THE COMPLETE WILD BODY is the first in a long list, republished by Black sparrow Press, of exemplary essential modernistic landmarks on the road of excessive self-discovery by THE ENEMY, Wyndham Lewis his-self. To give you an inkling of the kind of bombastic verbiage that riddles this prose like so many death-traps: "To introduce my puppets, and the Wild Body, the generic puppet of all, I must project a fanciful wandering figure to be the showman to whom the antics and solemn gambols of these wild children are to be a source of strange delight."

The literary Lion here roars loudly somewhat unbecoming of English gentlemanry, which is exactly the vorticist point right in the center of this bull's eye Wyndham Lewis slays exactly all we ever thought refined and full of polite mannerisms in modern society. "tyros" accompany on canvas these stories of his, for Wyndham Lewis is one of the greatest painters of modernism as well as author, being the founder of VORTICISM, the only avant-garde movement of 20th century Britain; likewise he influenced and intellectually ruled and/or fascinated Pound, Eliot, Joyce, Stein,et.al.etc., and a slew of lesser-known (unjustifiably) Artists circa (roughly) the turn of the century to the dropping of the atom bomb. His Art like his life was lived under the persona of the enemy and his condemnation was indeed high praise in that he deemed whomever worthy of his intellectual onslaught. His graphic works brilliantly illustrate the volume and compliment the tales that smack of a science-fictive otherworldliness but are entirely realistic, to the extensive degree as to be super- realism (surrealism); especially in consideration that all the characters are mere auotmatons executing their behaviour patterns as if ordered to do so by some outside force of cosmic porportions. Not to say they are dull and predictable, not in any absolute sense; Ker-Orr is our adventuer, a "soldier of humour" in a very pataphysical sense, whose definition is the "science of imaginary solutions". Conjured up as by tricks is an entire situational reality where the narrator is faced with human mimickery and acts, deified with a strict militant stance,according to a system of beliefs prescribed by "inferior religions". Lewis rewrote/re-worked the stories twenty years plus later and tells us all he did in these pioneering myths he's still exhausting philosophically. The stories are replete with all the enthusiasm of a young artist forgeing new worlds in a time of intense innovation, and of all his myriad works, this book is my and many others favorite; I consider it one of the ten greatest books- among 50 plus boxes -I own. I would be-deck it with the constellations entire, not just five dim suns, which is not enough illuminism to shed lite on the innumerable profoundities barely contained herein.

While Joyce was still working on traditional prose in The Dubliners and Eliot hadn't entered his Waste Land, Wyndham Lewis wrote a series of short stories that shattered expectations of english writing. A correspondent of Pound, Eliot, Yeats and Joyce, Lewis was too prickly a personality to be accepted into the canon as they were. As with many great writers his achievement was too difficult and uncomfortable for society to accept. This collection prints the 9 stories about life in the Breton countryside as they were collected in 1927 and then follows them with the originally published stories from which they were revised. The prose still feels entirely new and strange, and, unlike most contemporary writing that tries to achieve that status, it is both entertaining and theoretically astute.

"The Art of Being Ruled" is a dificult book to review, because the author (P. Wyndham Lewis) takes an ironic view of the cultural, artistic and political movements of the early 20th Century, and irony is vastly overrated as a general way of getting one's message across. Lewis, a novelist and abstract/semi-abstract painter (the founder of England's 'Vorticist' movement) sets out to write a sort of companion piece to Machiavelli's "The Prince"-- but where "The Prince" is a manual about how to rule, Lewis' book is for the rest of us-- a sort of exposé of the mechanics of mass-culture and mass-rule.

Lewis had the bad luck of being born too soon-- his observations about the feminization of culture and about the rise of virtual reality, for example, would have been hard to digest at the time they were written, but nowadays they are almost clichés. What Lewis gets at (and you'll see this especially in his book "Time and Western Man") is the modern mania for novelty and subjectivism; Lewis is coming at these ideas from the point of view of an artist rather than a politician, so the book is less political than philosophical. In fact, Lewis changed his political views over the years, so much of the book contains early stabs at the more mature views he took in later books, but "The Art of Being Ruled" is very intelligent and entertaining, not to say prescient.

