THE APES OF GOD

London: The Arthur Press, 1930. First Edition, one of 750 (# 92) signed by the author. Small 4to, pp. 625, bound in some soiled tan cloth, a very good tight copy. Bookplate on front pastedown. Issued by subscription. Morrow & Lafourcade A12a; Pound & Grover A11a. from Wikipedia: "The Apes of God is a 1930 novel by the British artist and writer Wyndham Lewis. It is a satire of London's contemporary literary and artistic scene.The novel is set in 1926, leading up to the General Strike in May. It has an episodic structure, following a young simpleton called Dan Boleyn from one encounter with the literati to another. Dan follows the directions of an infatuated sixty-year-old albino, Horace Zagreus, who believes him to be a genius. The 'Apes of God' that he meets are imitators of true creators; they are characterised as "prosperous mountebanks who alternately imitate and mock at and traduce those figures they at once admire and hate." (p. 123) Zagreus is himself only the imitator of another character, Pierpoint, who appears to be the origin of all the ideas that circulate in the society depicted in the novel. Pierpoint, though often mentioned and often maligned, never appears in the novel. He is described as 'a painter turned philosopher' (p. 129), a description that could be applied to Lewis himself (his 1927 book, Time and Western Man, contains a great deal of philosophical arguments)