i read a book that gave me nightmares
My friend Bart introduced me to the work of J.M. Coetzee, someone I should have known about long ago. And I read his book Disgrace over the last couple of days, and it gave me nightmares. For two days. Really. I mean, sometimes I have a bad dream but I can't point to something and say that is the undisputed cause of it. But in this case, it was clearly the book. I read it then I have a nightmare, A+B=C.
The story is along the lines of an old professor in Cape Town who is disgraced from his academy because of an affair with a young student. He then goes to the countryside to live with his daughter, who is subsequently raped by a gang of thugs. It's about so much more than that though, I found it to be some of the most brutal and pointed writing I've ever read, every page is a challenge to the reader to take a moral stand on the events portrayed and that is no simple matter in the case of this book. It's a kind of critique of the cultural residue from colonial attitudes, questioning the larger guilt or innocence of seemingly benign western assumptions. I think it is a philosophical treatise disguised as bleak and well-written fiction. (Coetzee's Nobel lecture is highly recommended).
Maybe I should stick to comics for a few days now.
Comments
Well, I guess I can't tell you there's a nice Poppy Z Brite book, "Exquisite Corpse", a book of the rare kind that makes me close it for a while after reading some paragraphs on the metro. Just because I'm busy trying not imagining what I've just read.
I don't think I've got comics that makes me have nightmares. But I have loads that make me think about how sh*tty life can be, which his an horror in itself, I agree.
Alright, alright, check "Johnny The Homocidal Maniac" by Jhonen Vasquez. Classic stuff, includes goths, killed people, scared little boys, aliens, brainless parents, dead people, puppets, lines like "I'm escaping a house full of assholes so I can live in a world where they're NOT in chains", cut in pieces of various shapes and sizes people, black ink, content in the margins, after life, and, be afraid : cheerleaders. Highly recommended. Once you're addicted to Nny's book, check Squee's one too!
Posted by: Remi | May 15, 2004 2:17 AM
hi remi! i really shouldn't have used the word comics in such an offhand way, certainly didn't mean to imply that there are not very serious ones, art spiegelman comes to mind just off the top of my head. i have to confess i was thinking of comics in the very stereotypical sense, like the kind that are "fun" and "light." but, on second thought, most of my exposure to comics in recent years has been with really serious ones. even julie doucet's stuff has it's heavy moments. hmm... is there anybody who makes "fun" comics anymore?
Posted by: roddy | May 15, 2004 9:07 AM
they still make fun comix here in japan. along with every other kind...
Posted by: r. | May 15, 2004 2:47 PM
Oh, you know Julie Doucet! niiice!
If you want hilarious comics, the four legendary "Gregory" books (with Herman Vermin! and Wendel! and the crockroach!), the little boy in a stragiht jacket, has recently been re-published by DC comics in two volumes. Neil Gaiman called Marc Hempel's creation "the Peanuts for the 1990s"! (oh boy, it's Singapore '59 all over again).
Check "Tug & Buster" by the same author too (Image Comics).
Posted by: Remi | May 15, 2004 5:59 PM