Tarr

Tarr opens as a razor-edged modern novel of ideas, announced by Montaigne and shaped by P. Wyndham Lewis's fierce interest in art, temperament, civilization, and the clash between intellect and instinct. Its prologue frames the book as a timely response to war, Prussian militarism, and Nietzschean ideas of power, setting Tarr and Kreisler against each other as opposing forces: the artist as self-divided intelligence, the German as a type of violent, aristocratic will. From the start, Lewis promises a story of satire, psychological conflict, shock, and dark comedy rather than ordinary realism. In Paris, Tarr and Hobson reunite in a bohemian quarter crowded with painters, models, Germans, and café life, and their banter quickly becomes a contest of wit, pride, and concealed resentment. Their conversations spiral from teasing into philosophical combat over women, sex, marriage, art, appetite, and identity, with Tarr revealing both his brilliance and his vanity as he defends the artist's strange, isolated nature. Meanwhile, Kreisler's humiliation in an English club turns to rage, and a letter from Germany drives him toward a coldly staged suicide, deepening the novel's sense of instability, violence, and the tragic comedy of modern life. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.