499. Self-Condemned

Self-Condemned
Wyndham Lewis

1954
Around 440 pages

I am more excited about finally finishing all the Wyndham Lewis novels on the List than I am about reaching the big 500. I can't even dignify him with an official ranking, because I was bored with all of his novels equally. This might have been the least dull of the bunch, but maybe I was just relieved we were finally saying goodbye to this drone.

It's 1939, and Rene Harding knows a war is coming. He decides to leave his job as a professor in London and move to Canada, without consulting his wife. Wyndham Lewis called Canada "a sanctimonious ice-box." I guess he just hated everybody (but mostly Jews).  Rene is an unbearably selfish and controlling character, which I suppose makes sense, as this seems like autobiographical account of Lewis's actions during the war.

More than his other novels, Self-Condemned reminded me of Ayn Rand. Both writers are severe and tend to digress into lengthy political rants. Thankfully this List spares us from Ayn, but we weren't so lucky with ole Wyndham. 

RATING: **---

Interesting Facts:

In his essay "Good Bad Books", George Orwell says of Lewis "Enough talent to set up dozens of ordinary writers has been poured into Wyndham Lewis's so-called novels… Yet it would be a very heavy labour to read one of these books right through. Some indefinable quality, a sort of literary vitamin, which exists even in a book like If Winter Comes, is absent from them."

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