I did a thesis for my BA on PWL, a seriously overlooked figure, and used this book more extensively than any other. It is a partial autobiography of the years during and around the Great War. It is an excellent example of how sharp and witty his prose could be.

This collection is much more interesting *and* funny than a more recent anthology of bad poetry, because it draws so heavily on great poets--Wordsworth, Byron, Poe et al. Laughing at semiliterate amateurs is a cheap shot. The wonder is the follies of the talented, and Stuffed Owl displays these. The introductory matter and editorial comments are also brilliantly funny, and the index--yes, the index--is a scream. THIS TITLE SHOULD BE READILY AVAILABLE (publisher please note.)

Every reader knows of authors who were all the rage when they were alive and publishing, only to be forgotten or relegated to obscurity upon their death, if not before. They disappear for decades or generations, admired or consulted by those few who read in specialized fields; or they are the subject of intermittent articles in this or that journal. Thanks to the Internet they can be seen shimmering, a sort of astral projection, on web sites and list-serves with spotty attendances. In these venues situated on rural roads in the republic of letters they are argued with, championed, held up as the acme of what's misbegotten, or pegged as simply typical of a period. For fans, bitter consolation lies in their man or woman being reviled, as such shrill attention does indicate that the core of the oeuvre has not ceased to be dynamic, and perhaps threatening.

Occasionally authors have risen from the dust of library shelves, which is the closest we can now get to witnessing the Phoenix. These rescued figures become the product of cottage industries, but a well-timed nod from hollywood can escalate their reputations and swell their audience. Many of the latest literary finds are those whose work means something quite particular to current audiences - at times, but not in all cases, a retro chic - comprising enthusiasts, popular authors in a position to repay literary debts, scholars who have revisited past figures in search of their postmodern 'nowness,' and because of groundswells of curiosity from disparate parts. There is a lovely unpredictability in the resurgence of these artists which fosters hope in those whose favourite choice has not yet bounced back into the limelight. (In an attempt at a shove back onto the stage, see my Amazon review of Lewis' _Rude Assignment_.)

It is unlikely that Wyndham Lewis will ever again receive the attention, negative or positive, that his paintings and writings garnered during his lifetime, yet if any critical work of recent years could restore his dented reputation and, more fruitfully, bring his ideas back into view for a fresh examination, then it is this book by Paul Edwards.

In his combination of literary analysis and art criticism Edwards writes with economy, clarity, intelligence and sensitivity about Lewis' paintings, drawings, short fictions, novels and a mass of philosophically-minded and politically generated essays and speculative works. One realizes that Lewis, perhaps the most probing Modernist in the anglo-united statesian family, left no major concern of the 20th century ignored, even if only to swipe at it with pen and brush. It is to Edwards' credit that he maintains a focus on his subject's wide-ranging thoughts and positions, especially as they are transformed with the passing of time and as events, historical and personal, transform Lewis.

Certain aspects of this book call for special commendation: the examination of _Tarr_, Lewis' first novel; the analyses of _Time and Western Man_ , the central non-fiction work of Lewis' writings, and of _The Human Age_, his last fiction; and the constant engagement with the art works. Art criticism is often written in an abstract and coded way, and academic criticism is often larded with unnecessary polysyllabic constructions, but a key benefit of Edwards' style is that one can argue with his conclusions or suggested interpretations because he has made himself understood. There is no dancing with words, or playfulness in a deconstructionist sense, to obscure his points.

In the aftermath of this book it was instructive, in a disappointing way, to read a review by irish novelist John Banville of _The Crisis of Reason: European Thought, 1848-1914_, written by J.W. Burrow, which appeared in _The New York Review of Books_ (October 4, 2001, pp.38-40). On p.40 Banville responds to what Burrow says about Nietzsche:

"[...] There is a study to be made of the influence on modernism of Nietzsche's thinking, which is insufficiently acknowledged even by the most philosophically-minded of the modernists - it is hard to recall, for instance, a single mention of Nietzsche's name anywhere in Eliot's prose criticism."

