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Ford Publications

Karlheinz Pötter's Exposition

Recent Books

Congratulations to Jörg Rademacher for the volume he edited, Modernism and the Individual Talent. Re-Canonizing Ford Madox Ford (Hueffer) (Münster – Hamburg – London: Lit, 2002), which has been warmly received. The Belfast writer and critic Danny Morrison has said of it:

Modernism and the Individual Talent  “is written in memory of Ford but, appositely, is also dedicated to the late W. G. Sebald: the former described as a ‘European writer’, the latter as a ‘writer of Europe’. It is a subtle distinction which echoes Ford’s own observations that despite the ‘eternal principles for all the arts’ the application of those principles are ‘eternally changing, or eternally revolving.’ For sure, it is the application of those principles which gives life to literature and gives challenge to the critic whose work is never done. These essays, most of which began life as contributions to symposia on Ford, and aimed at correcting the neglected influences of the German side to his character, are not just for devotees of Ford but capture the exciting times of the Modernist movement in which he lived and moved and significantly helped mould.”

Roger Poole comments: “Modernism and the Individual Talent is indeed a success on a scale which I had not expected. [Rademacher has] done more to establish a base for the history, historiography, Reception Theory and general Quellenforschung, than any comparable collection known to me. In particular, [Rademacher’s] own essay blazes the trail for a lot more work according the same lines, as does [his] insistence throughout that we should regard Ford as a European writer.”

Copies can be ordered from lit@lit-verlag.de at a cost of € 25,90.

ISBN 3-8258-4311-4. 224 pp.

Congratulations also to Laura Colombino, whose Ford Madox Ford: Visione/visualita e scrittura has just been published (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2003).

And last but by no means least, double congratulations to Sara Haslam, on the publication of her excellent book Fragmenting Modernism: Ford Madox Ford, the Novel and the Great War (Manchester University Press, 2002); and on the birth of her daughter Maisie!

Ford Publications

• In the Literature section of The Best of Everything (1980, ed. William Davis), Anthony Burgess rates Parade’s End as "Best Novel (In England)":
  "The best novel produced by a British writer (and British has everything to do with culture, nothing to do with blood) is the tetralogy by Ford Madox Ford (previously named Ford Madox Hueffer) called Parade’s End. It is also the finest novel about the First World War. It is also the finest novel about the nature of British society. Ford is neglected. The finest editor of his time, he not only encouraged Joyce and Lawrence but actually wrote a good deal of Joseph Conrad’s fiction for him. If this judgment on the supremacy of Parade’s End be cavilled at, I am prepared to yield and to submit Ford’s The Good Soldier as the best novel ever produced in England."

• David Trotter in "Lemon and Pink", London Review of Books, 1 June 2000, reviews Ford’s reprint of Return to Yesterday (ed. Bill Hutchings, Carcanet 1999) and the new collection, War Prose (ed. Max Saunders, Carcanet 1999).
  Of Return to Yesterday, Mr. Trotter says that it "is a book about ‘pure letters’, and about much else besides, about politics, and suicide, and market-gardening. Literature, Ford wants to say, however luminous, cannot escape its own inconsequence; and he renders that inconsequence by a steady withdrawal of attention, emphatic but never petulant from the performance writers make of their art."
  Reflecting on Ford’s production about the war, Trotter affirms that the "most significant outcome of [his] experience of war at the sharp end were the four novels collectively known as Parade’s End (1924-1928). [...] The world before the war was one thing, Ford maintained, and the world after the war another. They could not be spoken about in the same terms.
  "Carcanet’s volume of ‘war prose’ demonstrates to vivid effect that the gulf separating one world from the other was not as wide as he sometimes made out. Max Saunders [...], has pulled together a rich variety of reflections on [the] conflict and its aftermath."

Karlheinz Pötter's Exposition

Participants in the Münster conference were welcomed with a very attractive and original display mounted by Dr. Karlheinz Potter. It was a magnificent exhibition of art related to Ford Madox Ford's work and life. Walking through this exhibition of pictures and drawings, effectively arranged on panels, we were brought nearer to Ford's life, to the people he knew and to places he often visited.

The whole exhibit then travelled to the Canterbury Conference, where it attracted scores of scholars and visitors.

The display may be rented out for a small fee (to cover Dr. Pötter's expenses and shipping). It includes 18 panels, each numbered on the lower end with adhesive tapes in the back for easy mounting. Dr. Pötter also offers a similar exhibition devoted to James Joyce with a rich collections of photographs of places where the Joyces lived in Dublin, of portraits, of drawings, and more -- a total of 40 panels.

Please contact Dr. Karlheinz Pötter, Rockbush 28, Tel./Fax 0251 71 72 29, or Hof Hesselman, Am Hof Hesselman 10, Tel. 71640, 48 163 Münster, Germany.