Absolutely gripping story of a runaway. Helen Potter using storybooks, circumstance, and resilience to overcome the psychological fallout of abuse- toAbsolutely gripping story of a runaway. Helen Potter using storybooks, circumstance, and resilience to overcome the psychological fallout of abuse- to try to lead a happy life. A girl and her rat.
This story is three things. Something loved, something fascinating, something meaningful. Talbot wanted to tell a tale of the Lake Country, using the miserable youth and liberated adulthood of Beatrix Potter and its relation to the North as a means to linger on Hill Top, told by a sexually abused homeless girl whose obsession with Potter drove her to follow their parallels. The abuse Helen underwent caused her to become a vagrant, gave her unreal visions the reader gets to share, left her socially destroyed, disgusted by touch, guilty, confused. Lost in a world- in a universe- where she didn't matter.
A Tale of One Bad Rat follows Helen and her once-real-then-imaginary pet Ratface from city squats to country paths. She deals with her past, her feelings of uselessness, the life she has to lead, and it is breathtaking. Meticulously researched in all aspects (abuse, the North country, Beatrix Potter's life). Painful. Vindicating. A damned amazing work....more
If I could give this book six stars, I would. I enjoyed this read more than anything else I've come across in quite some time. The imagery is subtle aIf I could give this book six stars, I would. I enjoyed this read more than anything else I've come across in quite some time. The imagery is subtle and gripping. Its side characters and locales, the harpy, the witch-bent castle, the skull, the cat, the sea, they make the book, which isn't a fair statement at all, as the trio that steer the story are impeccable. The unicorn, the magician, the gypsy. I just love every single damn character in this whole damn thing. The story itself is flawless, paced gloriously, comfortably slowly and yet capable of a number of totally shocking twists. The Last Unicorn is consistently surprising. A reader's delight. I say that because the language the story is told with is also utterly enchanting. Not as whimsical as Tolkien but as matter of fact as Peake, as freewheeling as Lord Dunsany, and unlike any of those fellows because it was written in 68 and plenty of random contemporary references. It is otherworldly. I really, really loved it. One of the best Fantasy books I've ever read, for serious....more
The style of these folktales is a kind of Aesop's Fables meet Lord Dunsany vibe. Princes, paupers, wise men, and parents go on journeys to elevate theThe style of these folktales is a kind of Aesop's Fables meet Lord Dunsany vibe. Princes, paupers, wise men, and parents go on journeys to elevate their station or better understand the mysteries of the world. Thing is, pass high enough into the mountains or deep enough into the woods and you're still likely to find demons, magic items, magic animals, giants and blind magicians, storytelling corpses. The descriptions are vividly unique and always hiding between the words, a deep understanding of the Way makes each page pulse with life. Delightful. More delightful still is there is no one type of story. You get the adventures that tell a tale of moral balance, but you also get open-ended stories with no discernible meaning, and stories of mixed morals the narrator prompts the reader to puzzle out themselves. Surprisingly pre-20th century in its style for something originally compiled in 1975 (except for an odd reference here and there), but timelessly approachable. Humor, depth, lust, the surreal, the mundane, the beauty of skies and mountains and the voices of the trees....more
I truly believe scientific study needs stuff like this to make it make sense. Scholarly papers are important, but data needs context to generate underI truly believe scientific study needs stuff like this to make it make sense. Scholarly papers are important, but data needs context to generate understanding. Making it funny also helps. This book hit on a lot of points for me, both in my personal interest in positive psychology, making choices and being happy, and in my personal life. Reading this book whilst freshly dumped and trying to navigate "phone world" and "real world" was not the best choice for my self-esteem. Now at the end I am glad I did. It is the long, sensible chat that no one is having with me, with someone whose life is similar to mine- but someone who has their shit considerably more figured out than I do (and for some reason is still interested in my concerns).
