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An Adultery (1987) by Alexander Theroux

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Alexander Theroux’s name returned to the news with the publication of Laura Worholic; or, The Sexual Intellectual. The 878-page work can be intimidating to readers, especially those unfamiliar with Theroux’s bombastic, encyclopedic, maximalist style.  A gateway to his larger works would be An Adultery, written more than two decades earlier and less than half the length of Laura Worholic.  The writing is as straightforward as the slip of a plot. Painter Christian Ford loves Farol Colorado.  Farol is married and Christian is going out with Marina.  Complications ensue.  While the adulterous male narrator may be one of the most clichéd … Continue reading An Adultery (1987) by Alexander Theroux

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The New Comics Anthology (1991), by Daniel Clowes (editor)

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A stunning collection of comix, from the punk funnies to foreign voices and places in-between. Published in 1991, the chorus of independent voices range from Harvey Pekar to Gary Panter to Art Spiegelman to Chris Ware and Los Bros. Hernandez. Before the publishers marketed the heck out of the term “graphic novel” and prior to Maus legitimizing the genre to cautious, middlebrow, suburban white people, this anthology stood out like a lighthouse in the storm of Reaganomics, Cold War paranoia, and the tights-and-capes crowd. The ensuing decade has seen these artists become more and more mainstream, which isn’t necessarily a … Continue reading The New Comics Anthology (1991), by Daniel Clowes (editor)

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The Black Doll, by Edward Gorey

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“The Black Doll” is a screenplay for a silent movie Edward Gorey wanted to make. The screenplay itself is a wonderful mishmash of McGuffins, archeology, masquerade, and comic dread. Heiresses, thieves, the Fiend, and others try to capture the Black Doll and the PRO (the Priceless Religious Object). The screenplay, like all of Gorey’s work, is set in Gorey-world, a time roughly analogous to Victorian, Edwardian, and Roaring Twenties UK and USA. Gorey is masterful in his use of atmosphere. Also included is Anne Nocenti’s interview with Gorey. Nocenti worked on “Typhoid Mary” a Marvel comic book villain associated with … Continue reading The Black Doll, by Edward Gorey

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Neuromancer by William Gibson

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This novel made me fall back in love with science fiction.  Gritty future noir set amidst AI, evil multinationals, and organized crime.  The novel glitters with beautifully written passages, amalgamating techspeak with Japanese, Haitian creole, and back-alley slang.  Sure, it’s been criticized as “surface and gloss,” but what surface, what gloss!  When most speculative fiction writers — including some Grandmasters who will go unnamed — became prolific typists with good ideas, Gibson took a well-worn idea (hard-boiled crime fiction), gave it a spin, and produced a spectacular gem. To top it off, Gibson wrote it on a typewriter — how … Continue reading Neuromancer by William Gibson

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The Cantos by Ezra Pound, A Critical Appraisal

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I: The Mount Everest of Modernism “It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” – Sir Edmund Hillary The Cantos.  Ezra Pound.  The very mention of those names send shudders down even the most well-read literary snob.  T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” seems like a small indentation in comparison.  The only work with comparable difficulty and lit crit caché is Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.  Reading these works carries along serious bragging rights.  “I saw the new Terrance and Philip movie.  Now who wants to touch me?” Eric Cartman said in the South Park movie. As a reader … Continue reading The Cantos by Ezra Pound, A Critical Appraisal

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Dollhouse Riffs: Riff #2: Bodies, Souls, and the Big Bad

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“When you will have made him a body without organs, then you will have delivered him from all his automatic reactions and restored him to his true freedom.” Antonin Artaud, “To Have Done with the Judgment of God” (1947) “The Earth is a body without organs. This body without organs is permeated by unformed, unstable matters, by flows in all directions, by free intensities or nomadic singularities, by mad or transitory particles” Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (1987) Malcolm Reynolds, Angel, Buffy, Joss, and River In the Whedonverse, there are the Big Damn Heroes and the Big … Continue reading Dollhouse Riffs: Riff #2: Bodies, Souls, and the Big Bad

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Book Review: Devil Take the Hindmost: a History of Financial Speculation by John Chancellor

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In the re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica, the first Cylon Hybrid utters these chilling words: “All this has happened before, and it will happen again.” It may seem odd to quote a science fiction series in review of a book about the stock market, but it’s disturbingly apropos of the subject matter. John Chancellor’s magisterial book, Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation, charts the course of human folly in high finance from tulipomania to kamikaze capitalism. Trade and exchange are as old as time, while the need for money and the desire for wealth are not necessarily bad. … Continue reading Book Review: Devil Take the Hindmost: a History of Financial Speculation by John Chancellor

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Dollhouse Riffs: Riff #1: Dollhouse, the Dollhouse, and “freedom”

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How free are those that control Dollhouse, compared to the dolls? Topher and Sierra’s “play date” occurred under the nose of Adele.  Adele, smartly, lets it pass.  Without it, Topher would be driven nuts.  Or is this “play date” used as an opiate, a distraction for Topher.  Is Topher also a doll?  (A theory forwarded by my girlfriend.  I think there is some merit to it.) The play date creates a carnival atmosphere, a great leveling that occurs between the powerful genius and the pliant doll. A similar leveling occurs when Victor is programmed to help Miss Lonelyhearts, in this … Continue reading Dollhouse Riffs: Riff #1: Dollhouse, the Dollhouse, and “freedom”

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