An amazing adaptation of what for me is one of the greatest novels of all time, Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I am quick to say this adaptation by the aAn amazing adaptation of what for me is one of the greatest novels of all time, Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I am quick to say this adaptation by the artist Manu Larcenet was approved by Cormac McCarthy before his death, and I am quite certain he would more than approve of it. The balance in the work is between the bleak, almost hopeless post-apocalyptic landscape and the remaining shreds of humanity--to keep living your life as one of "the good guys"--til the inevitable end. This is among other things a father and som story, about a father passing down humanistic traditions of principled living/survival to his young son.
They are starving, these two, as is everyone they meet, and and in this version more so than the film version, the starvation is obvious and chilling and necessary. All the art is chilling, actually, brilliantly realized in black and white, each image a horrifying vestige of the unnamed disaster that has come before, as well as images of Beckett's phrase, "I can't go on; I'll go on."
I recommend, of course, that you read McCarthy's original text, see the wonderful film, but also read this worthy contribution to the Road project. Highly recommended. A piece of art in its own right, without question.
Thanks to the author Cormac McCarthy (RIP), the adapter/artist Many Larcenet, the publisher AbramsComicsArt, and Net Galley for this early look at the text, to be published September 17, 2024....more
Since I am generally a completist, and had read all previous eight volumes of Chester Himes’ Harlem Cycle series featuring Coffin Ed Johnson and GraveSince I am generally a completist, and had read all previous eight volumes of Chester Himes’ Harlem Cycle series featuring Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, I finally got my hands on the ninth, Plan B, which was published in French in 1983 and published in English in 1993. The series is set in the sixties and focuses on Harlem, seen through the perspective of two angry, frustrated and sometimes violent black detectives. The action is often raucous, profane, hilarious, insightful, rough around the edges with flashes of brilliance and offense. I read them in part because I had read Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins series set in LA which was said to be in part inspired by Himes: Books that explore a range of black experience in the context of crime. And Himes was always on my tbr list; I am only now (2024) getting t him, and he's great, on the whole.
Himes began Plan B in 1967-68, but it was never completed. He wrote what I thought to be the completion of the series, Blind Man with a Pistol, in 1969, and both books have some similar themes, so I think of Pistol as a somewhat tamer view of the late sixties civil unrest than Plan B. Neither of these books are really detective fiction, though both include Coffin Ed and Gravedigger. Working with Himes’ notes that describe the intended ending of Plan B, Michael Fabre and Robert E. Skinner “finished it.” Himes died in 1984, having worked, in his waning years, in declining health, to complete it, but he came up short, and many feel he may never have really decided how to finish it.
Plan B is a pull-out-all-the-stops apocalyptic novel describing a violent black uprising or revolution inspired by his reading the news from France about the late sixties riots, and other racial violence, such as the killing of Rev. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. In an interview, Himes said he had wanted to "depict the violence that is necessary so that the white community will also give it a little thought, because you know, they're going around playing these games. They haven't given any thought to what would happen if the black people would seriously uprise."
The book is apocalyptic--uber-violent, including lots of killing and sex. War is societal breakdown, and this is all about that. It begins with a chapter ending in a angry killing by Gravedigger of a pimp, and another early chapter depicts the chaos that might defy American textbook depictions of post-slavery “Reconstruction” as a kind of chaotic destructive occasion of rage on the parts of both Southern Confederate whites and freed slaves.
2024 brings us a film seen as shocking but not unrealistic, Civil War, but that film is a relatively tame vision compared to Plan B. The book details the efforts of community leader Tomsson Black to ignite violence in Harlem in order to create a radical change in racial relations. Whites do counter-attack, as one might expect, so thus it becomes all-out war.
If you are easily offended, do not even consider reading this book, because it is meant to offend. And shock. Himes uses humor to deflect criticism in his earlier books in the series, but there’s not much humor here. Mostly rage. But there are some remarkable passages in it, to be fair. Some brilliance, and lots of disorder, within a big outrageous mess that comes close to what I think Himes intended it to be, his masterpiece, though he also doubted anyone would actually have the courage to publish it. Percival Everett says it, even unfinished, or finished by others, is one of his three best books.
Himes loves Harlem and its people, but the whole series is a solid indictment of a society that created Harlem in the first place, a place of poverty and despair and fraudulent preachers and drug addicts and all.. So for inspiration for violence Himes loved Faulkner, but it reminded me of some Cormac McCarthy works at their most racially violent. Dystopian fiction. But worth a look if you take a deep breath and hang on.
