If you're into snide, barbarically cruel satire (who isn't?) you'll love the first half of 'Snooty Baronet'. Initially, you'll be repelled by its seemingly slapdash prose and pugnacious narrator but if you hang in there you'll wind up feeling uplifted by Wyndham Lewis's misanthropic clowning. Among various fads of the 1920s, he savagely ridicules behaviorism, liberated women, whale hunting, human kindness, publishers, the special theory of relativity, and D.H. Lawrence. Unfortunately, the second half becomes too silly when the characters travel abroad as part of a far-fetched publicity stunt. But nothing beats those opening chapters for bracingly ruthless observation and splendidly original English.

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