1602

1602 by Neil Gaiman is an intriguing concept.

What if there were superheroes during the Spanish Inquisition?

Of course, they’re burned, drawn, quartered, beheaded, sodomized, etc.

(sodomized figuratively, not literally)

(I’m not really sure what I mean by that.)

Magneto and some of the X-Men make the transition into historical allegory naturally, but alas, even Neil Gaiman can’t make the Fantastic Four interesting.

Not a bad read, but nothing memorable.

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

I can’t believe I hadn’t gotten around to reading The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie until now.

People are trying to kill a guy for writing this and I haven’t read it yet? What the hell is wrong with me?

Plus, once again, big fan of Satan. Satan in the title.

How could I go wrong? I gotta tell you, this book is easily one of the ten best novels I have ever read.

There is so much in here that I really need to digest it and maybe even reread it in the coming months before I can get a handle on it. I think that if most authors were to attempt something on this scale, it would end up being a mess, but Rushdie is up for the task.

Verses is congested with all kinds of crazy ideas and jumps from theme to theme, from story to story, from protagonist to protagonist.

We start with two fellows falling out of a plane that has just blown up. It doesn’t sound like it should be a funny chapter, but it really is. We follow them all the way down to earth as they miraculously land, unharmed.

We travel alongside them as they learn that maybe survival isn’t in and of itself the prize.

There is something more.

Then, Rushdie takes us back to the brothel where twelve prostitutes pretend to be the twelve wives of Mahound, the prophet.

Such sacrilege.

Then, it’s on to a disastrous pilgrimage with a delusional, leader who claims to be taking orders from the Archangel Gibreel. Is the prophet sadistic or foolish? Not only am I not sure, I’m convinced that Rushdie himself doesn’t know..

Rushdie juggles so many characters, so many stories, so many story arcs yet he weaves them together with such credibility that it really doesn’t feel as experimental as it really is.

It’s a rare novel that really experiments with theme, character, and story and is simple and accessible at the same time.

When it comes down to it, while Verses deals chiefly with religion, transformation, (one of our protagonists changes from a man to a faun to Satan himself and back again only to find that he really hadn’t changed much at all.) deception and death, on a broader level, it’s really about how we react to the unknown.

Rushdie studies both the insanity of belief and the stubborn arrogance of disbelief.

Goddamn, this book was good.

Rushdie’s style is so simple and lovely.

When he states that, “Where there is no belief, there is no blasphemy,” it just really impacts the entire book with a very short, simple sentence.

I really need more time to digest and then I may post more thoughts on it in the coming weeks/months/years.

1984 by George Orwell

A few months ago, I listened to 1984 by George Orwell on one of those books on CD thingies. And by ‘books on CD thingies,’ of course, I mean audiobook. I just listened to an audiobook for the first time ever last year. It’s staggering to think just how much influence this novel has had on our collective consciousness. Apart from the art that it’s inspired, from V for Vendetta to American Psycho to I haven’t read this since the ‘90s and while I found it unsettling then, it’s just bone-chilling ball-fuck terrifying now. I’m sorry, but if they ever make another film out of this, Bill O’Reilly has to play O’Brien.

It’s just too perfect. I also think Fox News needs to change their slogan from ‘Fair and Balanced’ to ‘Your source for your two-minute hate.'

Exterminator! by William H. Burroughs

If Naked Lunch is 1984 on acid, then Exterminator! is Animal Farm on PCP & crack. Seriously, Burroughs & Dr. Seuss were the premiere existentialists of the 20th century. And yes, it’s an apt comparison.

I know Burroughs is usually associated with the whole junkie culture, but that is a simple assessment at best. Yes, drugs are prevalent in all his works, but they are incidental. Junk is purely the means by which Burroughs distorts the reality of his different characters/narrators.

It’s not that dissimilar from how Dostoyevsky used religion and conscience to present the different points of view in The Brothers Karamazov. And yes, that comparison is also apt.

But aside from the snooty, philosophical, boring, pretentious, etc. reasons I could give for reasons why you should read something by Burroughs before you die, seemingly random, flung together cusses like MOTHER-LOVING STUPID-ASS BIBLE-BELT CUNTSUCKERS are just goddamn poetic

Gluttony by various

I know that usually, I put the pictures of the book covers here to give you a point of reference, but I found this bad-ass picture instead and the cover of this book is really nothing special. So, enjoy.

Gluttony, is a collection of shorts, poems and essays about well, Gluttony. Hence the title. I picked it up like a couple of years ago because it was on a clearance rack (actually, it might have actually been at Deal$.) or something and one of the stories was written by Woody Allen so I figured, “Hey, what’s the worst that can happen?” Well, I’ll tell you. The worst that can happen is you can have to read a lot of tedious shit. There were a couple of pieces that were pretty entertaining, A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole and Notes from the Overfed by Woody Allen were pretty damn funny. And Feast by Diane Mason was surprisingly creepy. I’m pretty sure it was supposed to represent what gluttons have to look forward in Hell. On the whole, though this collection really didn’t amount to much. But if you’re in Deal$ and have a dollar, these three pieces are probably entertaining enough to justify paying 33 & ½ cents apiece for.

Gimmie an 'S!'

Okay, I read The Comics Go To Hell: A Visual History of the Devil in Comics, which I’m not really sure how to categorize. It goes through the evolution of our perception of Satan as portrayed in comic form. He has chapters exploring several facets of Satan and how he is presented including how he comes into play in the superhero genre, how he is used humorously, how he is used to represent the evil in ourselves and how and why he is used to frighten. He even has a chapter devoted to the endless adaptations of the story of Dr. Faustus. While this is hardly a comprehensive analysis of how our civilization has come to think of the Devil and evil in general, it is a fascinating read and Stromberg even surprised me a few times at just how deep he was willing to go. One of the things that amused me so as I read this was how I was constantly reminded of how intimately I know this subject matter in comparison to the public at large. Anytime he would explain the context of something as far as how it references the Bible or just Christian popular culture, I found myself thinking, “well, duh.” Then I’d remember that most people probably weren’t aware of whatever he pointed out. I was very pleasantly surprised that Stromberg referenced the Chick gospel tracts. These comics scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. The images of Satan in these tracts are far more unsettling than any horror movie I have seen. The Satan that terrorized me the most when I was young, the one that gave me endless nightmares and caused me to accept Jesus into my heart over and over and over just in case I hadn’t done it right the first time was Satan as drawn in the last panel of Somebody Goofed. I still see this as an absolutely paralyzing image.