cerebus the one man political machine

"High Society", Dave Sim, 1986

I thought that Cerebus was supposed to gain MORE cohesion as the series went on. Instead, with "High Society", only the second book (reprinting issues 26-50), Sim's giganto comic series only clusterfucks more often, and more the aggravation of the reader, myself.

I was entertained by the first 25 issues. They were funny, a little punchy with the upper-class and the ridiculousness of religion. Then Sim really started to get serious with these topics in "High Society"...I think. If you can truly explain to me the difference between the Cirinists and the traditional Tarim followers and Suentus Po's people, then please. Tell me their ideology, because so far it makes no sense to me at all. So whilst "High Society" is devoted to Cerebus's rise through the aristocracy and political ranks to be the new Prime Minister of Iest (and while that should have provided a vehicle for some intensely good satire of bureaucracy and government inefficiency), he seems to mix it all in with low humor, stupid comic book parodies, and a lack of knowledge on what makes government tick these days. So there are senseless invasions, bad economies, dumb bureaucrats, and that is synthesizing, because when you read "High Society", it's all over the place.

What is Astoria's biggest motivation? Is it really women's suffrage? For God's sake how boring.

Why are the Hsiffies invading Iest?

Whatever happened to Bran Mac Muffin and the Pigts?

Why does Cerebus want Jaka around? Why does Jaka love Cerebus? Their story makes NO SENSE AT ALL.

How are Astoria and the Roach still linked? Why is he Cerebus's bodyguard?

What happened to Elrod?

If you go issue to issue and just laugh at all the absurdity, OK, fine. It has that value. But I don't need that value. Cerebus is hailed as this great literary work. If they mean its verbose and intentionally complex, yessir, I'd agree. But if it's truly making a statement on something, then exactly what is that? That government is fucked? Hell I don't even know what "New Republicanism" is! If it's making fun of something, I can't see what.

So here's what I like about it: Cerebus is pretty funny, and his dealings with the bureaucracy are interesting in showing how spur of the moment events so drastically change the fickle politicians' mind. That's about it. For the most part, I was hoping that the author would care to TELL A STORY. Explain things. Kurt Vonnegut chided authors, in one of his articles, who wanted to use fancy language but couldn't take the reader along with them through a story. That is "High Society". It could've been really good.

when i say "cere", you say "bus", cere!, bus!, cere!, bus!

"Cerebus", Dave Sim, 1987

So Michael Chabon writes a coming of age story surrounding comics, I click links on Wikipedia, end up seeing the "Graphic Novel" is becoming considered the newest form of "literature", real art, become intrigued, see "Cerebus" cited, see "Cerebus" is some 6,000 page narrative the author calls the longest in human history, see it contains political and religious satire, sounds good, sounds grand, buy volume one, here's what I think:

The first of ump-teen Cerebus collections is noted for its crude art and silly humor. But more than once do I see foreshadowing of what is promised to me by so many admirers and critics: the dark comedy and satire! It's first realized when a group called the "Pigts" take Cerebus the Aardvark in, believing he is a god. "Tarim, Ashtoth, these were gods...They brought war, pain, they killed without reason or apology...", Cerebus ponders before the statue of the idol so closely resembling himself. Then he tears it apart, and on his adventures go.

Cerebus's adventures lead him all over the map. As he goes, we find him switching allegiances on a dime (once protecting the bureaucratic leader Lord Julius (famed for his likeness to Carlo Marx), next trying to take over his city of Palnu with a group of barbarians), running into comic book spoofs I had to research to understand (Red Sonja and Elric from the Conan series, The Cockroach spoofing Batman and Captain America this time around), all the while searching for gold and ale.

