Monstre Gai

The Human Age #2

by Wyndham Lewis

In the second book of "The Human Age" trilogy Pullman and his ex-school-fag Satterthwaite try to gain admission to the Third City, a purgatorial world beyond the grave, by joining the entourage of a cynical, ambiguous and authoritative figure called the Bailiff. He may be the devil or belong to the devil's forces and is in fact the Gay Monster, whom Lewis had defined as "a man 'beyond good and evil,' a destroying angel and cultivated Mephistopheles". Once inside the city, Pullman must choose between the evil Bailiff and his arch rival, the angelic Padishah (or great king), who is a sentimental bore. He remains loyal to the Bailiff and must flee with him when God's angels recapture the city.

Genres: Fiction

254 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

(Percy) Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) was a novelist, painter, essayist, polemicist and one of the truly dynamic forces of the early 20th century and a central figure in the history of modernism. He was the founder of Vorticism, the only original movement in 20th century English painting. His Vorticist paintings from 1913 are the first abstract works produced in England, and influenced the development of Suprematism in Russia. Tarr (published in 1918), initiated his career as a satirical novelist, earning the praise of his contemporaries: "the most distinguished living novelist" (T.S. Eliot), "the only English writer who can be compared to Dostoevsky" (Ezra Pound).

After serving as an artillery officer and official war artist during the First World War, Lewis was unable to revive the avant-garde spirit of Vorticism, though he attempted to do so in a pamphlet advocating the modernisation of London architecture in 1919: The Caliph's Design Architects! Where is your Vortex? Exhibitions of his incisive figurative drawings, cutting-edge abstractions and satirical paintings were not an economic success, and in the early 1920s he devoted himself to study of political theory, anthropology, philosophy and aesthetics, becoming a regular reader in the British Museum Reading Room. The resulting books, such as The Art of Being Ruled (1926), Time and Western Man (1927), The Lion and the Fox: The Role of the Hero in the Plays of Shakespeare (1927) and Paleface: The Philosophy of the Melting-Pot (1929) created a reputation for him as one of the most important - if wayward - of contemporary thinkers.

The satirical The Apes of God (1930) damaged his standing by its attacks on Bloomsbury and other prominent figures in the arts, and the 1931 Hitler, which argued that in contemporary 'emergency conditions' Hitler might provide the best way forward in Germany damaged it yet further. Isolated and largely ignored, and persisting in advocacy of "appeasement," Lewis continued to produce some of his greatest masterpieces of painting and fiction during the remainder of the 1930s, culminating in the great portraits of his wife (1937), T. S. Eliot (1938) and Ezra Pound (1939), and the 1937 novel The Revenge for Love. After visiting Berlin in 1937 he produced books attacking Hitler and anti-semitism but decided to leave England for North America on the outbreak of war, hoping to support himself with portrait-painting. The difficult years he spent there before his return in 1945 are reflected in the 1954 novel, Self Condemned. Lewis went blind in 1951, from the effects of a pituitary tumor. He continued writing fiction and criticism, to renewed acclaim, until his death. He lived to see his visual work honored by a retrospective exhibition at London's Tate Gallery in 1956, and to hear the BBC broadcast dramatisations of his earlier novels and his fantastic trilogy of novels up-dating Dante's Inferno, The Human Age.

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A perfectly functioning capitalist world as a sort of purgatory (again though, purgatory isn't really the right word because as with the last book, Lewis is creating his own version of the afterlife) is pretty hilarious. I'm not exactly sure how to interpret this book other than saying it is Lewis' wholly unique view of the afterlife which is basically just an exaggerated version of our current world. So, like Dante did in his era, Lewis is showing us how our own world is a sort of purgatory. All the Devil vs. God war stuff was also fascinating and unexpected from a novel of the time period. I'm excited for the conclusion to this trilogy!

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

there are some kind of interesting ideas in here but wyndham lewis's prose style is so tame compared with his earlier work that it's not very good reading. the increased focus on plot and character isn't helping either.

[Fnaught · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an infinitely superior, gay, very English alternative to ‘The Master and Margarita’ (1928), this deserves to be nothing less than the alcoholic baseline of postmodern English writing.
-Drink/hallucinate whilst you read! Devils included.

[Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

perhaps appropriately given his opinions on joyce wyndham seems to have reversed his journey in prose style: where his early work is barbarous and barbed, perhaps climaxing in the childermass's brick walls of bizarre language here at the latter end of his career he writes with much more limpid clarity, it's a fine and beautiful style but one misses the force of the earlier fiction

[Kelly James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I consider 'The Childermass' to be among the novels in Lewis' 'mad genius' period, and something of a baroque masterpiece. Unfortunately, both 'Monstre Gai' and 'Malign Fiesta' are a letdown in this respect. They have a much more 'straightforward' approach in comparison, and the sense of wonder I felt while reading The Childermass was nowhere to be found. That being said, it was still enjoyable to see the direction in which Lewis finalized the story. I only wish the author had lived long enough to complete the fourth volume he had planned, as I felt the conclusion of the trilogy was somewhat unresolved.

[John Brooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed my entire life through the perception of the author.