Will’s Reviews > Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself > Status Update

I agree with what I take to be the central point of the Book VI, that violence is always tragic and can never be fully justified. But the image of an innocent slave owner killed by his slaves doesn’t feel like a great way to make this point


That being said the section isn’t totally without merit: the emergence of a revolutionary conscience is cool, ditto the ideas around the pamphlet and its creation of history

“What is the world around us but a great concert-hall, echoing with the music of birds and beasts, of wind, water, and foliage? what but a great gallery of pictures, painted by the hand of Providence? Nature is a painter—Nature is a musician; and her sons can do nothing better than follow her example.” Book V, Ch 3.

“As for the president, we would have him reserved for a nobler purpose; we would have him boiled down to a soap, according to the plan recommended by the French chymists, to be used by his successor in scouring the constitution and the minds of the people.”

Book IV, Chapter 7.

Outrageous. Absolutely hilarious. Genuinely one of the funniest books I’ve ever read.

Its musings on the soul and the body feel serious without being suffocating, and extremely prescient given the near ubiquity of bodies, orientation, space, etc in modern theoretical writing.