From: word_chemist@hotmail.com   
      
   "selene1022"  wrote in message   
   news:1142277057.203503.193290@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...   
   > It is.   
   >   
   > The Apes of God   
   >   
   > Afterword by Paul Edwards   
   > Illustrations by Wyndham Lewis   
   >   
   > '' Every individual without exception is ... unbearable''   
   > Horace Zagreus, in 'The Apes of God'   
   >   
   >   
   > This new edition of a modern classic of satire, out of print in America   
   > for more than forty years, was originally published in London fifty   
   > years ago where it instantly created a firestorm of outrage and   
   > vituperation. The present edition preserves Lewis's full text - all   
   > 625 pages of the 1930 edition - and also retains the original cover   
   > illustration and sixteen interior designs.   
   > Acknowledged by the critics to be one of the most devastating books in   
   > our language, 'The Apes of God' strips bare the social affectations and   
   > malaise that made the British culture of his time so hateful to Wyndham   
   > Lewis.   
   > The period of the late 1920s, described later by Lewis as ''the   
   > insanitary trough between the two great wars.'' Lewis's mock-picaresque   
   > hero is Dan Boleyn, a 20-year-old Irish innocent. Tutored by a   
   > 60-year-old albino dilettante named Horace Zagreus, Dan travels   
   > reluctantly through the London art world. He is horrified (and   
   > confused, and bored half to death) by the false, contrived   
   > ''broadcasts'' of the ''Apes'' - a series of pseudo-artists who   
   > resemble, on the one hand, absurd mechanical dolls, and on the other,   
   > very specific personages of the era (like Sir Osbert Sitwell).   
   > Lewis's version of a world in which habitual falsehood has created   
   > general paralysis is fierce, unrelieved, and prophetic of an even more   
   > mediocre future.   
   > At the time of its publication, British poet and critic Richard   
   > Aldington called 'The Apes of God' ''one of the most tremendous forces   
   > ever conceived in the mind of man. For comparisons one must fall back   
   > to Rabelais and Aristophanes.'' Despite gaining occasional champions   
   > since then - including W. B. Yeats, who praised Lewis's   
   > ''intellectual passion'' - Lewis's satirical masterpiece has been   
   > resisted by our established modernist sensibility. This is no doubt   
   > because its triumphant, hilarious revulsion against cultural   
   > affectation continues to secretly outrage and offend the guardians of   
   > that sensibility.   
   >   
      
   I'll drink to that.   
      
   ROBBIE   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)