Word: tewlers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Unheroic Hero. Teddy Tewler was born ("shyly, not headfirst but toe-first, like a timid bather") about the turn of the century. Even his conception was an accident. "One knew there was some sort of knowledge about [contraception], but one couldn't be too careful whom one asked, and your doctor also in those days couldn't be too careful in misunderstanding your discreet hints and soundings." When Teddy was four, his father died of indecision (you can't be too careful) among a convergence of busses. In his extreme youth Teddy enjoyed sticking out his tongue...
Until Evahgeline Birkenhead's advent, Teddy's amative life had been in part fanciful, in part optical, in part under suburban hedges ("Starp it, I tell you!"), entirely virginal. When Teddy surprisingly received a comfortable bequest, Miss Birkenhead beat Miss Blame in the race for Hero Tewler. The seduction, marriage and sexual initiation, cruel but convincing, are brightened only by a dandified best man who neighs a stentorian Hey! before every brontosaurian innuendo...
Ideers. With biological maturity, Teddy developed the only idea he ever had—the idea that all "ideers" are pernicious "Character" and "deeds," he decided, have nothing in common with ideas. The one sure way to exorcise intelligence is to shout the word "Bawls!" Teddy Tewler had reached complete Tewlerhood...
...large Author Wells sets up his awful, trapped symbol of mass man without benefit or need of comment. But in the last pages he speaks his mind. Tewler m Wells's opinion, is not only the symbol of a class, but of nations. Everywhere the Tewlers of this world have the same desperate deafness to the voice of reason the same vulnerability to the voices of church, state, school, law, wealth, authority m all its forms. Reason: these voices are themselves the voices of the Tewlers Between outsize Tewlers who lead and run-of-the-counter Tewlers who follow...
What Then Shall We Do? This question Biologist Wells answers with another questionקs Homo Tewler born dumb or is he made dumb? Is Tewleremia hereditary or environmental? If the former, the end of man (thanks to the appalling power of human ingenuity) is not far off Another war or two will do it, if this one fails. But if, as Wells believes, Homo Tewler is a bundle of terribly conditioned reflexes, then he is redeemable. First however, he must discard his mental and social shackles, do the two things he is conditioned never to do: listen to reason...