Thursday, December 6, 2007

The Paranoid's Pocket Guide to Mental Disorders You Can Just Feel Coming On

With complete descriptions of the symptoms, diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, and treatment for psychosis, this book could convince even the most rational readers that something—or someone—is out to get them. From the slightly odd Stendhal Syndrome (the fear of artwork) to the mentally debilitating Athazagagoraphobia (the feeling that you’ve forgotten something important) and the downright bizarre Windigo Psychosis (the belief that you are a wild and ravenous monster), The Paranoid’s Pocket Guide to Mental Illnesses You Can Just Feel Coming On is a fascinating compendium of psychological illnesses for all of us to fret and agonize over.
More...

The Deviant's Pocket Guide to the Outlandish Sexual Desires Barely Contained in Your Subconscious

So you like animals. Everyone likes animals. But if you really, really like animals — or clowns, or trees, or dressing up in a fur suit before you enter the bedroom — then this book is for you.
More...

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets: The Comics of Fletcher Hanks

One of the strangest cartoonists of American comics' Golden Age, Hanks had a short career—the 15 stories collected here were all published between 1939 and 1941—but the deranged, nightmarish vigor of his work has made it something of a cult item. Hanks created pulpy characters like Stardust the Super Wizard, the scientific marvel whose vast knowledge of all planets has made him the most remarkable person ever known and the jungle heroine Fantomah, whose face becomes a snarling skull when she uses her magic powers. The artist's manic obsessions turn up again and again: global-scale atrocities, miraculous rays and, most of all, poetically apt punishments. In a typical story, Master-Mind De Structo tries to suffocate America's heads of state with an oxygen-destroying ray, so Stardust turns him into a giant head, then hurls him into a space pocket of living death occupied by a headless headhunter. Hanks's artwork is crude and technically limited (each of his characters has exactly one, wildly caricatured, facial expression), but nearly every page has some image that sings out with deep, primal power.
more

Monday, December 3, 2007

Naked Lunch

Burroughs's literary experiment--the much-touted "cut-up" technique--mirrored the workings of a junkie's brain. But it was junk coupled with vision: Burroughs makes teeming amalgam of allegory, sci-fi, and non-linear narration, all wrapped in a blend of humor--slapstick, Swiftian, slang-infested humor. What is Naked Lunch about? People turn into blobs amidst the sort of evil that R. Crumb, in the decades to come, would inimitably flesh out with his dark and creepy cartoon images. Perhaps the most easily grasped part of Naked Lunch is its America-bashing, replete with slang and vitriol.
(Cover shown is the Flamingo Sixties Classic 2001 edition)