⋙ Libro Gratis The Apes of God Penguin Twentieth Century Classics Wyndham Lewis Paul Edwards 9780140087024 Books

The Apes of God Penguin Twentieth Century Classics Wyndham Lewis Paul Edwards 9780140087024 Books

Download As PDF : The Apes of God Penguin Twentieth Century Classics Wyndham Lewis Paul Edwards 9780140087024 Books

The Apes of God Penguin Twentieth Century Classics Wyndham Lewis Paul Edwards 9780140087024 Books

Written during the Great Comma Famine of 1930, the run-on sentences and Joycean references can truly tax the reader. Getting through this vicious, verbose book is like struggling through great seas of peanut butter and marhmallow whipped words towards tiny islands of plot that can be seen at a great distance but advance slowly despite the most herculean efforts. Highly recommended for castaways and prisoners for life.


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The Apes of God Penguin Twentieth Century Classics Wyndham Lewis Paul Edwards 9780140087024 Books Reviews

The best (and bitchiest) book of the art demi monde ever written.
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.
Written during the Great Comma Famine of 1930, the run-on sentences and Joycean references can truly tax the reader. Getting through this vicious, verbose book is like struggling through great seas of peanut butter and marhmallow whipped words towards tiny islands of plot that can be seen at a great distance but advance slowly despite the most herculean efforts. Highly recommended for castaways and prisoners for life.