So why read this if you aren't interested in relationships? Modern Romance is about dating because it is about how passion works and the politics of communication. The way we commingle is different now and examining it when the stakes are the highest- LOVE- is an insightful way to examine how we think about how we talk all the time....more
Breathtaking. Gets the Walker Bean award for comic I want to give to the most people. I spent the entire last chapter with my heart in my throat. FantBreathtaking. Gets the Walker Bean award for comic I want to give to the most people. I spent the entire last chapter with my heart in my throat. Fantastic read....more
75% engrossing 25% gross. Everything adventure yarn is quite satisfying, the opinions on society and race are a disappointing sign of the times- She w75% engrossing 25% gross. Everything adventure yarn is quite satisfying, the opinions on society and race are a disappointing sign of the times- She was written 130 years before I read it. A slog at times, beautifully executed on occasion, some solid philosophy that doesn't try to hard. I found myself lost within it with some frequency, but spent a lot of the back half wondering why I was bothering. In the end, I am left wanting something I can't quite put my finger on....more
The narrative style of Tales from 1,001 Nights is an endlessly turning wheel of metaphorically related tangents, often imitated but never duplicated. The narrative style of Tales from 1,001 Nights is an endlessly turning wheel of metaphorically related tangents, often imitated but never duplicated. Being able to behold the many facets of a jewel is one of my favorite adages for describing the power of the written story. But this jewel moves on its own, each facet getting a moment of focus whether you are ready to inspect it or not, until the circle is completed and the primary story returns.
Actually, it kind of beggars belief to tell stories the way it does. The world of the Nights is one where story is the richest commodity, greater than gold or jewels or rukh’s egg. You can gain other riches by listening to a story. A sultan may pardon your life if your story is good enough. Telling a tall tale is an instant way to end physical conflict with demons: when you are in mortal peril, the smartest move is to ask you assailant if they’ve heard a particular related story about so-and-so and such-and-such and they invariably haven’t and will keep the peace to hear you out. The enduring mystery to me is that, not only does this work, but in a society built on telling each other stories, nobody has ever interrupted to say that as a matter of fact they have heard to the one about Alexander the Great and the Poor King and then get back to the smiting. No matter how many stories are out there, there’s always a new one to hear.
Which speaks to my experience, I suppose. 1,001 Nights is the collection of and inspiration for thousands of stories, but the only ones I knew diving in were those of Ali Baba and Aladdin- which, as it turns out, are both French apocrypha and not truly stories of Sheherezade. Her tales are randy, insightful bouts of high fantasy shot through with romantic verse and long passages of self-summary. The poetics found in the Nights is the saucy stuff I imagine inspired the naughty, great poets of the turn of the century (if not before). I get the same kick from it I got from reading Raspe’s Baron Munchausen knowing my heroes had read it long before I was born. I like to ape my idols. Plus, c’mon, look at this:
The door opened and, as its leaves parted, the porter looked at the person who had opened it. He saw a lady of medium height, with jutting breasts, beautiful, comely, resplendent, with a perfect and well-proportioned figure, a radiant brow, red cheeks and eyes rivaling those of a wild cow or a gazelle. Her eyebrows were like the crescent moon of the month of Sha`ban; she had cheeks like red anemones. A mouth like the seal of Solomon, coral red lips, teeth like camomile blossoms or pearls on a string, and a gazelle-like neck. Her bosom was like an ornate fountain, with breasts like twin pomegranates; she had an elegant belly and a navel that could contain an ounce of unguent, She was as the poet described:
Look at the sun and moon of the palaces, At the jewel in her nose and at her flowery splendour. Your eye has not seen white on black United in beauty as in her face and in her hair. She is rosy-cheeked; beauty proclaims her name, Even if you are not fortunate enough to know of her. She swayed and I laughed in wonder at her haunches, But her waist prompted my tears.
