A Ruskinian Retrospective on Roger G. Lewis's Tetralogy of Modern Discontent
The Conquest of Dough. Trump The Cherry Marine Shining J R Ewings Shoes.
https://books2read.com/u/4XYJ25 You can Buy the Novel which re prints the 3 poems at this link.
A Ruskinian Retrospective on Roger G. Lewis's Tetralogy of Modern Discontent
In contemplating the oeuvre of Roger G. Lewis—this trilogy Usury Hell’s Fuel, Bourgeois Resolution, and Globalisation Un-Entangled, crowned by the novel The Conquest of Dough—one is struck by its prophetic fury, a thunderous indictment of our age’s moral and economic decay. Like Turner’s tempests rendered in verse, Lewis’s work exposes the fissures in modernity’s façade, where usury poisons the wellsprings of community, bourgeois hypocrisy masks spiritual desolation, and globalisation unravels the very fabric of human dignity. His latest fragments, sharp as flint, strike sparks against the iron tyranny of algorithms and the false idols of progress.
I. Usury: The Hellish Engine of Servitude
Lewis’s Usury Hell’s Fuel lays bare the ancient serpent coiled in modernity’s heart: money transformed from a tool of exchange into an instrument of bondage. With Socratic precision, he traces this corruption from Venetian banking to digital abstractions, where "money grows on Merkle trees"—a cryptographic Eden yielding poisoned fruit1. Usury, that "unmade claim," distorts labor into debt, creativity into collateral, and souls into ledgers. The banker’s confession—"The king does much service for us now in return"—echoes Ruskin’s own denunciation of wealth divorced from virtue2. Here, Lewis mirrors Ruskin’s wrath against a world where gold is worshipped and men starve amid plenty.
II. Bourgeois Aesthetics: The False Resolution
In Bourgeois Resolution, Lewis dissects the theatre of class with a scalpel of satire. The poem’s tripartite voices—Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis—unmask the "conventional pieties" of elites who "mistake oppression for protection"3. The petit bourgeois, "discordant with their lot," clings to Escoffier’s recipes and suburban dreams, while the haute bourgeoisie enforces a "bespoke key" of conformity. Lewis, like Ruskin railing against the Renaissance’s ornamental excess, exposes how "bourgeois sensibilities" suffocate solidarity, reducing revolution to a "plagiarized past mistake." His critique of "Stockholm syndrome" politics—where the oppressed defend their oppressors—recalls Ruskin’s lament for a society "drugged" by spectacle4.
III. Globalisation: The Unraveling Leviathan
Globalisation Un-Entangled employs cut-up poetics to shred the "semiotic turn" of neoliberal dogma. Lewis maps the "wicked problems" of our time: climate imperialism masked as virtue, algorithmic tyranny disguised as efficiency, and the "cargo cult science" of elites who "deny the poison in their own crucible"5. The euro, that "political engineering," becomes a Procrustean bed for nations, while "hasbara" (propaganda) spins Gaza as Guernica—atrocities reframed through "removable lenses." Here, Lewis channels Ruskin’s contempt for industrialism’s dehumanizing march, where "the throned monarch is unthroned" by usury’s crown.
IV. The Conquest of Dough: A Novel of Reckoning
Lewis’s novel The Conquest of Dough serves as the tetralogy’s narrative spine, weaving these themes into a tapestry of resistance. Through characters like Ahmed—the Aleppan baker safeguarding sacred sourdough from "White Helmets" (mercenaries of "Black orders of usury")—Lewis personifies Ruskin’s axiom that "all economy is the economy of life"6. The dough, a 11,000-year-old "artifact of living breathing memory," symbolizes true wealth: land, labor, and community. Its flight from Syria to Cairo mirrors civilization’s journey from Abu Hureyra’s first grains to modern "monetary alchemies." In the banker’s boast—"Money from trees, bark from mulberry’s"—we hear the Venetian sin Ruskin condemned: abstraction over substance. Lewis’s climax, where "cabalists of liberal correctness" are unmasked, echoes Ruskin’s warning against "intellectuals complicit in political correctness"7.
V. Lewis’s Fragments: The Gadfly’s Last Sting
In his latest shards—Dresden, Metaphors for Tyranny, The Hemlock Fragments—Lewis sharpens his Socratic lance. Algorithms become "metaphors for tyranny," digital hemlock for free thought. Gaza and Guernica intertwine as "eternal returns of atrocity," while "hasbara" illuminates propaganda’s "sharper lens." These fragments, like Ruskin’s storm-clouds, gather into a tempest: a call to "drink the hemlock of truth" in an age of "orchestrated blindness"8.