Banville is mistaken when he says Nietzsche was not regarded sufficiently by "the most philosophically-minded" modernists, for as Edwards makes plain throughout his almost 600-page book (not a page too long), Lewis engaged Nietzsche in a constant debate (and dealt with many others as well). Pointing out this error on Banville's part is not meant to cast a slur against him; it merely shows how far Lewis has sunk below the critical horizon.

The book's layout is very good. In most cases, when art work is discussed the painting or drawing is at hand without needless flipping through the book. While as a rule footnotes are preferable, in this instance the use of endnotes is justified.

This book has given far greater pleasure than many others recently. For those unfamiliar with Lewis it is an excellent primer; for those just stepping into his sea of words it is an invaluable guide; and for those who are well acquainted with Lewis' concerns and motifs there is much to deliberate on, and hopefully respond to, in Edwards' original findings and his engagement with other critics.

Paul Edwards deserves more laurels than he is likely to get for writing about an artist who is underrated, over-scorned, difficult, and not very likely to experience a surge in popular appreciation. He also merits praise for writing in a direct manner, tackling the contentious aspects of Lewis' life and works head on, for his generally even-handed treatment of others who write on Lewis, and the zest underlying every sentence. His discerning enthusiasm will urge a reader to read Lewis' books again, or for a first time. Not many academics or critics achieve that notable goal.

Wyndham Lewis is the kind of writer who everyone respects
but almost no one reads. Apes of God has all the trappings of a masterpiece: iconoclastic prose style, heavy-duty intellectual content, penetrating psychology and a shadowy and mythic, bombastic and possibly insane authour.

The book however, has 2 serious faults IMHO

The first could also be an advantage, depending on your point of view. Wyndham Lewis was a very, very bad man. He shared Ezra Pound's addiction to Fascism and had, in the words of Hemingway "the eyes of an unsuccesful rapist."
His "right-wing" politics were/are the reason he is not generally taught in universities or colleges. He is called a mysogynist, and indeed his female charaters are all exceptionally shallow and stupid. I happen to like the brilliant vitriol and Lewis makes no claim to objectivity.

Secondly Apes of God is too long and exceptionally boring in parts. The long satires of the artsy-fartsy social scene accomplish their goal, but personally I don't find reading about the insipidity of dinner parties very titillating. My biggest gripe however is The Sex. Sexual tension holds the plot together, but Lewis has a strangely victorian inability to write about the act itself. The Socratic homosexual relationship between Dan and the Protaganist Zagreus is rendered in a totally sterile manner.

