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zenithblueI actually finished it within 72 hours of cracking the Amazon box, but it's a hard thing to figure out how to review. I wanted to mull things over a bit. Also I couldn't exactly do the write up at work, since I didn't exactly want to have a full color crotch-shot sitting at the front desk of a county office building.
Okay: so, no promises on the coherency front. Here we go.
1. Why I would pretty much bust heads for Alan Moore, pretty much any time he asked me to. I would pretty much bust heads for Alan Moore. His writing makes my brain work like no one else's does, not harder or better but with unusual zaps and zorts and movements. It's something about the intricate density between word and image, idea and dialogue, content and medium. No one else writes like this. An elucidating fact: when he hit middle age Moore became a magician. He said he figured it would be more interesting than having a mid-life crisis of the traditional sort. After reading Promethea, my boyfriend and I had two different reactions. Boyfriend's reaction was that Promethea is a handbook for magic, a beautiful and involved how-to of magical thought. I thought Promethea was all about the metaphysics of creativity and imagination.
The answer, actually, is that for Moore, those are the exact same thing.
2. Lost Girls is pornography. The only people I've talked to who were disappointed with Lost Girls (actual number of said people: one) were expecting a revisionist erotic tale, or maybe a more removed exploration of the erotic. That is not what this book is about. This book is pornography. It's compassionate pornography, it's philosophical pornography. It's beautiful, humanistic, intelligent pornography. But if you don't want to see a lot of sex, you will not want to read this book.
3. Lost Girls is beautiful pornography. One of the things I admire greatly about Moore is that he works with artists of all different styles, and the end result is fascinating every time. No other comic writer that I know of spends as much time detailing the panels he wants the artist to illustrate (note the epic script to the opening of Watchmen, for those curious). And amazingly, in spite of the incredibly demanding amount of detail, most of his artists have a great working relationship with him. He's going to marry this one, after all. The point is, the interplay between Gebbie's phenomenal, breathtaking, beautiful art, and Moore's sense of philosophical dialogue and description is a brilliant one. There is a sense of play to the art--after all, these are characters from children's books--but there's also a depth of detail that allows you to notice someone's face, or the turn in someone's foot, even while the focus of the panel is (insert sex act here).
The book, for those who haven't heard the hype, follows three children's books heroines--Wendy, Dorothy, and Alice--and their sexploits. There is a combination of flashback, in which the characters reveal their youthful sexual adventures, and also "real time" fucking. And here's the fascinating thing...
4. Lost Girls is, in every way, as much homage as revisionist. This is marvelous. I do not know how he accomplished this, and it seems the biggest and most beautiful surprise of the comic. Somehow, no part of the stories feel sullied. It's not about taking these stories and making them perverted for our amusement. It's not about sexing up the classics. Rather it is like peeling the outer layer of the story back to see something beneath. We are finding the next layer down, below the fanciful children's stories. We are finding the truths underneath. I am not saying here that Barrie or Baum or even poor old much-maligned Carroll was writing a sex metaphor--I don't believe that--but they were writing stories of innocence lost, of finding your own way home for the first time, of growing up, of figuring out the path you're going to follow. Isn't that the same as getting lost in the marvlous, murky, dangerous, delightful worlds of youthful sex?
5. Lost Girls is encyclopoediac pornography. It's fascinating, because Moore is willing to explore every part of sex, good and bad. There's a weird tension in the frame--the women are always getting off on their stories, but sometimes the stories are traumatic, sad, scary. Sometimes they're hot, they're delightful. Sometimes they're about degradation and sometimes that's a good thing, and sometimes that's a bad thing. There is an unflinching willingness to accept all the things that make up our sexual selves. I can't find the damn line right now, but to paraphrase the girls: they have no hope of ever becoming less lost without telling the stories. Which leads me to number five,
6. Lost Girls is a fantasy. This probably seems obvious. But here's what I mean: for Moore, pornography is the pure playground of the sexual imagination. The sexual imagination is an inviolable thing; there is no right and wrong in this pure fantastical world. There is a metafictional dialogue at one point about this to drive it home, but it lives all over in the text. You can dream of a thing without ever really wanting it. That is absolutely your right. Moore imbues the mind--its intellect and its emotion both--with as much power as the cock or cunt.
Okay...the boyfriend needs his computer, so I'm going to post. I loved Lost Girls. I thought it to be brilliant. Beautiful art. And a beautiful reclamation of pornography from the dregs it usually rests in. An insightful, smart reclamation of sex as a part of the human experience. I'll refrain from putting my more personal reaction here but I will say in general I had a very visceral, in some cases emotional reaction to a lot of the book--I'm sure no one needs the details.
Also: Wendy gets a spanking. And she deserves it.
If anyone wants more detail about the different stories and how they unfold, I'd be happy to provide more info--I don't want to ruin anything for anyone, if you're worried about plot spoilers, but there is a ton to say about the three women and their roles and their stories. Maybe that will be a post later this week.