I don’t know how to rate it, frankly. Some parts are 5 stars, no question. Some of it seems indefensibly nihilistic, by far his darkest vision of the world. And he never finished it, so can you say it is a great book? Kafka wrote some unfinished novels we now call classics, but none of them such as Plan B where Himes destroys the very world he set out to create in his series. Crazy book. Maybe a kind of warning? I guess today I’ll say 3 stars....more
M.R. Carey’s The Boy on the Bridge (2017) is a prequel to The Girl with All the Gifts, both parts of a zombie apocalypse series I read because a frienM.R. Carey’s The Boy on the Bridge (2017) is a prequel to The Girl with All the Gifts, both parts of a zombie apocalypse series I read because a friend is doing a project based on dystopian monster books. I do read a lot of dystopian books (Prophet Song by Paul Lynch is my latest, which I loved), but I am not typically into zombies. I am one of the rare comics readers that stopped reading The Walking Dead, so see? I mean, I get the whole allegory for our time, and the need to get together to save the world, so that makes the whole genre worthwhile. I’m pro-survival!
This one is good, well-written but unless it was because I read it fast, I didn't think it added much new to the genre. The pacing seems slow for half the book, and I don't care about many of the characters. I’ll look at your reviews to see how I was wrong. I mean, it is YA horror and features a boy sent out into the world to save it from virus-created monsters, or “hungries.” The passengers of the Rosalind Franklin, an armored motorhome holds scientists, military personnel, and a fifteen-year-old boy named Stephen Greaves.
Stephen is our mc, and interesting--autistic, savant. The pregnant Dr. Samrina Khan is our primary female narrator and gets Stephen. All the others seem quite indistinguishable from each other and seem to scapegoat (or just be mean) to Stephen apparently because he is young, smart and weird.
Stephen discovers a band of wild children who are as fast and predatory as the hungries, but they have the ability to communicate and think. This is a key important discovery, that these children seem to be different than adults infected by the virus.
I do like that discovery and what it means for the future. I like the opening of the book, I like Carey’s top scale writing chops, and I like the epilogue, that has a hopeful vibe. ...more
Tender little buddy read with my friend George, for reasons I can't quite recall at the moment, but maybe something to do with the times we are livingTender little buddy read with my friend George, for reasons I can't quite recall at the moment, but maybe something to do with the times we are living in?...more
“. . . if you say one thing is another thing and you say it enough times, then it must be so, and if you keep saying it over and over people accept it“. . . if you say one thing is another thing and you say it enough times, then it must be so, and if you keep saying it over and over people accept it as true – this is an old idea, of course, it really is nothing new, but you’re watching it happen in your own time and not in a book.”
I am not sure I can read a book of this force and passion and terrifying realism many times each year, but I already know that the Man Booker 2023 winner Prophet Song by Irishman Paul Lynch is one of the best novels I will read all year. But I have to say it gutted me, took my breath away, hurt me, as it inspired me; between reading the news and alternating it with this book I know I am too close to darkness and will need to take a break from things like it for awhile, but I am sure Lynch wants me to know I have learned something or had something reconfirmed in reading it about what it means to be a human being in this time and place. And I have.
Prophet Song is about war, civil war, the rise of extremism, fascism, but it’s war generally, Gaza, Ukraine, it’s the U.S. and every other traumatic border with tens of thousands of refugees streaming in, it’s family separations, the constant flood and abuse of refugees. . . A sweet and brave Venezuelan family I met yesterday in my village, looking for work, needing food, one of the thousands new to the area and what can we do for them all? But what does it say about us if we say we can do nothing?
I thought of these lyrics: “Well maybe I'm only dreamin' and maybe I'm just a fool But I don't remember learnin' how to hate in Sunday school”--Steve Earle, Jerusalem
This is Orwell’s 1984, it’s Cormac McCarthy's vision, post-apocalypse, it’s what it must be like to watch your husband taken, your children threatened, it’s what it is like to get on that boat and travel from an unsafe place to an uncertain one where when you are hungry people scream go home in your already traumatized faces. But it’s also Grapes of War territory, the land of love and family and goodness and grace in the middle of madness and cruelty. Gorgeous writing that is both a warning about the future and an acknowledgement that in many ways the future is already here, with extremism and fascism on the rise.
This book takes place in Ireland, with a focus on the mother, Eilish Stack, of a family that faces the war and does what a good parent would do anywhere, trying to remain sane and keep her family safe. And how impossible this is as her husband is suddenly gone, then her eldest son, as her Dad descends into dementia, as she nurses a baby. So it’s a tribute to women in war, in crisis, everywhere. I thought it was mainly about a dystopian slide into madness--which it is--but what emerges is something more complex and equally powerful. If you have read Grapes of Wrath, and this, look at the end of both books. And what one book changed the view of white women Americans about slavery? A book focused on the mother of children sold from her, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Oh if this close empathetic look at a mother taking care of her family as events threaten to destroy it might have the same effect on mothers/others everywhere who might read it.
The prophet song: “. . . what is sung by the prophets is but the same song sung across time, the coming of the sword, the world devoured by fire. . .” but later Eilish realizes that the prophet song is “not about the end of the world but of what has been done and what will be done and what is being done to some but not others, that the world is always ending over and over again in one place but not another and that the end of the world is always a local event, it comes to your country and visits your town and knocks on the door of your house and becomes to others but some distant warning, a brief report on the news, an echo of events that has passed into folklore.”
