Wyndham Lewis Books

"The Art of Being Ruled" is a difficult 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 (you have to know a person to know when he's kidding). 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 expose 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 like "Self-Condemned", "America and Cosmic Man" and the later "Childermass" novels, 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 book was written in 1928, some reprints were made in 1951, and it's scarce as hen's teeth. It's a wonderful volume of all sorts of things to do with Christmas, from ancient to modern times. There's a little Scrooge in there, and the Nativity from medieval plays, and hundreds of snippets ranging from poems to meditations and commentaries. A truly wonderful book.

This is the most wonderful book about Christmas I have ever seen. It's a compilation of Christmas lore and excerpts, the Boar's Head Carol next to Chesterton's warm praise of Dickens's holy enthusiasm for the spirit of Christmas. Some are moving, some are funny, some are just glorious, and all are interesting. Very hard to find. Treasure it.

Long out of print, VERY worthwhile. A treasure trove of writings about Christmas, from miracle plays to bits from Dickens to poems to meditations. VERY fine book -- grab one when you can -- you will NEVER run out of interest in it, not even after years.

St. Philip Benizi is a leading ornament of the 13th century, and this book tells his life well. An added attraction is that the history of the origin of the Servite order--possibly begun on the day St. Philip was born--is told. The order did not obtain the definitive approval of the Church until Feb. 11, 1304--long after Philip's death. Philip was canonized by Pope Clement X on Easter Sunday, 1671, at the same time as St. Francis Borgia, St Gaetano Cajetan, St. Louis Bertand, and St. Rose of Lima. This is a well-done and very readable account of a great saint.