On HU
This week started off with my two part discussion of comics, gender, masculinity, and the closet: Part One,and Part Two.
Richard reviewed the DVD Superman/Batman: Public Enemies which was very bad.
I reviewed Concrete: Strange Armor and Concrete: Human Dilemma which weren’t that bad, but weren’t good, either.
Kinukitty reviewed Foreign Love Affair. which she appreciated despite the fundoshi.
And Suat finished up the week wondering why on earth the critics like The Imposter’s Daughter.
And this week’s download with lots of shoegaze. You can also get last week’s if you missed it.
Off HU
I didn’t publish anything this week, alas, but I did get involved in a couple of comments threads which might be entertaining if you like that sort of thing.
Brief flame war here (keep scrolling)
This is a fun conversation about Quentin Tarantino, contemporary literature, Hemingway, C.S. Lewis, and other stuff.
Other Links
Tucker reviews comics as if he were French writer Michel Houllebec. I wish I’d thought of that.
Sean Collins is wrong, wrong, wrong about the abstract comics anthology. I really liked his review, though.
I haven’t read The Big Khan, but I suspect reading Chris Mautner’s snarky review is more fun anyway.
Robert Alter provides what is probably the definitive commentary on Crumb’s Genesis. Thanks to Suat for the link.
Matt Yglesias compares racism in Europe and the U.S
That Robert Alter article is great, valuable stuff. I haven't read all of the various articles about Crumb's Genesis, but I'd be surprised to find anything that could compete with your "definitive" label. That portion about Crumb's art "answering" various questions of text by depicting definitive interpretations is one that few people seem to have picked up on. As much as Crumb's description of the book has relied on his "nothing left out" explanation, it's good of Alter to point out that the one major area Crumb failed was in the capacity of the Bible to leave mysteries behind.
Other mainstream articles on Crumb's Genesis: Eddie Campbell links to Bill Kartalopoulos in Print and Paul Buhle in The Jewish Daily Forward. Comics Comics has linked to a more skimpy article by David Hajdu in the NYT. Robert Alter's article is the best I've read, combining real depth of knowledge as well as some distance from the adulation that Crumb tends to receive in the comics world.
You don't like Cormac McCarthy? Damn, I'm stunned. His stories are "dick" so I understand why you might dislike them but I think they are fantastic and I do love the prose.
It really isn't the gender politics so much as the prose and the pretension….
I haven't read it in nearly 10 years but I must say that I found Blood Meridian to be a pretty fine novel at the time. If you have the time, let us in on why you dislike this particular novel.
I don't know that I'm going to be rereading Cormac McCarthy anytime soon….
I should say, though, I don't have anything against dick novels per se. Moby Dick, as just one example, is pretty unimpeachably great.
"It really isn't the gender politics so much as the prose and the pretension…."
Pretension at being literature or subject matter?
He's just got a very "look at me, I am mythic" thing borrowed partly from Hemingway and partly from Faulkner, and I find the mixture fairly intolerable. The refusal to use punctuation too just makes me want to kick him.
Hahaha. Those are some of the things I like about him. I'll have to check out Faulkner.