“. . . words, there are no words now for what she wants to say and she looks towards the sky seeing only darkness knowing she has been at one with this darkness and that to stay would be to remain in this dark when she wants for them to live, and she touches her son’s head and she takes Molly’s hands and squeezes them as though saying she will never let go, and she says, to the sea, we must go to the sea, the sea is life.”...more
The world has gone to hell. What cartoon character can save the day, someone who really understand the environment? Dr. Alec Holland, who becomes SwamThe world has gone to hell. What cartoon character can save the day, someone who really understand the environment? Dr. Alec Holland, who becomes Swamp Thing, has to face down John Constantine, who made a deal with the Legions of Hell to destroy the world. So this is dystopian horror, with lots of people dying in the epic battle to save the planet. Solid, ok story. Doug Mahnke's visuals give a nod to Stepheb Bissette's work on his and Alan Moore's run of Swamp Thing, rough, vibrant, sometimes pulpy, sometimes downright psychedelic.
Oh, we've got to get ourselves back to the garden? Joni Mitchell sang, but it appears possibly too late for that in this environment-turns-to-horror setting, but you know, in comics, anything can happen, so maybe Swampy will actually save the planet. Somebody has to....more
The first volume of a science-fiction/fantasy/horror series set in a near future dystopia that is gorgeously drawn, colorful and inviting, and then tuThe first volume of a science-fiction/fantasy/horror series set in a near future dystopia that is gorgeously drawn, colorful and inviting, and then turns dark and gruesome. So we're in France, where a young sort of passive man makes his way to Paris.
The world we encounter here is recognizably present except for the addition of "whols," sort of weird-looking colorful creatures in inventive shapes. People seem generally to live peacefully with whols, though gradually we see men who just want them gone, get violent, and the violence in general gets pretty disturbing and feels (early on, at least) disturbing. Our main guy likes to garden, grows up bullied, but when he gets to The City he meets a woman he cares for, and others he seems to develop bonds with, some are pro-whol activists. Conflicts and increasingly wild whol-istic illustrations proliferate. Fascinating, but there's blood, sometimes a lot of it.
Reminiscent of other sci-fi stories such as Jeff Lemire's Sweet Tooth, hybridity happens, which is to say human begin to develop "whol-"ness (which is not to necessarily say wholeness). The main guy has sort of plastic hands, Captain Marvel-ish elasticity, sort of superpowers that could be used for good but also for ill. I was startled by the turn to ultra-violence, given the sweet watercolor opening, but I think I will read on and see what kind of war is being fought here....more
Before reading the City of Bohane (2011) I had read Kevin Barry’s more recent Night Boat to Tangier, and That Old Country Music, both of which I lovedBefore reading the City of Bohane (2011) I had read Kevin Barry’s more recent Night Boat to Tangier, and That Old Country Music, both of which I loved. Or rather, I listened to them, because while you should usually read physical books that pay as much attention to language as Barry does, but he makes it tough by being an exquisite, seductive reader of his own work, creating a deep, dark foundation for the stories. Ach, that voice! That language!
I read this book because Ray Nessly said it was his favorite book of the year, so read his review for an appreciation of what this book is really about, lyrical and gritty language. And rich characterization would be my second choice to pay attention to, but in the way of noir--call this Irish noir--tone and atmosphere and the threat of violence maybe the most central element:
I am not really sure that that much is gained by setting this story in a fictional Irish city fifty years in the future. Dystopian, sure. There’s only gang wars now, the Cusacks going to Smoketown to take on Long Fella's Fancy gang. The Sand Pikeys are also in there. Then there are the characters: From the outset brutal Logan Harnett and Gant Broderick seem like the chief power-brokers, but ultimately three women are really in control--Girly Harnett, Macu, and maybe especially Jenni Ching, one of the most memorable figures in a gang war novel you will encounter, smoking her stogies. Then there's the weird focus on clothes, though maybe style and noir always go together.
Maybe with the focus on rich colloquial and partly invented/futuristic language we are reminded of the later Joyce or Beckett, or even Anthony Burgess’s Clockwork Orange.
“Oh give us a grim Tuesday of December, with the hardwind taking schleps at our heads, and the rain coming slantways off that hideous fucking ocean, and the grapes nearly frozen off us, and dirty ice caked up top of the puddles, and we are not happy, exactly, but satisfied in our despair.”
“It was one of those summers you’re nostalgic for even before it passes. Pale, bled skies. Thunderstorms in the night. Sour-smelling dawns. It brought temptation, and yearning, and ache – these are the summer things.”
“Whatever’s wrong with us is coming in off that river. No argument: the taint of badness on the city’s air is a taint off that river. This is the Bohane river we’re talking about. A blackwater surge, malevolent, it roars in off the Big Nothin’ wastes and the city was pawned by it and was named for it: city of Bohane."
