Looks like the Indigo Girls got a great cover for their new album from the awesome Jamie Hernandez.
It makes me so happy that Los Bros Hernandez continue to tell the stories they began in Love & Rockets. In terms of storytelling, I’ve never been able to settle on a favorite brother. But when it comes to the art, Jamie has always kept me spellbound.
My first exposure to the word serendipity must have been as a child, reading about the pink sea monster in the Stephen Cosgrove book.
I sat down just a bit ago to respond to an e-mail message from a stranger in Japan and ended up discovering the origin of the word, which is worth sharing. Serendipitous, indeed.
From Dictionary.com:
Word History: We are indebted to the English author Horace Walpole for the word serendipity, which he coined in one of the 3,000 or more letters on which his literary reputation primarily rests. In a letter of January 28, 1754, Walpole says that “this discovery, indeed, is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity, a very expressive word.” Walpole formed the word on an old name for Sri Lanka, Serendip. He explained that this name was part of the title of “a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of….”
I finally finished The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World, which is an excellent and highly-recommended read (thanks for the tip, Tama!). Author Michael Pollan looks at the symbiotic relationship between humans and plants, focusing on four specific plants and related human desires — apples for sweetness, tulips for beauty, marijuana for intoxication, and the potato for control. The marijuana section was especially good, with ruminations on how the allure of pot might be explained through it’s ability to temporarily interrupt memory, and why that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Memory is the enemy of wonder, which abides nowhere else but in the present. This is why, unless you are a child, wonder depends on forgetting — on a process, that is, of subtraction.
Last week, I zipped through Live from Baghdad, a quick, enjoyable — though ultimately shallow — look at the 1991 Gulf War written by Robert Weiner, who was CNN’s Baghdad producer at the time. The book is a great fly-on-the-wall look at events in Baghdad in the months leading up to the start of the war, and of the first week or two of actual fighting. It’s a great read for anyone interested in television news, and is certainly timely (it makes current events seem like a bad Hollywood sequel). But it suffers from a lack of critical thinking as to the quality and consequences of CNN’s groundbreaking coverage of a war from within enemy territory. The author is dismissively laudatory in dealing with the issue, as if the mere fact that CNN was able to pull off such a feat is all that matters.
Finally, I read Gore Vidal’s Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta, with a heavy heart. Vidal is one of my favorite authors. He’s written brilliant fiction (Myra Breckinridge) and superb non-fiction (United States collects the bulk of his terrific essays). But, as this somewhat dotty collection of polemics against the American empire shows, his famous wit and razor-sharp mind have lost a good measure of coherence. It’s disheartening that Vidal is not in fighting form when he’s most needed in the ring.
Currently, I’m finishing the final book in the amazing Gormenghast trilogy. Next, I’ll be opening either Alex Kerr’s Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan or Augusten Burroughs’ Running with Scissors (thanks for leaving it behind, Sam).
“Memory is the enemy of wonder, which abides nowhere else but in the present. This is why, unless you are a child, wonder depends on forgetting — on a process, that is, of subtraction.”
— Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire
Marvel Comics to unveil gay gunslinger
In a bubble in the first edition of the series, Rawhide Kid comments about the Lone Ranger: “I think that mask and the powder blue outfit are fantastic. I can certainly see why the Indian follows him around.”
At Salon.com: Why do books cost so much?
When I posted the entry earlier this week on news articles touting the respectability of comic books, I must have been brain dead to forget my personal involvement in just such an endeavor.
In 1987, at the tender age of 18, I had my first-ever published article. It was a piece on comic book censorship, and it ran in the local daily in Kenai, Alaska, along with an article called “The Evolution of Comic Books.” I was the featured “expert” in the “Evolution” article, which was accompanied by a picture that to this day I’m embarrassed to see.
Re-reading my article, I’m pleasantly surprised at the quality (and by this I mean it doesn’t suck). Was I really only 18? Then I re-read the article in which I’m interviewed and come across this:
“Superman has been pretty much redone. He not as powerful, no romance with Lois… He’s more of a yuppie than he used to be,” Gerhard said.
Groan… And this proved comics were becoming more respectable? Well, it was the 80s and I was just a boy.
For the amusement of all, I’m posting both articles here.
I can’t count the number of times over the years I’ve read news articles along the lines of, “Guess what! Comic books are serious art!” Here’s another one.
Inevitably, these articles always present a laundry list of serious issues ripped from the headlines of the day that are dealt with in current comic books. Inevitably, reading this list always makes me think, god that sounds boring.
In my mind, comics—like so many other forms of art—are at their worst when they consciously try to be serious and earnest. The magic of comics has always been found in unexpected places and in surprising forms. Alcoholism, sexual-identity crises, drug addiction, abusive childhood, terrorism? Including these issues within stories is not a bad thing, per say. But it shouldn’t be the main focus.
There are exceptions, of course. The astonishing Maus always tops that list. But when you try to mix, say, Green Lantern and the serious issues of the day, the effect comes off as kind of sad and comical, or a lot like a lecture from Tipper Gore.
I wish the comic book world would stop craving mainstream legitimacy and go right on creating worlds of wonder for those who know where to look.
A nice interview in the Atlantic Online with Christopher Hitchens, who has written a book on George Orwell.
I saw the quote below on The Morning News, which is what led me to the article.
“The great point that I try to make is that in fact Orwell isn’t a very great writer. He’s a very honest and courageous writer and he does a lot of work and he does have a certain gift of phrase, there’s no doubt about it. But he’s not in the first rank of writers. And that’s a good thing, because it shows what average, ordinary people can do if they care to, and it abolishes some of the alibis and excuses for people who aren’t brave.”