Boon, the Mind of the Race, the Wild Asses of the Devil, and the Last Trump;being a First Selection from the Literary Remains of George Boon, Appropriate to the Times
1915
Boon, the Mind of the Race, the Wild Asses of the Devil, and the Last Trump;being a First Selection from the Literary Remains of George Boon, Appropriate to the Times
1915
H.G. Wells presents the 'literary remains' of one George Boon, a fictional author of grandiose ambitions and spectacular failures, in this bizarre 1915 satire that feels like something between a literary hoax and a nervous breakdown. The book opens with an introduction by Wells himself, mourning Boon's absence in a world consumed by the First World War's carnage, then launches into fragments of Boon's unfinished masterworks: a treatise on 'The Mind of the Race,' a farcical epic called 'The Wild Asses of the Devil,' and something about 'The Last Trump.' Miss Bathwick appears as Boon's long-suffering amanuensis. The whole thing is part genuine satire of the literary establishment, part absurdist comedy, and part melancholy meditation on creativity amid civilization's collapse. It's strange, uneven, and occasionally brilliant, a window into how one of the great speculative minds of the era coped with a world that had gone mad.