As Ray says, Come for the prose, stay for the prose....more
2/14/24: Reread for Spring 2024 YAL class, sort of in conjunction with Dry by Neil Shusterman, a YA novel, also dystopian about our world set on fire 2/14/24: Reread for Spring 2024 YAL class, sort of in conjunction with Dry by Neil Shusterman, a YA novel, also dystopian about our world set on fire through climate change, and the kids on their own, left with the world we have given them, and what can they do? Millet's book is not a YA book, and is much better written, imo, but both can reach younger audiences with the urgency the topic requires.
Original review, 10/27/22: The Children’s Bible is a kind of dystopian allegory of a near future descending into chaos. Brought on by climate disaster that the kids are aware of more than the adults. The parents are just clueless--wealthy, educated, where “drinking was a form of worship for them. . . they respected two things, drinking and money." Climate change has come quickly to disaster; whoops, there it is, we thought we had more time, shoot! Then chaos, people rioting over food and water, as the parents pair up and “couple” in upstairs bedrooms.
The kids look at all this as they see the world burn. These children--some of whom are also careless jerks in this book--are aware of the sins of their parents; they know that greed, selfishness and general disregard for the planet is destroying their future.
“Do you blame us?” [a mom asks, late in the book] “Oh, we blame you for everything.” [a girl] “Oh, I don’t blame you. . ." [another girl]. The woman smiles gratefully. “I just think you’re stupid, and selfish. When the time came you just did what you always do, whatever you wanted to.”
“When we ran, if we chose to, we ran like flashes of silk. We had the vigor of those freshly born. Relatively speaking. And no, we wouldn’t be like this forever. We knew it, on a rational level. But the idea that those garbage-like figures that tottered around the great house were a vision of what lay in store—hell no. Had they had goals once? A simple sense of self-respect? They shamed us. They were a cautionary tale.”
“It was them and not them, maybe the ones they’d never been. I could almost see those others standing in the garden where the pea plants were, feet planted between the rows. They stood without moving, their faces glowing with some shine a long time gone. A time before I lived. Their arms hung at their sides. They’d always been there, I thought blearily, and they’d always wanted to be more than they were. They should always be thought of as invalids, I saw. Each person, fully grown, was sick or sad, with problems attached to them like broken limbs.”
If you think the parents are painted too broadly, too caricatured, consider that one thread of this pretty amazing, deeply angry and sad book is the darkest of comedy, satirizing adults--who are mostly considering their stock portfolio performance and getting wasted every day at the cocktail hour--from the perspective of the next generation left to clean up the mess. This is a view familiar to anyone growing up in the late sixties, where young people saw the post-WWII generation as racist, sexist, in denial about the environmental disasters that they were creating, pro-Viet Nam War, and so on.
Cue Greta Thunberg as the emblem of environmental responsibility:
and then, in the next slide, you'd want an image of a million adults partying and spending millions in Vegas, or whatever (yes, I saw the Super Bowl and enjoyed the whole billion dollar spectacle with hundred thousand dollar seats, but I take Millet's point here; I'm not sayin' I'm a saint; I crave escapism as antidote to despair, too).
And yes, there are actual deaths and disasters that happen in this book. It's not merely a light satirical joke. Millet is writing climate fiction. She knows what is coming.
What are the narratives of children without adults? Lord of the Flies is a central one, a view that debunks the idea of childhood as Edenic innocence, and instead embraces the Calvinistic notion of total depravity. The kids in Kevin Wilson’s Nothing to See Here periodically spontaneously combust, and recover, and are seen as the victims of upwardly mobile, negligent parents. I am most recalling as I read this novel a short story about neglectful parenting, “Pilgrims,” by Julie Orringer, where adults are so selfishly caught up in sex and drugs in the seventies, leaving the kids alone, and this neglect leads to violence. As with The Children's Bible, this story is a vicious castigation of generations of ignorance leading to catastrophe. And in these stories the adults are not right wing extremists but liberals, stoned-meditating as the kids run wild. Peace, indeed.
I also thought of Nathaniel West’s social chaos in The Day of the Locust. Not quite realism, on the edge of madness. I thought of a pre-meme bumper sticker from the sixties: Never Trust Anyone Over Thirty, or the Who’s "I Hope To Die Before I Get Old" (still alive, old Who guys. . . who? Who!? Can you speak louder, I can’t hear from years of playing this music too loud!). See Meg Rosoff’s YA dystopian How We Live Now. . . and maybe Peter Pan and the Lost Boys?
I didn’t love Millet’s most recent book, Dinosaurs, which might also be categorized as climate fiction. but I loved this one. It has a real edge to it, a sense of rage and despair and absurdity I relate to in it. Climate fiction at its best.