What's the point? Fun, I suppose. Apparently the long-term narrative had not yet been decided on, so Sims had no intention of this thing being a 300 issue massive work yet. Still, it's hard not to laugh at the ridiculous chants of The Cockroach as Bruce Wayne, moaning day and night and killing without cause for his parents, or the snappy one-liners of Lord Julius the bureaucrat (ex, after the torturing, something GWB should know a thing or two about: "Isn't that just like a prisoner...? You invest a good hour and a half breaking them on the rack. And they up and die on you."). Then my favorite had to be Cerebus's view on chivalry from a small school in the wetlands..."Of course he's had many adventures...Why he's probably saved simply thousands of women from death...Haven't you?", to this Cerebus replies, "Actually NO. Cerebus did use one for a shield once, though." This, of course, brings up the accusations of Sims as a misogynist, but I think, perhaps, it points at the knowing of smart men, that too many women just want to be saved by men regardless of their feminism. And that is not good, it's terribly unfortunate, especially if you want to be saved by Cerebus! Anyhow, it's funny, the comics becoming more witty, more inventive as the issues go by (especially in the psychedelic "Mind Game", where Cerebus is in a parallel consciousness manipulating religious fanatics, a wonderful comment on how two opposing, fundamentalist factions can be so easily manipulated by their beliefs, like a Sunni/Shiite conflict). And knowing Lord Julius as well as the Cockroach are mainstays, but that the story develops into a more cohesive plot -- more fun and additional commentary to come!

Good thing I just retrieved "High Society" from the post office yesterday. I'm reading about three books at once right now, but I think I can find time for the little aardvark amongst the amazing tales of The Lost Boys and the occasional Portable Atheist reading. Won't be an issue.

Notes: I just read, while looking for my footer images, about where Sim REALLY started to be called a "misogynist" -- issue 186, something they referred to as READS. Sounds fascinating, especially where Sim begins to argue against the current Marxist-feminist society. I'm sure my views are caught in the middle somewhere, but I respect this man's art now, so I'll stay tuned for where he will take it. Also, publications continue to talk about the first issues as just some funny animal book, but I feel like that died much earlier than they give it credit for, especially when we meet Lord Julius and talk about bureaucracy, aristocracy, etc. Should dovetail seamlessly with a novel called "High Society", now shouldn't it?

maggie cassidy

"Maggie Cassidy", Jack Kerouac, 1959.



Look at that cover. You'd think Jack was writing about encounters with escorts in France, not an adolescent heart-breaking love affair that the author looks back upon with sadness of days/pages turned. How awful.

So first I must say what "Maggie Cassidy" is not:

1) A book about horny.

Now I will move on to say my piece/peace.

Like The National Matt Berninger, Kerouac is having a secret meeting in the basement of his brain. Suppressed emotion of anguish in young love lost. It is seriously never like that I again, I do believe it.

From meeting Maggie Cassidy at a New Year's dance in high school, to having her over to big NYC for a prom at his new prep school, then the bitter and self-eating ending that shows you can overwhelm with emotion sans extreme sexual commentary. Yessir, this one hurts. Maybe myself moreso, moreso right now, because I feel stung by so many women whom I could've married. But I didn't want to. Or maybe I did, but I didn't really know. He didn't either. We're so lost in late teens, early twenties.

Every stupid review I write of Jack Kerouac talks some of automatic writing. It shouldn't, it is his known style for many a books, but this one is so completely successful in the vain of "Tristessa" in that of so many fragments of thought it creates this dancing poetry in novel form. On page 184, near the end, he concocts a speech from Maggie that is half a page, tons of "-", and from it emerges a sentiment that'd haunt Kerouac throughout his search for that ultimate big feeling, "You'll burn yourself out like a moth jumping in a locomotive boiler looking for light". She continues after a minor pause, deriding Jacky for his new big city being.

I see her like so many girls of my own life. With family I met in passing. With cities I met in passing. With a culture I know too well, couldn't be. It's so confusing to say what could have been, especially when what would ensue develops the intellect and awares us of what is.

