It Only Took a Month...

... But I'm back. And hitched!

Regular (or semi-regular) posting should resume this month. In spite of the holidays. Until then, enjoy these little nuggets of info:

I'm Sorry Mr. Lethem, But I Don't Much Care For Your Work:

After being duly impressed by Jonathan Lethem's take on Omega the Unknown, I thought I'd give his prose a try. Couldn't really get into it.

Fortress of Solitude had an interesting start about life in Brooklyn in the 70's and 80's, despite being a little worn out by hard-luck obsessive nerds thanks to The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. But then the second half of the novel kicked in. The lead character became more unlikeable alongside prose that spelled out what he was feeling and to some extent how we should feel about him.




In my infinite wisdom, I thought I'd give him another shot - perhaps his book Girl In Landscape, described on the back cover as a surreal sci fi Western. Imagine the flaws noted above imposed upon a teenage girl's journey of self-discovery.

Moving on.

How Can We Miss You Batman, If You Never Go Away?



Last week DC dropped issue Batman#681, the final chapter of Grant Morrison's "Batman R.I.P." storyline. Newsarama, CBR, and other sites have reported that all of the Bat-family of titles will be axed in the coming months, presumably to be relaunched with shiny new number 1's.

What's bothering me is the oddity of releasing another Morrison-penned issue of Batman featuring Batman immediately after said character's presumed death a week before. It's not that I expect Batman to stay dead or anything - I'd just like to get to the epilogue (which #682 doesn't really feel like, so much as another interesting story that should have occurred in the middle of Morrison's run).

Still thought the issue was pretty neat, though, with all of the alternate takes on Batman had something else come through the window that fateful night besides a lost and confused bat.

I'd like to do a post sometime about Morrison and his fascination with branding, legacy, and the pervasiveness of pop.

Spoil Your Awful Third Act On the Cover, Why Don't You?



All things considered, I did want to give this movie a chance. But man, what a dumb twist that undid a pretty compelling and effective beginning.

Also, Will Smith should play more bastards.

On Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian," and Giant Albinos

I just finished reading this yesterday and wanted to comment on a book that may have some influence over one of my future projects.

I liked it, if that's really the best way to describe how I feel about it. I appreciate how not a single character or situation is sentimentalized - it's all matter-of-fact evil fuckers evilly fucking shit up (and ultimately getting fucked up).

Without getting into the plot too much, "Blood Meridian" is a sort of historical fiction tracing the movements of the Glanton Gang - notorious scalphunters, murders, and scoundrels - throughout Mexico and the Southwest. McCarthy uses Glanton's second-in-command, Judge Holden as six foot tall albino upon which to hang the themes of the work.

The Judge has been described in memoirs as "cowardly," and that further (this part I love), "a cooler blooded villain never went unhung." Holden embodies the passion for war, and the belief that violence is the only tangible thing at which man can and should excel. As McCarthy writes him, the Judge is an elemental force - less a man than a shadow that looms over other men. He has neither a beginning nor end and almost off-handedly extinguishes the life of the novel's erstwhile protagonist, The Kid.

As written, the Judge informs the reader that everything will in fact, not be okay. Judge Holden is the terrible force of brutal, unhappy death that stalks and will invetiably annhilate a sort of dumb, plodding humanity that does not know itself.

So what's this got to do with me, you ask? Well, that remains to be seen. I've been toying with the idea of a similar "journey across the West" thing with a similar elemental force attempting to divorce itself of the need for violence. See, I'm hopeful (and I don't know that McCarthy is exactly hopeless) about where this whole humanity thing is going to go.

Watch this space. More coming soon.

-Charles