“That time in my personal life, I was coming to grips with the end of the world. The familiar world, anyway. Many of us were. Scientists said it was ending now, philosophers said it had always been ending. Historians said there’d been dark ages before. It all came out in the wash, because eventually, if you were patient, enlightenment arrived and then a wide array of Apple devices. Politicians claimed everything would be fine. Adjustments were being made. Much as our human ingenuity had got us into this fine mess, so would it neatly get us out. Maybe more cars would switch to electric. That was how we could tell it was serious. Because they were obviously lying.”
Ooh, burn (baby, burn).
And the title, The Children's Bible? My sister and I had one of those, growing up. Noah's ark, lots of animals there and in the Garden of Eden. As in this book, where a child carries a Children's Bible around. Always they leave out the Book of Revelation though--too disturbing for kids. I like that moral thread through this book, that threat. Oh, let's read the Psalms and all the happy parts, instead!
Delicious and horrible horror for Halloween at any time....more
At a glance I see that some Goodreads readers do not like these celebrated stories as much as some of his more recent work, such as in The Tenth of DeAt a glance I see that some Goodreads readers do not like these celebrated stories as much as some of his more recent work, such as in The Tenth of December, which I loved. And I know awards and prestigious publication sites are no guarantee of quality, but hey, every one of these stories was published in The New Yorker and four of the six were awarded the highest honor in short story writing, O. Henry Awards, from 1997-2001. And sure, regardless of what others think of them, since that is one point of Goodreads, “people’s choice,” this person thinks they are great, but I also think the awards are an important accomplishment and sign of recognition. So there.
True, there is the potential to offend here and there in these stories. A couple people mention Vonnegut in their reviews and this seems fair; as strange and whimsical as Kurt Vonnegut, but a little cruder and darker in his sardonic critiques of American life. Maybe I'll even call it dystopian, but for every detail here, we can find insane details from real life to match them in the past five years. But Saunders is no less humane than Vonnegut, ultimately. He believes in laughter, and love, and that we were meant in this life to "fart around," as Vonnegut puts it.
We have six stories, “Pastoralia,” “Winky,” “Sea Oak,” “The Barber’s Unhappiness,” "The Falls,” and “The End of FIRPO in the World,” and I like them all. You have your male stripper working to support his ungrateful family, who spend their day watching reality TV shows such as How My Child Died Violently and The Worst That Could Happen, a show of computer-generated tragedies. Is this funny? It feels like the worst of current American culture, black comedy. Wincingly true.
A man attends a New Age seminar, where he is told to repeat the mantra "Now Is the Time for Me to Win!" and to remove his mentally ill sister from his home in order to achieve his goals.
Here’s an excerpt from another story, just to get the flavor:
“And in terms of mass firings, relax, none are forthcoming, truly, and furthermore, if they were, what you’d want to ask yourself is: Am I Thinking Positive/Saying Positive? Am I giving it all I’ve got? Am I doing even the slightest thing wrong? But not to worry. Those of you who have no need to be worried should not in the least be worried. As for those who should be worried, it’s a little late to start worrying now, you should have started months ago, when it could’ve done you some good, because at this point, what’s decided is decided, or would have been decided, if those false rumors we are denying, the rumors about the firings which would be starting this week if they were slated to begin, were true, which we have just told you, they aren’t.”
What is this? Saunders worked for many years in places like this; he has a Dilbert-like despair at corporate American capitalism. What does he want from life? More kindness, more sanity, as he says in his famous graduation address. So yeah, he’s Vonnegut for a new generation, drawing as Vonnegut does from midwest cadences and culture, though Saunders is definitely south side white bread Chicago.
I love his stuff. I'm sure it is a little too dark and crude--okay, the sad middle-aged barber still living with his mother, judging women that he thinks might not be good enough for him, when he's clearly no catch at all, he may be really off-putting--for some people, though.
"It’s all so f...ing crazy!"--actual quotes from Family Tree
Indeed.
The third and final volume of a pretty forgettable crea"It doesn't make any sense!"
"It’s all so f...ing crazy!"--actual quotes from Family Tree
Indeed.
The third and final volume of a pretty forgettable creator-owned series by Jeff Lemire with art by Phil Hester. A little girl is turning into a tree, and maybe the whole world is. Is this a good thing? Why is it even happening? Has some obscure environmental point with a (as usual with Lemire) family foundation, and yes, a son-Dad-Granddad central trope. Not Sweet Tooth, not Swamp Thing, not even close. Some government people seem to want to be willing to kill people as the world turns to crap but it is never clear to me what is going on or why. But the family will survive the apocalypse, somehow, for some reason. Totally generic on so many levels with a corny title. It's maybe 2.5 stars for me, which for some reason I round up, not sure if I can say. Maybe because I found some of the Hester art interesting, the whole body horror dimension of people becoming trees.
