank you.

The passages I had in mind begin on p. 62.  James begins by quoting T.S.
Eliot, praising him as a great writer, whom he re-reads from time to time
to remind himself "what I do not believe."  The ensuing exposition, though
expressed with James's veddy British dry wit, is hilarious!  James
ridicules the nihilistic, defeatist world view so characteristic of modern
European intellectuals and asserts that you will find none of that in West
Indian writers.  West Indians have no sense of futility; it's not in their
history, not in their psychological make-up.  I hope Simple Simon is reading.

--------------------------------------
James, C.L.R.
A New View of West Indian History
Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 4
December 1989
pp. 49-70

TOPICS: Lovelace, Earl; Lamming, George; Harris, Wilson; L'Ouverture,
Toussaint; Eliot, T.S.; Sartre, J.P.; Patterson, Orlando

Appears in the CQ's memorial tribute issue to James. This was a lecture
delivered at UWI, Mona, June 3, 1965. Researchers should be wary of
transcription errors, especially in indented quotes which confuse James
quoting someone else and James speaking himself. That aside, this article
is a tour de force, an indispensable, detailed extension of James's
familiar views on West Indian writers, West Indian culture, and West Indian
society in general. It is both more particular and more general than usual.
He gives frank comments on several writers in addition to Lamming, Harris,
and Orlando Patterson, whose work he discusses in the context of Heidegger
and Sartre and Western philosophy in general. He presents Toussaint's
writing at some length in order to prove his thesis, that freedom is the
esthetic that underlies West Indian writing. [JM]
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At 08:49 AM 6/2/99 PDT, april_biccum@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>>You should read James's hilarious remarks about this as he
>>mercilessly ridicules TS Eliot and the whole culture of
>>exhaustion.
>
>In what work does the merciless ridiculing appear?