Jamie
drjwood.com
Jamie
@drjwood.com
Independent modernism scholar. I look at things, then I try to write about them.
The limits of sympathetic imagination

What is it possible to imagine? Are specific extreme experiences, like war or rape, simply beyond us? Coetzee's fiction helps us think through these issues.
The limits of sympathetic imagination
What is it possible to imagine? Are specific extreme experiences, like war or rape, simply beyond us? Coetzee's fiction helps us think through these issues.
vorticesandnotes.com
August 28, 2025 at 4:18 PM
On capitalist realism and ‘Wolf Hall’

Marxist critics have a distinctive (that is, peculiar) perspective on how capitalism operates internally. In searching for aggressive metaphors to describe capitalist realism, they accentuate an alleged glamour, when better models may lie in Tudor England.
On capitalist realism and ‘Wolf Hall’
Marxist critics have a distinctive (that is, peculiar) perspective on how capitalism operates internally. In searching for aggressive metaphors to describe capitalist realism, they accentuate an alleged glamour, when better models may lie in Tudor England.
vorticesandnotes.com
August 28, 2025 at 4:18 PM
Wyndham Lewis and the ‘Laughing Woman’

Wyndham Lewis painted several important pictures of a laughing Kate Lechmere early in his career, probably during 1911. These are crucial early examples of Lewis’s developing Vorticist aesthetic prior to BLAST; however, their history – who owned what, where…
Wyndham Lewis and the ‘Laughing Woman’
Wyndham Lewis painted several important pictures of a laughing Kate Lechmere early in his career, probably during 1911. These are crucial early examples of Lewis’s developing Vorticist aesthetic prior to BLAST; however, their history – who owned what, where and when Lewis exhibited – remains confused. This essay aims to shed some light on the situation
vorticesandnotes.com
August 28, 2025 at 4:16 PM
Edward Thomas, empathy, and reciprocity

Thomas's poetry may be best understood by considering the concept of reciprocity, rather than resorting to the contentious topic of empathy.
Edward Thomas, empathy, and reciprocity
Thomas's poetry may be best understood by considering the concept of reciprocity, rather than resorting to the contentious topic of empathy.
vorticesandnotes.com
August 28, 2025 at 4:16 PM
Orwell’s ‘crimestop’ and moral vegetarianism

A family owns a house in an idyllic rural location. The house's beauty frequently brings visitors to tears. It is so characteristic of its context that it is used on film sets. The interior has been professionally designed. There is no work to do, with…
Orwell’s ‘crimestop’ and moral vegetarianism
A family owns a house in an idyllic rural location. The house's beauty frequently brings visitors to tears. It is so characteristic of its context that it is used on film sets. The interior has been professionally designed. There is no work to do, with a new roof and a new heating system. It is unencumbered. The estate agents all concur that there are few properties in this condition in the region, and, remarkably, that it is very much priced to sell.
vorticesandnotes.com
July 8, 2025 at 2:03 PM
Shell Shock and the Grotesque

Overuse of the adjective ‘shell-shocked’ is careless; those suffering from shell shock used the grotesque not tropes associated with confusion to communicate their experience.
Shell Shock and the Grotesque
Overuse of the adjective ‘shell-shocked’ is careless; those suffering from shell shock used the grotesque not tropes associated with confusion to communicate their experience.
vorticesandnotes.com
July 4, 2025 at 2:42 PM
Lewis's Oct. 1919 lecture for the Arts League 'Modern Tendencies in Art' series, believed lost to us, was given a second (and better) airing at the Leicester Museum in Nov. 1919. #WyndhamLewis
Recovered in Leicester: Lewis’s 1919 Arts League Lecture
It is widely recorded that Wyndham Lewis gave a public lecture on 'Painting' in the Conference Hall of the Central Buildings in Westminster on 22 October 1919 (O'Keeffe 2000, 214). It was the opening lecture of a series arranged for the autumn by the Arts League of Service entitled 'The Modern Tendencies in Art'. Lewis would be followed by T.S. Eliot on poetry (29 October), Margaret Morris on dance (12 November), and Eugene Goossens on music (27 November).
drjwood.com
June 23, 2025 at 2:09 PM
Lewis's Lost 1919 'Cubist Exhibition' Preface. Local newspaper records suggest a previously unknown preface for a 1919 exhibition in Oxford. #WyndhamLewis #modernism

https://drjwood.com/2025/06/17/lewiss-lost-1919-cubist-exhibition-preface/
June 17, 2025 at 6:40 PM
On the limits of imagination www.drjwood.com/p/on-the-lim...? #Coetzee #imagination #aesthetics r=2eahdm&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
On the limits of imagination
Are there limits to the imagination? Are some extremely physical or emotional experiences simply beyond the reach of the aesthetic?
www.drjwood.com
June 7, 2025 at 1:21 PM
Wyndham Lewis's 'Laughing Women'
Unpicking the history of Lewis's earliest Vorticist paintings
www.drjwood.com
June 7, 2025 at 1:19 PM