Baron Munchausen is a fair comparison, as is Don Quixote and echoes heard in both directions, reflecting the Analects of Confucius and reflected in the Ocarina of Time. However, the old stories are where you really feel it. The body humor. Sex without stigma. The primary gift given by the powerful are snappy outfits, because being poor more often than not meant not even being able to afford clothes. The fact that a good quarter of the people in this book are walking around naked is one of those things you just don’t think about without a little prompting, like how in the age when the horse was king, there was shit everywhere.
Sheherezade is telling poor folks’ stories to the mad king. I enjoy teasing the folkloric, pagan roots out of Arthurian Romance as much as the next guy (possibly more), but to read the stories in the raw is a true delight. I don’t like the snobs who read the Classics exclusively and look down their noses at modern lit but every time I close one of these hard read books that are a couple hundred years old, I understand them....more
This was an extremely surreal read, a book that just got weirder and weirder the deeper into it the main character fell. The overall feeling is that oThis was an extremely surreal read, a book that just got weirder and weirder the deeper into it the main character fell. The overall feeling is that of Tim Powers, weird magic pulling strings behind the scenes and mucking things up for a surprisingly intellectual group of down-to-earth protagonists. With the foul mouth and taste for pop culture of Warren Ellis and the small town nostalgia of Stephen King. Magical realism turns to time travel turns to a poorly programmed reality folding in on itself. It was good and it was the kind of thing where people say "they should make a movie out of this" but it ultimately feels like a bunch of well-assembled really crazy ideas without anything deeper hiding beneath the surface. Beach book Philip K. Dick....more
“Haydn. Mozart. Beethoven. Kondo.” Andrew Schartmann’s entry in the 33 1/3 series is a bit controversial.
Some call into question Super Mario’s placeme“Haydn. Mozart. Beethoven. Kondo.” Andrew Schartmann’s entry in the 33 1/3 series is a bit controversial.
Some call into question Super Mario’s placement amongst the most noteworthy albums of all time, or “The Super Mario Bros. Soundtrack” being called an album at all. Schartmann acknowledges the unorthodox position he is writing from, sure, he says, it’s not an album like at the record shop. And sure, a big piece of why we are still enamored with NES music 30 years later is nostalgia. But, says the book, there’s that and more. It’s not just nostalgia. It is an album. Let’s dig deeper and talk about it. Nintendo inarguably holds a place in music history. “How did Kondo add to it,” asks Schartmann, “rather than simply lean on it?”
The first half of the book (Worlds 1-1 through 1-4) are on the world Super Mario Bros. was released into.
The book opens with the infamous E.T. mass grave. This crazy, literal burial of a drastically sub-par game wasn’t some random act. Nintendo swept the American market after the wheels on the home video game market fell off. There was no one left to compete. Atari’s downward trajectory ends with dumping games and being dumped by the parent company, but the E.T. incident came about because the end was nigh and they weren’t doing anything about it. Atari, Colecovision, Magnavox Odyssey et al. folded because they flooded the market with ugly games that were no fun to play. Disenthused gamers gave up, no one wants to be stuck with a system with a crappy little pool of crappy little games, so no one bought any of them and everyone failed. A decade of making money had turned the revolution that captured the whole of America’s attention into an industry that bored them all to death.
In 1985, Nintendo’s goal was simple: revolutionize everything. Nintendo wanted to be the Lumières to Atari’s Edison. Take the black box of the golden age arcade screen and turn it into a dynamic, seemingly endless world of color. Hide extra things everywhere so the player has reason to explore as well as advance. The playadigm shifted, and the point of a video game was not just to rack up the highest score but to do something.
Rewriting the book meant bringing an actual composer in to write music that matched the brightness of the Mushroom Kingdom. Kondo’s job was to compose music that engaged the listener to the gameplay. The success of playing a video game (or sport of any type) hinges on being able to get into the zone. To align your rhythm to the pace of the game. Kondo wrote from and for the zone.
The musician’s discretion is what makes D-G-A into punk rock. Kondo had no player to infuse expression into his compositions, so he had to program in the illusion of a musician.
