cover image Lower Than Angels: A Memoir of War and Peace

Lower Than Angels: A Memoir of War and Peace

W. W. Windstaff. Enigma Books, $19.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-910155-24-3

In his introduction, writer Stephen Longstreet maintains that the pseudonymous W. W. Windstaff, who died in 1931, was a member of a socially prominent U.S. family, which he does not identify. A fighter pilot for Great Britain in WW I and an active participant in 1920s Paris and Greenwich Village cafe societies, Windstaff may have had an interesting life--but he fails to communicate it in these graceless, rambling and deeply cynical memoirs. Although Windstaff claims to have been acquainted with the leading literary figures of the period, among them F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Eugene O'Neill, he holds them all in disdain and expresses loathing for the women he was involved with, as well as for the gays and lesbians he encountered, who included Gertrude Stein. The book is subjective and venomous character assassination masquerading as reminiscence. Illustrated. (Feb.)