Wyndham Lewis's ( founder of VORTICISM= the only British Avant-Garde movement of the 20th century)Apes of God is a vicious satire exposing the posture and posuers of the art world then (circa 1920's London/Paris/New York et.al.)and's wholly applicable before and aft as all areas not just the arts are riddled through with scavengery: shams and fakers lusting after popularity, getting on their knees in curtsies and bows before their corrupt Gods whom they shamelessly ape (ie.copy,mimick)in the devout worship of finance and social prestige; for which they sacrifice and abuse the very name of ART, using it only to profit greedy wiles and have no concern whatever as regards beauty or the bettering of humankind, much less the quest for absolute knowledge and solutions to humankinds varied cosmic dilemmas. The apes practice strictly black magic, a voodoo of the dollar whence they make idiot dolls of both the public, and their brethen, and mock the genuine bohemia by fostering appearances, such as upper middle-class citizens dressing in expensive outfits to look poor---the absurdity of the accepted norm really does summons an image of apes wearing clothes to fit in with humans! As comparison is legit and somewhat inevitable, Lewis' satire exceeds in both depth and vituperation that of George Orwell,and in its lyrical balled is more beautiful than Jonathan Swifts'. Lewis is of that rare species of sufficient force to prosper and forge single-handedly a one man advanced guard, as his graphic works equal in everyway and exist on a perfect par with his literary works; he was also, besides brilliant novelist, satirist, and painter who by many is said to best Picasso,he was a profound philosopher, an essayist of biting wit, a rare playwright and poet who wrote "An Enemy Of The Stars" - a futurist-fuelled expressionistic masterpeice published in one of several of his literary journasls' as a fearless, undaunted and unswayable critic he established himself in the guise he took in all his eclectic works: THE ENEMY! In which sense his condemnation was itself a form of praise, testifying to the fact he considered it worthy of his towering abuses. His works, published extensively by Black Sparrow Press, numbers perhaps 50 titles, many of them numbering well over half a thousand pages apeice; he even wrote, as his last major work a spiritual science-fiction trilogy which I pray will be published in the near future...Lastly, Wyndham Lewis unlike his contemporaries, including those like Pound and Eliot who champion his works, has over time wholly retained all the vigour initially constructed round that swirling vortex he single-handedly created, a veritable tower of Babel of achievments which will stand for centuries to come as one of the great wonders of the world of Art; and The Apes Of God, though some claim to be an elephant,ghostly white with wide red eyes, still romps through the literary jungles, levelling with terrifying stomping power all in its way, and a trailing desolation in its wake. His Apes Of God are still pounding their chests, all claiming to reign sole and supreme king of the jungle, yet scatter like field-mice at the approaching tank of a man that is Wyndham Lewis, perhaps the only artist left from his generation or this one that's capable of killing every last one of them who would otherwise take over the planet. I am, and remain, grateful some select few still can revel in his handsomely republished works such as this missive, thanks to undaunted publishers such as John Martin at Black Sparrow, dedicated to the works they print, which is a rare enough occurence these days.

This is the novel upon which the play "La Boheme" was based. The novel was originally titled "Scénes de la vie de Bohéme. This book is Murger's tribute to Bohemians. He chronicles the adventures of four Bohemians as they struggle to survive in 1840s Paris. Murger seems to have created a tale based on his own adventures in Bohemia. So there is a trace of autobiography in these pages. Rudolph is the character most similiar to Murger. He is joined by his friends Schaunard, Marcel and Colline. They are all artists of one kind or another. They form a Bohemian club which is like a support group. Their lives and loves are well documented here. Murger must have felt great nostalgia for his own period of Bohemianism. It is a passionate tale that still resonates today. If you are a fan of the opera or just interested in Bohemians and French literature, this book is a pleasing read.

I love the refutation on this book it brought great analyzing terms. The thesis was quiet hard to relate to the title. I found it quiet interesting.

This book is hard to find. I have been hunting for it for 3 years. I guess I will look further on still...........

This impressionistic book would appeal to fans of DEVO and Thomas Pynchon; it makes no bones about the devolved status of the human race, but there remains a hard core of affection and good sense. The novel takes place somewhen over the river Styx, where the casualties of World War I have piled up and are waiting to be processed through to the Magnetic City. Their mediator is a Punch-like character called the Bailiff, who alternately panders to and mocks the candidates with the intent of purifying their motives and helping solidify their personalities. If you've seen Patrick McGoohan's TV series "The Prisoner", well... the Bailiff is like The President in the episode "Fall-Out". I have to confess that this is only the first book of a series and that I haven't read the others yet ("Monstre Gai" and "Malign Fiesta", which were followed by "The Judgement of Man"-- the fourth novel was left in outline form on Lewis' death). "The Childermass" was well-received at the time it was first published but is not very widely read these days; I think it has a great deal of relevance still and will hopefully find a new audience among present-day readers.

Lewis can be laugh-out-loud funny in the middle of a serious bit of social criticism, and here he manages to get in a few laughs at the expense of James Joyce (who was writing 'Finnegans Wake' at the time) and Gertrude Stein. I would recommend his books "Men Without Art" and "Time and Western Man" for more material in this area.

My only real complaint with this book is that it just seems to break off in the middle of the story for no apparent reason; but now I'll have to read the other books!