In the end, the horny prevails, but not the horny, the dastardly and the sinister. Here's the last paragraph, but since nobody reads this, I can't ruin it:

"She laughed in his face, he slammed the door shut, put out lights, drove her home, drove the car back skitteringly crazily in the slush, sick, cursing." Post-revenge-fuck tortures, n that's it.

This from the book that took so many nostalgic and sentimental looks at old home town in a lost era. Kerouac's frequently bitter endings reveal such disappointment he had of his life -- starting in a good hometown Lowell, Mass then to Columbia, before life a military man and wanderer. The roamer, the writer, the antsy part-time recluse. Who started "Maggie Cassidy" with these wickedly sublime visions of winter back East, with the gang, with an easy life of the high school athlete and his little women, and fun.

Like so many of his books with the tinge of bitter ending accompanying this relentless for people and life, the evocative quality runs into your belly only when the pages begin to run out. Then you really can see the images of the indoor track and the little Lowell boy beating the great track star in the 30; the big father entertaining the guests in the back of the house during son's bday party with a dirty joke; the beautiful young lady of us falling into our pseudonym's arms and begging begging begging scared to be loved. Upon reflection, you realize how perfect awesome his writing was.

Now for the only "Maggie Cassidy" cover I know...

two big trees grow in (maybe not brooklyn, but) new york city

"The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay", Michael Chabon, 2000

Been a while since I finished, but reading and thinking about reading has taken a back seat to gearing up for work, taking care of new kittens, and writing devastating socio-love poetry. Now I digress to write a quick word on this fantastic coming of age novel.

"The Amazing Adventures" should be what "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" has become in annals of American Literature: a novel that peaks in the most human ways to the monstrous desire in all of us to spawn something great in this world. Where Francie had to overcome incredibly poverty and a sad family life in the poorest neighborhoods of Depression-era Brooklyn, we have Josef Kavalier escaping (in the most honest of definitions) from the Holocaust and Sam from sexual repression. Where Francie leaves us with a sense of undeniable hope, however, Chabon strikes the aching truth of a halfway ambiguous close (though Josef, whom it could be argued is Character 1A to Sams 1B, comes out OK nearly on the level of Francie). In the end, however, "The Amazing Adventures" strikes many of the same coming of age nerves that "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" does, with struggles, set-backs, and indeed, amazing adventures.

The Pulitzer Prize winning novel is so sprawling, and so magical in each part, from the young men becoming comic book pioneers, to Joe's torn love affair and need to exact revenge on Hitler, to his eventual return to the city to see the child and lover he left (whom, in an interesting twist, Sam is taking care of in his absence), it's hard to describe the episodes. With every turn, though, Chabon aims for the fantastic image, the plain face of anguish and the awe of dangerous adventures (emotionally and actually/physically). It's prime for a film if the writer(s) can adapt this huge 600-plus page and-worth-every-word book into the lavish and enticing scenes Chabon conveys with his words. With its emotionally taut scenes, brilliant internal and external conflicts (Sam v. His Homosexuality; Josef v. Third Reich; Josef's love for Rosa Saks v. His Need for Revenge; Sam v. Comic Industry; on and on), it's got the perfect story arch for many academy awards noms.

N that's what I think. Now maybe I should get to reading "Maggie Cassidy".

jack in the pocket

"Scattered Poems", Jack Kerouac, 1970/1

After you become accustomed to the wide-eyed humanity of Kerouac's best prose, his poetry surprises you. Not that his playfulness, his off-the-cuff style is shocking, but the lack of linearity in most of it, the quick visions, word sketches, this thing he calls "spontaneous prose"; it comes to remind one of a mix of the detailed visions and scattered mind-noise combined from "Visions of Cody", his most non-linear work of literature. I'll be honest: I never thought it'd happen, but I just about wrote-off "Scattered Poems".