The second half (2-1 through 2-4) is the world inside Super Mario Bros. World 1 was Contexts and World 2 is Music.
Kondo had to make something simple sophisticated. Rustic cooking in the video game world. Under three minutes of music. Three mono channels and a white noise channel. “Sparse,” according to Neil Baldwin, not simple. “Robust,” according to Kondo. And, as Schartmann points out, constraint fosters innovation. Kondo filled things out by writing in counterpoint as well as harmony. Syncopated rhythm. Not using a three note chord but three parts of a five note chord to create the illusion of greater space. Kondo tied his pieces together thematically, struck a balance between variety and self-reference. So, fun, fresh, but it holds together.
In a way, early NES music was similar to early recordings of folk music- the Smithsonian/Alan Lomax field recording period. Just a voice and a single instrument, maybe the tapping of a foot to keep time... but all the power of a full orchestra. Maximum resonance with minimum pieces. The flaw in this comparison is the life in folk music comes from playing it as it feels, while it is impossible for a loop to improvise on timing. But, by micro-managing arrangements down to each bar, Kondo gets the sound card to swing.
That syncopated gap is what Kondo found in the zone. Kondo’s melodies and rhythms outpace themselves and catch up again. That sweet hang time of the jazz drummer hitting it just enough behind the beat is the perfect analog for the state of titilated grace that the player has to be in for Mario or Luigi to run the obstacle course successfully.
8-bit jazz drums are only one of the aspects of Kondo’s surgical micro-composing that keeps the music on point. Kondo gets around the limitation of looped music by writing arrangements where the parts themselves can be resequenced. Structures that can be broken into pieces, rearranged, reconnected and still flow together. Loops without repetition. Kondo would reserve parts of these micro-loops for specific situations- variety to keep things fresh or make important moments more important. Or he would repeat structures in different Themes to create just that- themes. The Overworld theme, the level victory theme and the castle victory all share a little something, and that something is absent from the Underworld theme. Overworld and Underworld, two worlds, two styles. Kondo wrote music that emotionally fit what was happening onscreen. It was written to hang together as a soundtrack and not a sound track.
Though Kondo played a part in that, too. Not just busting bricks. Kondo made coins sound bright, 1-Ups sound like something gained, applied his skill as a creator of music to make the sound of jumping into something fun and pleasant that also brings about a feeling of physical movement. Beside innovation stood a respect for tradition. The BOOP sound of Mario throwing a fireball doesn’t correspond to a real world noise or create a spacial analogy like rising-sound-rising-motion, it is a straight up callback to the fact that, when a video game character shoots a pellet at their foes, it makes a BOOP sound.
All in all, quite a book. The first half felt a bit eerie to read, as I can see reflections of the video game industry’s 80s mistakes in a number of modern nerdly ventures who also depend on the sure seller instead of innovation. I couldn’t help but give franchise films the side-eye several times while reading about what happened to Colecovision. To say we geeks sit on another precipice similar to the one that birthed Mario is a jump, but it’s also quite optimistic, so I think I can get away with it. So any documentary that gives me food for thought outside of the subject it covers in my mind is well reported. Unfortunately, Schartmann’s writing throughout is awkwardly academic. Overly apologetic for spending half an essay on music discussing pop culture history, and also highly technical regarding both music theory and engineering. But you bear with it and it explains everything. Some of getting through the book was definitely slogging but it was more than justified by the wealth of ephemera. A book where I said “huh” aloud while reading with some frequency. You get the history side of the game, and the theory side of the game, and how Nintendo came to execute their ideas, but you also get relevant tangents like the history of the waltz and a broad take on embodied cognition. It’s not A Fistful of Quarters.