Blindness (1995) is written by Nobel-Prize-winning Portuguese author Saramago. In many ways it is a straightforward dystopian text, getting checks in Blindness (1995) is written by Nobel-Prize-winning Portuguese author Saramago. In many ways it is a straightforward dystopian text, getting checks in all the required boxes, and it is perfect for pandemic occasions. One by one people are going blind, only it's "white blindness" and not darkness they experience. No obvious meaning to me about what that means. We focus on a series of unnamed characters: The first blind man (who becomes blind happen while driving); a car thief who brings him home and steals his car, then becomes blind himself; an opthamologist who sees the first blind guy and then becomes blind; a man with an eye patch; a woman with dark glasses, a boy, but also there is the opthamologist's wife who does not go blind and becomes our heroine, though she also notes:
“The only thing more terrifying than blindness is being the only one who can see.”
We don't know how it all happens, really, but that isn't the point; it's a book about how one responds to trauma, to huge social events such as a pandemic, which this event seems to be like. It brings out the worst in us: panic, despair, blaming, cruelty, violence, and then also goodness, where people help each other and learn to work together to solve problems. It is painfully relatable given the past couple years, and has lots of links to other works such as Lord of the Flies, Blood Meridian, The Road, Crossed (a brutal dystopian comic series). It's an allegory, but not one pointing blame for what happens on any group. It has a philosophical edge about the nature of blindness--what it means to be looking but not seeing:
“I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind. Blind but seeing. Blind people who can see, but do not see.”
It is about actual blindness, too, as disability, and how the blind are treated.
Initially the government panics and puts everyone who is now "white blind" in an asylum, which reminded me of Michel Foucault's works on difference, and exclusion, Discipline and Punish and Madness and Civilization, where we isolate and are cruel to those and what we can't understand.
The doctor's wife, the one sighted, the humane one, is crucial to the small group's survival, as the whole world becomes blind, though she also participates in violence in various ways herself in the process (Spoiler: is assaulted with others and responds with violence), as we encounter a horde of murderous rapist men who overpower all those in the hospital, principally over access to food. I will just say that this episode in the book is the most uncomfortable, the most despicable, but it is a dystopian, it is not unexpected, we see the best but also the worst during a crisis.
"We're going back to being primitive hordes, said the old man with the black eyepatch, with the difference that we are not a few thousand men and women in an immense, unspoiled nature, but thousands of millions in an uprooted, exhausted world, And blind, . . ."
". . . blindness is also this, to live in a world where all hope is gone."
The ending takes a positive turn I might contend with, but this is a rich and powerful book with signs pointing to useful and hopeful directions in a crisis. I think because the doctor's wife and other women band together and take leadership it pairs well with The Handmaid's Tale as a work of strong feminism. It's also about language and its limits.
“Do you mean that we have more words than we need? I mean that we have too few feelings. Or that we have them but have ceased to use the words they express, And so we lose them. . ."...more
The big finish of the over-the-top apocalyptic horror series, which fe“There’s no world besides this one, you fools.”
“We are the seeds of the future.”
The big finish of the over-the-top apocalyptic horror series, which features:
1) an all-hands-joined-together reconciliation of the sixth graders (those still living, at least!); 2) a nation-wide plea by Emiko for the safe return of her son Sho; 3) vegetables growing out of the corpses, seen as some kind of grotesque hope for the future; 4) all exclamation points and screaming and running all the time; 5) Sho’s notebook is returned to his mother by Yu, who makes it back; 6) lots of people die, but 7) the ending is both (a little) happier and more optimistic for a horror manga than I expected, with some hope that the children may make a better future.
A classic horror manga with an environmental theme. ...more
The ninth of eleven volumes of an apocalyptic environmental horror manga series from the seventies positing an elementary school drifting in the near The ninth of eleven volumes of an apocalyptic environmental horror manga series from the seventies positing an elementary school drifting in the near future, where the world has gone to hell with earthquakes and mutants caused by eating Frankenfood magic mushrooms. The adults have screwed the planet up; can kids save the day? Based on volume nine, we doubt it!
So! The kids have to make it back to the school from the future nightmare Tokyo subway, where more manic insanity faces them: A kind of Lord of the Flies scenario where two halves of the student body exist, our hero Sho on the one side and bad Otomo on the other side, with evil insane cafeteria work Sekiya still in the picture.
So you say that doesn't sound out of control enough for you? Umezu says, okay, let's have Sho get appendicitis and have some of the other kids operate on him with an exacto knife! What could go wrong, with their elementary science background and no anesthesia!?!
Or how about this? In the time/space dimension we are living in, Sho's mother begins communicating to them psychically through a disabled classmate. (??!) What Sho wishes his mother will help him with, well, a couple of things actually happen! (??!!) Is this a sign of hope, as supplies of food and water are basically running out?! Cray cray....more
Four years ago, I had not been able to find in my library system the least four volumes of this series, but this week I found them. So I had to go bacFour years ago, I had not been able to find in my library system the least four volumes of this series, but this week I found them. So I had to go back and read a couple of the previous volumes, and all of my reviews so far to get me up to speed. The series is an apocalyptic manga made by manga horror master Kazuo Umezo written in the seventies and set in the near future. An elementary school is suddenly, after a volcanic explosion, drifting somewhere out of sync with time and space, the kids cut off from the parents and left with teachers and staff members in the school who are all maniacal jerks.
