SOURCE: Adler, Joyce Sparer. “Wilson Harris and Twentieth-Century Man.” New Letters 40, no. 1 (autumn 1973): 49–61.

In the following essay, Sparer discusses Harris's complex use of language, symbolism, and multiple levels of consciousness to create “a vision of the possibility of a new conception of man by man in this age of humanity's deepest crisis and disunity.”

“Dear Reader, (THE JUDGE WROTE HALF IN THE MARGIN OF HIS BOOK AND HALF ON A VACANT CARD). My intention, in part, is to repudiate the vicarious novel … where the writer … claims to enter the most obscure and difficult terrain of experience without incurring a necessary burden of authenticity, obscurity or difficulty at the same time.” So begins a letter from the novelist/judge through whom Wilson Harris speaks in Ascent to Omai. It concludes with a reference to the undertaking the writer does believe in: “the formidable creative task of digesting and translating...