But that does not mean it is unapproachable. It just means you might learn some things that aren’t easy to understand. The book closes talking about how Kondo dealt with the sophomore slump- by succumbing to it- driving home yet again that the success of Super Mario Bros. truly was something special, “the hard fought result of a common vision between two giants- [Koji Kondo and Shigeru Miyamoto]- who would not settle for anything less than a revolution in gaming.” Though I did not know his name until very recently, Koji Kondo’s work has had a meteoric and lasting impact on my aesthetics- and my life. Mario Bros. is my Mickey Mouse. I am grateful to understand it a little more....more
Image has become the home of a number of great horror stories since their recent revival under Eric Stephenson. Graveyard of Empires is a great zombieImage has become the home of a number of great horror stories since their recent revival under Eric Stephenson. Graveyard of Empires is a great zombie book. Bedlam is a fantastic serial killer story. And Wytches is a reimagined bit of Grimm fantasy. Wytches are horrible magical creatures that grant boons for tribute. And God help you if you stand between a Wytch and her pledge. The story is layered and surprisingly personal- Snyder draws on his own fears and experiences- and the art is as layered as the plot. It looks like Bill Sienkiewicz or David Mack. Colorful, dark, processed, affecting....more
Boy in Darkness is viscerally creepy fantasy. Half-men, half-beasts who dwell in an abandoned mine, their master a horrifying, blind lamb-balloon of wBoy in Darkness is viscerally creepy fantasy. Half-men, half-beasts who dwell in an abandoned mine, their master a horrifying, blind lamb-balloon of white curls and evil genius, the young Titus Groan. This is a nightmare departure from Gormenghast, its dark reflection. Charged with terrible details. Imagery that deeply pleases and imagery that makes the skin crawl. Must read for the Lord Dunsany fans out there.
I give the collection 4 stars instead of 5 because the rest of the stories are throw-aways of mixed value. One well-told crazy tale, one well done slice o life and a bunch of ho hum magazine work to pad out the volume. 100% worth the price of admission for the novella....more
Something happened to me while reading this that happens frequently with the million-details-at-once stories of good episodic television (Game of ThroSomething happened to me while reading this that happens frequently with the million-details-at-once stories of good episodic television (Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad etc) but hasn't happened with reading a comic in several years. I missed something the first time through.
Doctor Mirage is dense, packed with ideas. It is a kind of Indiana Jones adventure- replete with magic artifacts and Nazi cultists- but the journey is into a totally foreign, exotic and bizarre fantasy spirit realm to rescue a lost love. In five issues. Not only would it make an excellent game of Call of Cthulhu, it takes time to flesh out the story of who Shan Fong-Mirage is and actually rewards you with the stuff you learned about her mattering later in the story. It’s all told in an explain-as-you-go style so the plot can move forward through the myriad details. So, you’re thrown into the deep end from the first issue, but it’s not hard to follow. There’s just a lot going on.
At the same time, this book has the look of a tights comic. Doctor Mirage is outfitted like an X-Man. It is does straight up Books of Blood horror like Jeff Lemire’s Animal Man, the paranormal professional bravado found in Hellboy or even Ghostbusters, an anything goes afterworld as broad and fantastic as Bill Willingham’s Fables or Neil Gaiman.
So what I missed on the first read was some subtle foreshadowing, a little piece of backstory that tied into a big reveal late in the series. Not “getting it” did not mean the reveal was less powerful, I just didn’t think of it because the twists and turns of the plot pack enough of a punch to stand on their own. But on the reread, the foreshadowing is (obviously) clearer, the moment is bigger and it makes that later reveal into something huge. That oh wow moment when you’re exposed to another layer of the writing. Deep, subtle, fine stuff....more
Baby on a bayonet. This book will horrify and enrage in equal measure. Weird to say, but thrillingly written with a surprisingly satisfying last two cBaby on a bayonet. This book will horrify and enrage in equal measure. Weird to say, but thrillingly written with a surprisingly satisfying last two chapters. Truth can be stranger than fiction. I am glib and curt because you have to distance yourself from the reality of this book. Everything in it happened. And everything in it is utterly heartbreaking....more
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