See, it's dumb to have expectations of a great artist. They are great because expectations can be mightily fleeced, and holy man, I was turned-around upon first discovery of this collection, my first exposure to Kerouac poetry. A collection of poems from a variety of publishing sources brought into a (very large) pocket size, "Scattered Poems" is a nice sampling of his verse, or anti-verse as I'm sure he'd have it. Or a-verse. So after reading about his escapades with Dean Moriarty across America, and his meditations of love and drug abuse in the heart-breaking "Tristessa", I get a poem, I shit you not, from page two of this collection called "Fie My Fum", which goes "Pull my daisy; Tip my cup; Cut my thoughts; For coconuts". Look, I understand Kerouac's intro, that the new "SF Renaissance" in poetry is made of "CHILDREN" and that "they SING, they SWING", but it was surprising to see something quite at this level of naivete so early in a collection from a very famous and influential man.

I've opened to it, though. Not necessarily "Fie My Fum", mind you; it's silliness and I appreciate it as such, but as art it doesn't strike me. But the pictures from "The Trashing Doves" in the back of the Chinese store in the midst of skid row do strike me with the ease of a master painter; every little detail culls this gloriously real image from the mundane until it zooms outward showing the neighborhood, the world around. And it is heart-breaking little pictures that make these poems interesting, timeless, their look at the small detail plainly spoken, but aptly spoken, what Kerouac means when he talks of "what is". Of course his emotion penetrates the image subtly, lovingly, yet at the same time, he manages to battle off sentimentality with meditations, again, on what is. Here's the first half of "POEM"...

I demand that the human race
ceases multiplying its kind
and bow out
I advise it

And as punishment & reward
for making this plea I know
I'll be reborn
the last human
Everybody else dead and I'm
an old woman roaming the earth
groaning in caves
sleeping on mats

Imaginative as it is, he still chronicles what is, the core of the vision. They all aren't bleak as this, however, still to the point of his mind pictures expressed in few words, appropriately chosen, to make his bid to your heart and mind.

You won't confuse this with the complex poets of the ages who have worked in complex rhyme schemes, timely wordplay, etc., but Kerouac's imprint on poetry was playful, child-like, and at the same time, philosophical toward the world and the life he so loved with the highest anxieties and wonder. If anything, it's shown me how to release my own pretensions as I create my verse. Whilst "Mexico City Blues" is oft pointed to as Kerouac's best verse (and it does bridge "Scattered Poems" high-level spontaneity with the more meaty themes of his best lit), "Scattered Poems" isn't to be completely shoved off, for it gives great insight into his frequently cited "spontaneous" methods, as well as his pure, unabridged mind.

no priest attended him

"The Sorrows of Young Werther", Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, 1774

Werther is a new kind of tragic hero to me: One with a distinct weakness, though said weakness does not cause his downfall at the hands of the State or the Enemy, but at his own hands. "The Sorrows of Young Werther" seems to be highly notable for its controversial views on suicide (especially in the 1700s), and also for its cult following as an overwhelming number of people latched onto this tragic hero like few before him.

On all accounts, this story is a confessional where Werther's plight is discovered via letters to a close friend. As we read, he reveals himself as tender, intelligent, but moreso than intelligent, _passionate_ and sensitive toward nature. This is what draws in the dreamer, as they identify with good Werther. To go further, it is not uncommon for such a dreamer to identify with suicide; I find through all these literary studies as well as life studies that fantasies of death or sabotage of self can overwhelm one who has difficulty reconciling their true identity with the walking dead of most of the self-unrealized humans who surround them. In short, loneliness can eat the dreamer.

