A Manual for Living

 

John Cowper Powys outside his home in Corwen, North Wales, 1950s

With his hand resting on a walking stick, a white-haired old man is photographed outside his home at the edge of a Welsh village. There is nothing to indicate that this simple man had spent thirty years in America giving talks and lectures to huge audiences that included Ezra Pound, Charlie Chaplin, Emma Goldman, Paul Robeson and Isadora Duncan, many of whom became his friends, or that Henry Miller visited this house to meet the man with whom he had been corresponding. His unassuming appearance belies the fact that he is the author of 23 novels and has been compared to Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Thomas Hardy, D. H. Lawrence, Walter Scott and James Joyce and his autobiography, described as “one of the great books of the 20th century.”  A prolific writer, he wrote poetry, letters, works of fiction and non-fiction from the late 1800s until a few years before he died in 1963, prompting one commentator to remark on hearing of the news of death, Yes, but did he stop writing?” Among those who admired his work were Angus Wilson, Iris Murdoch, J. B. Priestley, Theodore Dreiser, Martin Amis and Margaret Drabble.  Yet his works are neglected and the majority of people have never heard of him.

Though poor in monetary terms, Powys left behind many riches particularly what he termed his ‘life-philosophy.’  Originally developed for his own personal use, he became convinced that he had found something that everyone could use to achieve a happier and more fulfilled life.  He was concerned with the lived experience of the ordinary person and disseminated his ideas through his writings not for material success or recognition but to help others to deal with the problems of living.

Although written many decades ago, much of what he has to say is highly relevant to our lives today as the themes he addresses are –life, happiness, death, truth, nature, - are timeless.  The trends and developments in science, technology and society that he identified have advanced and accelerated in recent decades and his ideas and strategies are, if anything, more relative and pertinent to our lives today.  If ever there was a time to rediscover him it is now.

Chance and fate led me to discover Powys but writings such as his should not be lying in the shadows waiting for the occasional person to happen upon them. It is for this reason that I am in the process of writing a book, A Manual for Living, about JCP's life-philosophy. Having compiled an anthology of his philosophy for living but unable to secure a publisher, I decided to write a narrative summary that I hope will be more attractive to publishers and more accessible to the reader.  JCP died in 1963 so there are copy-right restrictions in relation to his work and for that reason, I cannot self-publish the anthology but it is an option open to me with a narrative summary.  One way or another, I am determined to promote the ideas and wisdom of this overlooked writer and philosopher of the ordinary person.