But if you are still looking try the second hand shops in the Charing Cross Road, London.

For those who don't know, 'The C' is a 1920s book of the dead, in which there is a mass processing hold-up on the banks of the Styx due to the slaughter of WWI, and I suppose you could add the flu epidemic. WL dictated two sequels into a taperecorder 30 years later when he was blind.

In his first novel, set in the cafes and nightspots of Paris during the beginning of the twentieth century, Wyndham Lewis presents the reader with a gallery of figures who live as a master race of artists. The action consists mostly of rows, one culminating in violence, during which the cast of poseurs and atavists engage in esoteric debates, which enable Lewis to weave in his own political and artistic concerns into the manifold of polemic. Typically of his novels, with their Fascist, racist, sexist, elitist biases, "Tarr" pulls no punches, assailing conventional bourgeois values in art and culture and proclaiming the figure of the artist as supreme. Along with Ezra Pound, Lewis was the founder of Vorticism, the British counterpart of Futurism, and also the joint editor of Blast!, the magazine in which Vorticist views were enunciated. With its glorification of velocity, violence, modernity and the machine, Vorticism's major tenets are consistently applied in the novel, with its brutal, striking, seemingly spontaneous prose style and its portrayal of the artist as a sort of automaton who will risk everything to attain his end, regardless of the damage that this may cause to others. However, the novel is let down by its lack of incident and the way in which the author blatantly allows his characters to act as mouthpieces for views which are clearly his own. A minor, and now almost forgotten, classic.

With Tarr, Wyndham Lewis drags the reader through a few months in the lives of a collection of relentlessly self-absorbed and repulsive expatriates infesting the cafes and pensions of Paris just prior to the First World War. Cynicism and fermenting racial hatreds simmer just below the surface of a stew of intellectual banter and social intrigue. Conspicuous in its absence is any sense of sincerity or personal integrity of feelings. When a sincere response does erupt, it results in absurdity as when Tarr attacks the hat of his opponent in frustration after failing to win his point in a philosophical discussion. All of the principal characters are obsessive poseurs whose every behavior towards one another is propelled by a calculated maneuvering designed to improve one's position in an informal, but powerful, pecking order. The machinations are as complex as the motivations are shallow. More often than not, an agenda outruns the control of the agent who sets it in motion and the character then watches helplessly as events destined to blight his life unfold before him. Depressingly, the players do not appear to gain any insight from their foibles regarding the error of their ways and Lewis' dim view of the character of his fellow man is unleavened by the humor that finds its way into his later novels. The greatest flaw I found in Lewis' Tarr is one typical of the first novels of writers possessing an active intellect. The narrative flow is occasionally disrupted by the author's attempt to incorporate his own social and philosophical theories into the dialogue of his characters. And although this volume lacks the imagination and sophistication of Lewis' later works, there are a number of finely wrought passages which foreshadow the talent he is beginning to develop. My favorite;

For the last hour he had been accumulating difficulties, or rather unearthing some new one at every step. Impossible to tackle "en masse," they were all there before him. The thought of "settling everything before he went," now appeared monstrous. He had, anyhow, started these local monsters and demons, fishing them to the light. Each had a different vocal explosiveness, inveighing unintelligibly against each other. The only thing to be done was to herd them all together and march them away for inspection at leisure.

Tarr, The 1918 Version is an enjoyable and worthwhile read if you have the time, but if you will read only one book by Lewis, leave this one on the shelf and, instead, make a grab for The Apes of God.

Wyndham's power derives from his tendency to be reactionary. Orwell, Pound, T.S. Elliot and Lewis all began with leftist tendencies, and evolved into a realization of the folly of superimposed mind control as practiced by the left. This novel is a stark satire of these "artistic" propoganda aspects as channeled through art. To attempt to label Lewis with all the ghastly "--isms" is to attempt to superimpose a like kind of modern leftist template over a wonderful '30's rebellion against exactly this kind of labelling. Hard as it may be to believe it, this putative thought control was even worse then, during the political ascendancy of communism.