The end of Summer and early Fall brings moderate weather, the last of the bright sun, and cool nights. An end to Summer projects- an art show, kids’ art camps, various supporting projects on the computer- and there is time to read in the morning and at night.
Half-finished books, the casualties of the limited bandwidth left over from photographing, pricing, promoting artwork and doing the show- are everywhere, and new ones are always coming in. As I dig out, here are the ones I was finally able to finish:
Final Cut, Charles Burns: His thing has been teen angst, with attractive young people subject to monstrous mutation and isolating plagues. The obsessive visual detail – heavy, hyper real blacks and muted crepuscular colors, along with charcoal skies- adding to the general creepiness.
This latest comic is much more subtle, with no monsters in sight, other than the implied presence, as the young people are making a horror movie. Yet the creepy hyperreality is definitely there, with mental health and emotional insecurity the stand ins for the mutant threats of his earlier work.
The effect is complex, compelling and powerful and sticks with you afterwards, which is why I’m sure I’ll return to it for my annual Besties.
Alive Outside, Cullen Buckhorn, Marc Bell, Eds.: My initial impression was of a zine/comics/ art anthology, aligning it with Bell’s Nog A Dod, (2004) inspired by the zine ambience, but not fully linking it to the comics canon, as it forwards zine work much more than comics, and does not seem to have much to say about what connects them.
The comics that do appear fit in to the related mini comics mode, but Bell’s own work is one of his baroque montage 2 page spreads, and not his comics. These relate vaguely to Frank King’s (Gasoline Alley) Sunday page montages, but more to Bell’s Raw Sewage Science Fiction collection, which eschews narrative for tableau. This is true of much of the work here, and the attributions for a couple mark them as gallery works.
Comics are famously hard to define (see: Thierry Groensteen ), but if we stick to words and/or pictures in sequence, then we have to accept Alive Outside (and Nog A Dod, and Raw Sewage) as closer to an art/graphics book. The fact that these are being published, and discussed, in a comics context is a testament to how much the medium has grown since Raw Comics ( or some might prefer, the earlier Zap Comics) asked us to examine the possibilities.
So Alive Outside is being compared to the seminal Kramers Ergot #4, which isn’t really accurate. It’s more in the line of NoBrow magazine, or the late, lamented Ganzfeld, edited by Dan Nadel. A wonderful thing, much needed, but not really a comics anthology. Try Eric Reynold’s Now Magazine for that.
My first Raw, #6, was hard to find, I had to move to a different city, and Alive Outside was also hard to find, online from another different city, and most readers have never heard of either. But Raw has had its huge influence on content, style and design, as has Kramers. It remains to see whether Alive Outside will match those, but it can’t be ruled out.
Book Tour, Andi Watson: The ever morphing Watson does hit a sweet spot here with a humorously Kafkaesque tale of an author book tour gone way wrong. Lovely euro-style cartooning and a murder mystery, with distant uncaring minor bureacracies down every quaint lane and alley. Brought to mind Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled, if you can believe that.
Blessed Be, Rick Altergot: Another murder mystery, this time in small town America, with a satirical Lynchian tale of slackers, hippies and low level pervs and fraternal orders.
Mason & Dixon Guide, Biebel: This incredibly expansive and allusive novel is always worth returning to- and I have, 3 times. This provides a bit of a cheat -I can read it through and experience the book, episode by episode, with the historical notes adding depth and color to the zany yet deadly serious 18th Century historical tale. But it’s hardly a cheat if I start reading the book through again. And I may. Pynchon’s newest novel has arrived this week, and I can feel another binge coming on.
Noir, Christopher Moore: A P.I. pastiche that I grabbed when I hit the wall on the others, due to fatigue and work. It grabs you with a hilarious situational set up, then zips through a rollicking comedy of murder, UFOs and gender queer romance set in 40s San Francisco. Moore provides a corrective to racist, misogynist genre fiction along the way, assigning major roles to people traditional detective fiction disrespects, all while keeping the banter humming, and the jokes popping. I knew I’d be reading Pynchon’s latest- also PI inspired- after it, so why not?
Hemingway Women, Bernice Kert: essentially a bio of EH, told from the perspective of the women, and 80’s second wave feminism. This traditionally researched and formatted bio seeks to shine a light on how the real life women differed from the fictional counterparts., and it shows the women are all more interesting than he made them out to be in fiction. This is part of the tragic life behind the innovative writing.
But thankfully, the author doesn’t seem interested in grinding an axe- the various prejudices Hemingway exhibits are quite common for the time in a repressive puritan country, as is the women’s response to them: to soldier on. The now recognized diseases of alcoholism and probable CTE ( from numerous car and plane crashes ) also cry out for a bit of sympathy. Even now, the fascists try to repress female opportunity in Scumpland, so retroactive blame assessment hardly solves anything.
One sympathizes with the yearn for adventure and meaning and relevance, not to mention young blonde journalists, but entering middle age, Hemingway seemed lost, and this book does add depth and understanding to the downward spiral of his long career, in which his author’s vision seemed to become more fragmented and unfocused as he sank into the bottle and mental problems. Two wives, Hadley Richardson and Martha Gellhorn, separated relatively quickly and thrived, two others stuck around and did not fare as well.
The Jonathon Yardley blurb on the back cover sums it up pretty well: “Falling in love with Ernest Hemingway seems to have been heaven, and being married to him seems to have been hell.” The fascinating mystery of why creative genius often seems to go hand in hand with destructive behavior continues.
The Hemingway binge wraps up soon, with To Have and Have Not the last of his novels I really want to read. I’d never read it, and it popped up on the shelf of a favorite bookstore. I’d already started it when A new Pynchon came out. A fragmented book from a turbulent time for EH. As noted, another Pynchon binge will take its place- Shadow Ticket will probably be discussed soon here, and I’ve always wanted to return to The Crying of Lot 49, read in college. My annual comics list, Besties, already has a couple of worthy candidates, but publishers often save major titles for this season. Too busy to read, I had squirreled away several interesting titles for these quieter times, so I’ll be back soon.
#Readinglist #Besties #Comics #Pynchon
Leave a Reply