In parenthesis

David Jones

"An epic of war like no other wanbook is one of the most remarkable literary achievements of our time." DAMES CITERARY SUPPLEMENT

"This writing has to do with some things I saw, felt, and was part of with qulet modesty, David Jones begins a work that is among the most powerful Imaginative efforts to grapple with the carnage of the first World War, a book celebrated by W. B. Yeats and T. 5. Eliot as one of the masterpieces of modern literature. Fusing poetry and prose, gutter talk and high music, wartime terror and ancient myth, Jones, who served as an infantryman on the Western Front, pre- sents a picture at once panoramic and intimate of a world of interminable waiting and unforeseen death. And vet throughout he remains alert to the flashes of human ity that light up the wasteland of war.

"David Jones's In Parenthesis, the great work to have spoken for the generation of the First World War, is rooted in timeless values. Jones retired into his dug-out where every small object had meaning and spoke to him of a 'real world' very different from what is so-called by the media-men, a real world in which, even on the field of battle, 'everything that lives is holy."

-KATHLEEN RAINE