In this one Sekiya, a cafeteria worker, enslaves the kids, forcing them to dig a well to find water. They find a door to the future of the Tokyo subway, where main character Sho and his friends find an ancient filmstrip to reveal what has happened: Environmental disaster, earthquakes, erupting volcanoes, desertification, starvation, monster mutants created by eating Frankenfood. This was written by a horror master in the context of real environmental horror, a warning to the future. Oh, this is just a story! I’m sure the environment in 2021 will be just fine!
I read/write this as the news of a 7.2 earthquake and tsunami warning happens in Japan. Crazy manic scary classic horror. ...more
I was pretty excited when I picked up Nils: The Tree of Life at the library. It’s gorgeous, ad oversized book, with some of the best artwork you will I was pretty excited when I picked up Nils: The Tree of Life at the library. It’s gorgeous, ad oversized book, with some of the best artwork you will see this or any year. And then there is this juxtaposition of environmentalism, Nordic mythology, dystopia, coming of age. Nils is a teenager and his father a scientist trying to understand why it is the world is no longer thriving; Nils helps him with his work. His Dad, as a scientist, has no faith in sprites, spirits of the wood, or magic, but Nils thinks we have to live in harmony with everything, whether you believe in it or not. After all, most people believe sprites or spirits or yokai exist!
Sound promising? I thought so, especially since the art feels like it supports the confluence of all these things, but: The story is sometimes confusing which I find about a lot of fantasy, that I don’t always know what is going on, and that atmosphere is more important than plot, but still, I think the team spent more time on beauty than characterization. There’s at least four kinds of people involved, and for some reason am not able to keep all of them in my head at once (reminds me of Monstress in this respect). Tech people, Nils and his Dad, three goddesses. . . sounds intriguing, right?
One premise, that some folks (the tech people from Cyan) are trying to gather up souls so mankind can continue reminds me of the long shot idea I read about from Silicon Valley that through the wonders of microchips that we may be able to live forever:
I know it’s not quite the same thing, but I was reminded of it with the last ditch effort the Cyan are making.
At any rate, pick it up, even just to look at it. So beautiful. And if you are more into fantasy than I am. Ambitious, let’s say. Magic, fantasy, science fiction, Tree of Life, and a boy destined to save it.......more
I picked up this adult coloring recently on a whim because the subtitle is "A Survival Guide That's Fun for Every Bunker," and since the very last timI picked up this adult coloring recently on a whim because the subtitle is "A Survival Guide That's Fun for Every Bunker," and since the very last time I had heard the word "bunker" was in connection to the White House, I considered writing my own parody of this focused on what Our President Anointed by God Himself might be doing in his own Billionaire Bunker, what it might look like, what he might do in it, the kind of fast food he might insist on eating in it, and so on, and I started in on the project, but sort of lost heart with it. I don't want to think too much more about him than I already am forced to do. I pass this project on to you!
Lorenz's book begins, "So you retreated to your bunker at the first sign of the end of the world. What next?" The book moves through various scenarios, from robots to alien invasion to nuclear holocaust. There's a couple (published in 2016) climate change scenarios.
And there's a couple plague/pandemic-focused pages. One page has it, "If the plague is wiping out the rest of humanity, don't be a hero. Stay at home and watch all ten seasons of Friends!" Is this guy Lorenz a prophet or what??! Been there, done that. . ..
Eh, it's not that funny, really, and I wanted it to be. I never laughed aloud once, and only smiled a couple times....more
Maybe the first environmental book about water that I read was Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us (1951, read by me first in the seventies, when I alsoMaybe the first environmental book about water that I read was Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us (1951, read by me first in the seventies, when I also first read Silent Spring), part of a trilogy of books on the sea and one of many about the threats against our environment by the collusion of big biz/politicians that still is very much in place.
I read Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water (1986) when it came out, and have been of course reading a lot of books and articles on environmental destruction that maybe still only a third of this country is taking seriously (let’s let the oil barons run a climate change conference, yeah!). Drill, baby, drill, some of our so-called leaders say.
I read Dry (2018) by Neil Shusterman and his son Jarrod, with my spring 2024 YAL course as part of a group of YA cli-fi we are reading. We all read this one and then they could choose one of four others. I liked it, it’s both true to actual events happening in the American southwest (and across the planet) and also a pretty well-written thriller.
The Drought--the Big One--has finally happened, as California and other states are cut off from the Colorado River (the Tap-Out, they call it), after years of extreme droughts have actually taken just about all the remaining water from the whole five or eight(? more?) state area. This is dystopian lit that becomes a thriller as the five kids Alyssa and her younger brother Garrett, prepper neighbor Kelton, junior pro-biz developer Henry (Groyne is his last name, which might make you think of “dick” as a nickname), and alt-girl Jacqui. The point is that they occupy different ideological positions that adults also occupy in the world.