Okay: so, no promises on the coherency front. Here we go.
1. Why I would pretty much bust heads for Alan Moore, pretty much any time he asked me to. I would pretty much bust heads for Alan Moore. His writing makes my brain work like no one else's does, not harder or better but with unusual zaps and zorts and movements. It's something about the intricate density between word and image, idea and dialogue, content and medium. No one else writes like this. An elucidating fact: when he hit middle age Moore became a magician. He said he figured it would be more interesting than having a mid-life crisis of the traditional sort. After reading Promethea, my boyfriend and I had two different reactions. Boyfriend's reaction was that Promethea is a handbook for magic, a beautiful and involved how-to of magical thought. I thought Promethea was all about the metaphysics of creativity and imagination.
The answer, actually, is that for Moore, those are the exact same thing.
2. Lost Girls is pornography. The only people I've talked to who were disappointed with Lost Girls (actual number of said people: one) were expecting a revisionist erotic tale, or maybe a more removed exploration of the erotic. That is not what this book is about. This book is pornography. It's compassionate pornography, it's philosophical pornography. It's beautiful, humanistic, intelligent pornography. But if you don't want to see a lot of sex, you will not want to read this book.
3. Lost Girls is beautiful pornography. One of the things I admire greatly about Moore is that he works with artists of all different styles, and the end result is fascinating every time. No other comic writer that I know of spends as much time detailing the panels he wants the artist to illustrate (note the epic script to the opening of Watchmen, for those curious). And amazingly, in spite of the incredibly demanding amount of detail, most of his artists have a great working relationship with him. He's going to marry this one, after all. The point is, the interplay between Gebbie's phenomenal, breathtaking, beautiful art, and Moore's sense of philosophical dialogue and description is a brilliant one. There is a sense of play to the art--after all, these are characters from children's books--but there's also a depth of detail that allows you to notice someone's face, or the turn in someone's foot, even while the focus of the panel is (insert sex act here).
The book, for those who haven't heard the hype, follows three children's books heroines--Wendy, Dorothy, and Alice--and their sexploits. There is a combination of flashback, in which the characters reveal their youthful sexual adventures, and also "real time" fucking. And here's the fascinating thing...
4. Lost Girls is, in every way, as much homage as revisionist. This is marvelous. I do not know how he accomplished this, and it seems the biggest and most beautiful surprise of the comic. Somehow, no part of the stories feel sullied. It's not about taking these stories and making them perverted for our amusement. It's not about sexing up the classics. Rather it is like peeling the outer layer of the story back to see something beneath. We are finding the next layer down, below the fanciful children's stories. We are finding the truths underneath. I am not saying here that Barrie or Baum or even poor old much-maligned Carroll was writing a sex metaphor--I don't believe that--but they were writing stories of innocence lost, of finding your own way home for the first time, of growing up, of figuring out the path you're going to follow. Isn't that the same as getting lost in the marvlous, murky, dangerous, delightful worlds of youthful sex?
5. Lost Girls is encyclopoediac pornography. It's fascinating, because Moore is willing to explore every part of sex, good and bad. There's a weird tension in the frame--the women are always getting off on their stories, but sometimes the stories are traumatic, sad, scary. Sometimes they're hot, they're delightful. Sometimes they're about degradation and sometimes that's a good thing, and sometimes that's a bad thing. There is an unflinching willingness to accept all the things that make up our sexual selves. I can't find the damn line right now, but to paraphrase the girls: they have no hope of ever becoming less lost without telling the stories. Which leads me to number five,
6. Lost Girls is a fantasy. This probably seems obvious. But here's what I mean: for Moore, pornography is the pure playground of the sexual imagination. The sexual imagination is an inviolable thing; there is no right and wrong in this pure fantastical world. There is a metafictional dialogue at one point about this to drive it home, but it lives all over in the text. You can dream of a thing without ever really wanting it. That is absolutely your right. Moore imbues the mind--its intellect and its emotion both--with as much power as the cock or cunt.
Okay...the boyfriend needs his computer, so I'm going to post. I loved Lost Girls. I thought it to be brilliant. Beautiful art. And a beautiful reclamation of pornography from the dregs it usually rests in. An insightful, smart reclamation of sex as a part of the human experience. I'll refrain from putting my more personal reaction here but I will say in general I had a very visceral, in some cases emotional reaction to a lot of the book--I'm sure no one needs the details.
Also: Wendy gets a spanking. And she deserves it.
If anyone wants more detail about the different stories and how they unfold, I'd be happy to provide more info--I don't want to ruin anything for anyone, if you're worried about plot spoilers, but there is a ton to say about the three women and their roles and their stories. Maybe that will be a post later this week.
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no subject
on 2006-09-26 07:31 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-09-26 03:09 pm (UTC)