Werther's downfall is romantic passion. It is a bit pathetic to me that he'd kill himself over a girl, but his passion for this woman, Lotte, is part of his idealistic allure. Furthermore, that the torture of the one "thing" you want more than anything you've had or could have which is completely unattainable would drive someone to suicide really isn't that far fetched, is something we can empathize with, regardless if it might be pathetic. In a way, what makes us pathetic also puts us beyond that of the mere animal. Werther's passion over Lotte is based on Goethe's own unattainable apple of the eye; however, the downfall of Werther is based on a total other human being, and while these writings are every bit as sensitive and insightful on the human condition of the dreamer or intellectual non-conformist, it's clear that Goethe couldn't all together come to terms with suicide enough to do it himself. While far from promoting such actions, however, he was bold enough to put forth the act of suicide as a human reality and honestly explore how one could commit such an act. He's perhaps much like Kierkgaard in "Fear and Trembling", who cannot all together understand how Moses is able to have such faith in the absurd (by agreeing to sacrifice his son, Isaac, believing he will do this and see his son again in the material world), but can discuss it creatively and fluently. It opens discussion, in the case of "The Sorrows of Younger Werther", into a topic previously considered to be taboo.

Besides its philosophical discussion on suicide, Goethe offers many other insights on humanity through the filter of the sensitive artist. Let's see (looks through the pages), It is as if a curtain had been drawn from before my soul, and this scence of infinite life had been transformed before my eyes in the abyss of the grave, forever open wide. Can you say that anything _is_, when in fact it is all transient? and all passes by as fast as any storm, seldom enduring in the full force of existence, but ah! torn away by the torrent, submereged beneath the waves and dashed against the rocks? It is moments such as this existential bit (which goes on but I do not want to quote the whole paragraph), which make the book even more enriching in philosophy, and paint the whole picture of Werther's beautiful mind. Goethe goes deep into the crevices of this character's consciousness and has him confessing not just his love for Lotte, but his entire being.

I actually think writing about this book gave me a deeper appreciation for it than when I initially finished it. To truly enjoy, you must meditate on its controversy at the time of publish, the poetry of its language, the way it pins-down the dreamer and shows the suicide in all of us who know what we're a part of. I'm not sure if it'll spark more reading into Goethe, but it may. For now, I have this, and I'm sure extra readings will even further bring out the details of good Werther's thinking and feeling.

a quick word on mars

"The Martian Chronicles", Ray Bradbury, 1950

Immediately, this one struck me like my first reading of "Fahrenheit 451", a book I was so enthused about I was determined to teach it to my seventh grade students this past year despite the level of difficulty it posed to them thematically as well as semantically. "The Martian Chronicles" comes at you in waves, describing the first expeditions coming into contact with a species of Martians that have seemingly evolved parallel to the Earthlings. Then we have the Earthlings overcoming the Martians, unwittingly, to eventually colonizing the planet of Mars. Then the great war breaks out, human beings come to the brink of extinction, and return to Mars to, perhaps if they're lucky, start over.

It's been a week since I've read it, considering how I've been behind on releasing my random ponderings here, I don't intend to say too much. So here's two bits and I'm gone:

1) The majesty of the Martians mirrors our own majesty, but considering we did not know them long enough to examine their faults, their abrupt end was indeed melancholy. The invasion of Earthling germs was nothing they could come back from, and it left me wishing to know more about them, but was also a witty and scientifically possible end to them. And considering the reaction of the Earthlings when it came to the abrupt downfall of the native species -- the collective unconcern -- the greed and tyrannical qualities of homo sapien were fully exposed. Thus the majesty of homo sapien is ripped through, especially as the book develops and their technology and greed drive them near their own extinction.

2) It is easy to make connections from "The Martian Chronicles" to the soon-to-be-published "Fahrenheit 451". For one, both have their main plot severely effected by looming nuclear war. Another: the "Usher II" episode, which shows a brand of Thought Police being exported to Mars, explicitly follows the function of the firemen in "Fahrenheit 451", as these "police" come to burn the house dedicated to literature and imagination. Further, Bradbury believes heavily in the positive traits in humanity, but worries they will be overtaken by the greed or ignorance (or a combination) of the majority. In "451", Faber and Montag represent the virtues of intellect and curiosity in the face of a world on the brink of nuclear disaster; in "Chronicles", compassion for loved ones and family are exposed in the face of not only the conquest of another planet, but yes, nuclear disaster.

I loved this book, and I love Ray Bradbury. He rocks!