SOURCE: "Self Condemned: Last Wills and Testaments," in Wyndham Lewis, Twayne Publishers, 1968, pp. 136-65.

In the following excerpt from a book-length study of Lewis's life and work, Pritchard considers Lewis's collection of stories Rotting Hill an artistic failure, noting that the collection 's lack of vitality and imagination mirrors the grey austereness of socialist Britain that was the target of Lewis's reproach in the stories.

Before his fiction and criticism of the 1950's began to appear, Lewis published Rude Assignment, a last enormous effort to explain, justify, qualify, and assert once more various positions he had taken—or had been accused by others of taking. An invaluable document about his past as revealed in the books he wrote, it is perhaps not to be read through or appreciated as an entity so much as to be consulted for the backgrounds and outlines of controversies and misunderstandings. Ideally, Rude...