THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MALFEW SEKLEW

There is only one Malfew Seklew and Sirfessor Wilkesbarre is His Prophet. The polemical writings by and about Sirfessor Wilkesbarre, a Chicago radical, social aristocrat and egoist superman of the early 20th Century. Companion of Ragnar Redbeard, frequenter of the Dil Pickle Club, and a man too magnificent for one moniker, Fred Wilkes (1864 – 1930) traversed in his mind through socialism into a sardonic Nietzschean egoism as he made his way in the flesh from England to Chicago and New York. With an introduction by Trevor Blake, author of Confessions of a Failed Egoist, this volume gathers never before published biographical details of Wilkesbarre and his radical milieu. In addition, the editors have adduced over 250 footnotes and a number of strategically placed images.

As Seklew himself says: “Are you a Bromide or a Sulphide? A nonentity or a reality? Are you an unripe ego or an unfinished organism with underdone understanding and hard boiled beliefs, pingpong principles and petrified prejudices? Do you amble through the atmosphere with the courage of a carrot, the consciousness of a cabbage, the turpitude of a turnip, the pep of a prune, the punch of a parsnip and the psychology of a Sundowner in the swamps of Hobohemia, or do you dash through space with the courage of a Conqueror and the wisdom of a Will-to-Power Man? If not, massage your Mentoids, and be saved—from yourself at your worst.”