I very much liked the terrifying set-up, the thirst and panic and greed and paranoia and cruelty (and murder), some of which seems to be happening in the southwest now, not in the future. Must we all want to kill each other over diminishing resources and become our own worst selves? Apparently so. I thought it was a pretty straightforward plot, without much complexity once they all got in the car, where the issue becomes narrowed to survival, but it’s a good YA page-turner, though I thought it was more middle-grades level, which is to say the kids all seem very young to me and the plot suddenly becomes simple. But I’m glad it is being read in non-denialist schools and communities. Kids have to see themselves as part of this crisis and not just victims.
I asked my students to find articles online about water scarcity (or floods) in the southwest or globally or the midwest and of course there are thousands, all useful as background. ...more
Quick, pick your most hopeless-sounding title, Uninhabitable Earth, The End of the World, or Learning to Die in the Anthropocene? Well, the latter is Quick, pick your most hopeless-sounding title, Uninhabitable Earth, The End of the World, or Learning to Die in the Anthropocene? Well, the latter is one of a handful of recent books that makes a case for what the humanities can do to help us cope with climate (or any other) disaster. The author served in Iraq and knew he would likely die there, so he accepted it, and it changed how he lived and lives. He turned to the humanities—philosophy, history, and literature, the arts—to help him think through the inevitability of death and why it is we try to live in denial:
“Civilizations have throughout history marched blindly toward disaster, because humans are wired to believe that tomorrow will be much like today — it is unnatural for us to think that this way of life, this present moment, this order of things is not stable and permanent. Across the world today, our actions testify to our belief that we can go on like this forever, burning oil, poisoning the seas, killing off other species, pumping carbon into the air, ignoring the ominous silence of our coal mine canaries in favor of the unending robotic tweets of our new digital imaginarium. Yet the reality of global climate change is going to keep intruding on our fantasies of perpetual growth, permanent innovation and endless energy, just as the reality of mortality shocks our casual faith in permanence.”
“As we struggle, awash in social vibrations of fear and aggression, to face the catastrophic self-destruction of global civilization, the only way to keep alive our long tradition of humanistic inquiry is to learn to die.”
Roy Scranton is most interested in memory, history, the imagination, and writing and how they contribute to the end times of civilization as we know it:
“If being human is to mean anything at all in the Anthropocene, if we are going to refuse to let ourselves sink into the futility of life without memory, then we must not lose our few thousand years of hard-won knowledge, accumulated at great cost and against great odds. We must not abandon the memory of the dead.”
Scranton’s a very good writer, and has not finally given up, in the possibility of human life on Earth, though it sometimes sounds like it:
“The greatest challenge we face is a philosophical one: understanding that this civilization is already dead. The sooner we confront our situation and realize that there is nothing we can do to save ourselves, the sooner we can get down to the difficult task of adapting, with mortal humility, to our new reality. Carbon-fueled capitalism is a zombie system, voracious but sterile. This aggressive human monoculture has proven astoundingly virulent but also toxic, cannibalistic, and self-destructive. It is unsustainable, both in itself and as a response to catastrophic climate change.”
Many books now call for non-violent activism, but ex-soldier Scranton is skeptical this time of endless war and increasing violence will yield to pacifism and sign-carrying protests (which is my basic stance):
“The coal miners struggling for a democratic stake in production didn’t just protest, share news stories, and post messages. They didn’t just march. The African-American activists struggling for civil rights didn’t just tweet hashtag campaigns. They didn’t just hold meetings. They fought and bled and died for a world they believed in, for a share in the power they produced.”
So finally, Scranton doesn't want to die, he just wants to live his life with the realistic expectation that he will die, and probably die in dangerous situations. Scranton is actually mad as hell and wants us to rage, rage against the dying of the light with him instead of just ending with T. S. Eliot’s whimper....more
Ana Galvañ’s Press to Continue has sweet cotton candy colors that belie a sinister premise in all these experimental shorts, all of which are unnamed Ana Galvañ’s Press to Continue has sweet cotton candy colors that belie a sinister premise in all these experimental shorts, all of which are unnamed and many of which are wordless. All these things apply: Art comics, futuristic, dystopian, technological, surreal, atmospheric, unemotional. The title points to digital/video gaming in which participants (us) are victimized in and through tech by people in power. We see featureless faces, anyone is everyone. Few backgrounds.
In one a tiger seems to come through a screen and actually injures/kills a woman--the other women escape; in another a new trapeze artist at a circus hooks up with Scandal, The Human Doll, a robot, but he’s warned away from her when he finds what happened to his predecessor. The third features a bizarre interview format where a woman feels threatened, calls her interviewer on it, but she gets a second interview, anyway, and is a little disturbed to not know why. A fourth focuses on a boy who is sent to a camp with a lot of surveillance.
Oh, I saw at a glance references to Philip K. Dick in a couple other reviews, and this seems right: The speculative paranoia. Very thoughtful and coolly distant work....more