These three books reflect the beginnings of one of the most radical
and exhilarating figures in modern literature
Incandescent Limbo recounts White's years in Paris. Many a writer in the
modern era had made Paris a focal point of his or her activity, but
probably no one made more of it or got more out of it than Kenneth
White. While exploring a labyrinthine underworld, the book is
fundamentally an autoanalysis and traces the birth of the writer as an
intellectual nomad.
Letters from Gourgounel takes us from the city to a wild part of
south-eastern France, the Ardèche, where White undertakes a resourcing
in an elementary context. Hailed in England as a 'fascinating curiosity
of literature', this book not only made White famous overnight in
France, it was seen there as a turning point in the contemporary
situation.
In the third book, Travels in the Drifting Dawn, the intellectual
nomad begins his moves across territories and cultures. After passing
through the London underground of the sixties, then delving into the
ground of his native Scotland and neighbouring Ireland, we shift back to
the Continent, accumulating experience on different levels in France,
Spain, Belgium, Holland, before concluding the cycle in North Africa.
The trilogy is not only a summary of White's itinerary in its initial
stages, it opens up a whole intellectual and cultural programme.
