from "America and Cosmic Man," Wyndham Lewis (1948)

Writer, artist, and literary critic Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) offered a kaleidoscopic view of American history in America and Cosmic Man (Doubleday, 1948) one of a score of books that commented on the bold new shape of the geopolitical world after World War II.

Although the title would suggest a kind of mystical world-to-come, these personal and political essays are pragmatic and often conservative in their tone, more than a bit cynical of developing government control, and sometimes wide of the mark: the hard reality of post-war politics in Europe and America far outpaced the hopes of the artist, who wrote most of these essays in 1946. He hoped America might lead the way to the end of the "plural sovereignty" of nations, "now that the earth has become one big village, with telephones laid on from one end to the other, and air transport, both speedy and safe."

As one critic remarked about the clash of ideals and realities that developed of the Cold War, Korea, and McCarthyism, "Little did Lewis realize what a rotten example the American average man would set." Though world events -- and his own checkered history as a conservative provocateur -- proved his conclusions at times faulty, Lewis's sharp wit makes for entertaining reading. From a chapter simply entitled "American History," here he outlines the "perfect polarity" between two of the nation's Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.


The history of America is compact, because so short, and -- in consequence of America's remoteness -- not mixed up with those of other people's. Up to the "shot that rang around the world," or more formally, up to July 4, 1776, when America declared its independence, Americans were Englishmen. ...

The new state duly came to birth in the year 1776: it was an English civil war, a Whig putsch against George III, engineered by a group of ambitious English colonists. The colonists participated, as Whigs and Tories, in English politics. When the King's army was defeated, the American Whigs drove out all the Tories -- the "fifth columnists" of that day -- and confiscated their property.

... (The Constitution) is venerated as if Jehovah had stepped out of a cloud and handed it to General Washington. Its terms have been religiously observed ever since, by Swede, Swiss, Pole, Chinese, Jew, and even by the Irish. Only Lincoln acted as if it were not there and paid with his life for this sacrilege. ...

As history, that of Americans is fascinatingly simple ... The great landmarks are 1776, when the U.S.A. started, and 1861-65, when the Civil War occured. The next big date is 1914-18. Everything in between is just a story of bigger and bigger, and of more and more. (One cannot describe it as a story of better and better.)

The Republic, with its "rigid" Constitution -- except for this big hiatus in the sixties, given over to fratricide -- has run smoothly along: chopping down trees, killing Indians, and building up larger and larger factories, taller and taller houses.

American history has a further advantage: namely its provision of a perfect political polarity, in the persons of the two most important Founding Fathers, Jefferson and Hamilton. (Washington is not important, except as a symbol.) Right at the outset came this faultless pair of opposites. The former is the model radical, the latter the model conservative.

All American politicians today are in theory Jeffersonian, in practice Hamiltonian. It is highly confusing for the European ... It was Jefferson who insisted upon a Bill of Rights, whereas Hamilton typically opposed it in The Federalist, comparing such a document to "a treatise of Ethics." ... For him ethics had nothing to do with government. But for Jefferson they had everything to do with it.

(Self-portrait, above: "Wyndham Lewis as the Tyro," 1921)

James Warhola's "Uncle Andy's Cats" (2009)

Animals have been an integral part in the lives of many artists and writers. Creative individuals with career reputations for being reclusive, difficult or aloof have had their favorite pets. Late in life even the seemingly incorrigible William Burroughs himself played host to a succession of felines, and in 1954, unlikely as it seems, Andy Warhol already had a Manhattan apartment overrun with cats.

That year, he created a picture book of cats to give as Christmas gifts featuring calligraphy by his mother Julia. All but one of the Warhol cats (the real ones, 25 of them) answered to the name Sam, except for one named Hester, a gift from Gloria Swanson. Warhol hand-painted each of the lithographs in the edition of 150 copies of the book, and tinted Hester a beautiful pale wash of color.

The book's name came from a suggestion by Warhol's friend Charles Lisanby. Julia wrote out the cover title with a missing letter "d": 25 Cats Name Sam and One Blue Pussy. Warhol was charmed by the accidental nature of the imperfection and left his mother's original spelling intact. Itwas never disclosed whether Warhol also meant to include only 17 cats in each book -- perhaps he felt that given the nature of cats, they would multiply in number to 25 soon enough.

Which, apparently, is indeed what happened. James Warhola, the artist's nephew, completes the picture with Uncle Andy's Cats (Putnam, 2009). It's the wide-eyed, illustrated children's story of how Hester and a single Sam created a houseful of pets in the unlikeliest of settings.

Warhol's new uptown apartment, in 1962, is already bursting with the advertising displays, Brillo boxes, and raw material of the new art he was creating. A carousel horse stands in the living room, and Siamese cats courtesy of Sam and Hester are everywhere. For James it's a carnival-mirror image of his own father's work as a Pittsburgh junkman, and the seven-year-old is understandably delighted. He and his six siblings have the run of the townhouse's three floors, play in rooms crammed with bric-a-brac, wake Uncle Andy in the morning curled up with a bed full of cats.

The carnival atmosphere, of course, is not for everyone. In the previous story of Uncle Andy's: A Faabbblous Visit With Andy Warhol (Putnam, 2003), James's mother wonders when Andy is going to clean up the mess. James and his father, though, are amused at Andy's ability to turn what looks like junk into something else altogether: art.

The cats, surely one or two who were presented as gifts as well, made an impression on Warhol's young nephew. His family's trips from Pittsburgh to New York provide James with an early and very unique glimpse of an artist at work. The visits are also an ad hoc education on the value of creative chaos.

The two books illustrate a cheerful family dynamic, presenting an aspect of Andy's private life that seldom gets explored, and as a children's book it's natural that the impromptu family visits never collide with Andy's more arcane and famous personal pursuits. But the visits inspire James to develop as an artist, briefly working for Andy himself, then as an illustrator of science fiction (to Andy's chagrin) and also a staff artist for Mad magazine as one of its "Usual Gang of Idiots."

Both books are meant to be fun introductions to the original King of Pop. Warhola's intention in creating the books for children, he states in an illustrated interview, is to demonstrate "there are better things in life than watching TV." In addition to his career as an illustrator Warhola is a consultant of the Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art in the family's ancestral town in Slovakia, a permanent exhibit filled with art created by Andy, Paul, and James.

(This post is for Dexter, the eleven-year-old adventurer, who has decided on his own to summer elsewhere than a house with two German Shepherds and a half-blind collie. )