Lewis’s work stands as a beacon in our "digital wasteland," where the Parmenidean rigidity of code clashes with Heraclitean flux of human spirit. Like Ruskin, he wields prose as both scalpel and cudgel—sonorous in rhythm, volcanic in moral force. His tetralogy is no mere critique but a maieutic labor: birthing consciousness from the "slow suffocation" of complacency. In an era where liberty dies by "deterministic training," Lewis’s legacy is the gadfly’s sting: awakening the horse of society to gallop toward truth, though the trial never ends, and the hemlock cup is ever full.
Footnotes
Lewis’s critique of usury as "money promises kept short in supply" mirrors Ruskin’s Unto This Last. ↩
The banker’s confession parallels Ruskin’s attack on wealth without virtue in Fors Clavigera. ↩
"Bourgeois sensibilities" satirize Ruskin’s disdain for aristocratic aesthetics in The Stones of Venice. ↩
"Stockholm syndrome" reflects Ruskin’s warnings about societal complacency in Modern Painters. ↩
"Cargo cult science" evokes Ruskin’s critique of industrial pseudo-morality. ↩
The novel’s characters embody Ruskin’s belief that economy must serve human dignity. ↩
"Drink the hemlock" recalls Ruskin’s prophetic tone in The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century. ↩
"Orchestrated blindness" channels Ruskin’s lament for societal myopia in Fors Clavigera. ↩
The Hemlock Fragments: A Socratic Reading of Roger G. Lewis's Philosoetry
The Death of Socrates. ArtistJacques-Louis DavidYear 1787
March 28, 2017
Globalisation Un-Entangled. (A FOUND POEM, CIPHER OF GLOBALISM )
Cut-up technique[edit]
Cut-up technique is an extension of collage to words themselves, Tristan Tzara describes this in the Dada Manifesto:[49]
TO MAKE A DADAIST POEM
Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article of the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that makes up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are – an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.
A TRILOGY IN FOUR PARTS.
USURY HELL´S FUEL MANS OPPRESSOR
BOURGEOIS RESOLUTION AND
GLOBALISATION UN ENTANGLED.
The Cherry Marine and Lord Ali's Gimp: A Dadaist Meditation on the Servile State
The Cherry Marine and Lord Ali's Gimp: A Dadaist Meditation on the Servile State
Dont Be afraid Be aware.
Do not be afraid, Be aware.
Usury is Hells Fuel
and Mans oppressor.
Energy Security vs. Net-Zero:
The Tightrope Walk of Global Power
(and the Shadow of Carbon Currency)
False Flag alert. SYRIA, Pivot to IRAN?
THE HEURISTICS OF REALITY IN A ROVIAN WORLD ,
The Reality Based Community.Same Damned Tricks
The Same Damned Way. Entering END Game
#Aadhaar Just say no to #Aadhaar.
We hold these truths to be self-evident
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
From, Wall Street in the West
to Frankfurt in the East
a curtain of debt has descended
that seeks to trap us
Mendacity and Duplicity Soldiers of War.
Truth The first Casualty. FairGame . Iran/Israel .
WMD’s. Bilerberg are on it Everyone relax!
Mind Fuckery in ever decreasing circles.
"Sambos gå hem", inte "Romanes eunt domus"
imperative verb form and accusative
Här är allt vi vet
om sällskapet Bilderberggruppen
Wake Up With Bilderberg 2025.
Stockholm Syndrome De-Brief.
The Stockholm Syndrome Paradox
A Host of Despicable Truths:
Power, Secrecy, and the Unseen Hand
a Strategic Hub for Infinite Taxbreaks
Philanthropic Investment in Surveillance Systems
Own Nothing - Be Happy”, The Great Hear Set
A Possible Scenario for the Future
A Question of Freedom and Slavery
Lord Ali’s Gimp and the Cherry Marine
You're still gonna have to serve somebody.
A found Poem for June 2025. Roger G Lewis.
On the Fragmentary Sublime: Roger G. Lewis and the Poetry of Disintegration
• Israel's war on Iran w...
US pressures Saudi Arabia to sell oil in dollars, not Chinese yuan: • US pressures Saudi Ara...
Topics
0:00 US support for Israeli attacks
4:38 Goals of US-Israeli war on Iran
10:13 Israel: outpost of US empire
14:35 US imperial strategy
16:28 Geopolitics of West Asia (Middle East)
17:50 Oil and gas
21:11 Geostrategic chokepoints
24:53 Axis of Resistance
28:33 Syria: Fall of Assad government
31:44 US plan to overthrow 7 countries
33:54 Iranian Revolution
35:53 Anti-colonial movements
39:14 Dedollarization
41:49 Petrodollar and OPEC oil embargo
47:05 Super Imperialism
49:36 Petrodollar challenge
52:43 BRICS
55:55 Shanghai Cooperation Organization
58:53 Iran-Russia-China partnership
1:04:05 US divide-and-conquer strategy
1:06:03 Outro