Homo Sappy ens

THE APES OF GOD--Wyndham Lewis-- McBride ($3). Though rumored to be aimed at the Sitwells (Edith. Osbert, Sacheverellj, Wyndham Lewis' Gargantuan satire carries poisoned arrows enough to riddle all the bohemians and neo-bohemians on earth. With a scalpel of wit in one hand, a cleaver of words in the other, the author lays open their pimplish coteries, shows them apish creatures loosely sexed. Wherever Art is, there are these Apes gathered. The fact that Satirist Lewis' account of their doings slipped the censor can only be explained by his book's disarming brilliance and enormous length. The chief gist of the Apes' preoccupations is revealed in the opening scene, where, outside Lady Fredigonde Follett's London mansion, "the policeman could be observed at his usual occupation known as Oh-dear-Mabel!, which consists in a repeated readjustment of the stiff melton trouser-fork, by a simultaneous flexion of both legs.'' What "Oh-dear-Mabel!" is for the policeman, the Artistic Life is for the Apes.

Into the charmed bohemian circle comes boyish Daniel Boleyn under the patronage of aged albino Horace Zagreus, reputed to be simply Wilde about young men. Zagreus undertakes to show Boleyn the ropes of Bohemia, sends him off to tea-parties and interviews with Apes Flagellant, Lesbian and the like. Boleyn takes his orders very seriously but cannot understand what it is all about. At Lord Osmund's drunken Lenten party all the world tries to act crazy, succeeds. Because of his comparatively sane behavior Boleyn, more mystified than ever, is cast off by Zagreus in favor of young Archie Margolin. Then Zagreus marries ancient Lady Fredigonde, who has a lordly income not derived from Art.

The Author. Englishman Percy Wyndham Lewis was born in Maine, in 1886. Precocious, at 15 he studied art at London's Slade School, few years later philosophy under Bergson at the College de France. In 1914 he exhibited paintings in London that led Ezra Pound to hail him as leader of a new school: Vorticism. Vorticist Lewis, together with Pound, edited two numbers of a vitriolic review, Blast, before he enlisted with the Royal Artillery in the War. Since then, an enfant terrible in earnest, he has written many biting books: Tarr, The Art of Being Ruled, Time and the Western Man, The Childermass. By its enormous scope and exuberant execution The Apes of God should do for modern satire what Joyce's Ulysses did for the modern novel.

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