TWIB-II 29: 4/21-4/27
May. 7th, 2008 12:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanFinals, and I'm behind again. But I'll be caught up soon. In the meantime, here are the three books I read two weeks ago.
1) West of Eden - Daniel Rushkoff & Liam Sharp
It's quite evident from the second volume of Rushkoff's Testament series that he's aiming for Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore, but striking closer to Penthouse--both in terms of hackneyed writing, and ridiculous amounts of female nudity for the guys but precious little to amuse female readers. The book concludes with twelve pages of micro-font explaining what happened in the preceding 116 (perhaps at the behest of wiser heads at Vertigo who're worried that readers won't be able to make sense of Rushkoff's hurried and underdeveloped narrative without it). Aside from the grammatical and spelling errors, this afterward is notable for Rushkoff's admission that the story's modern-day actors play multiple biblical actors, which "isn't intended to confuse the readers as much to demonstrate that there isn't a one-on-one correspondence of Bible characters to our modern characters"...perhaps because Rushkoff is too lazy to bother constructing a storyline that contains one. I'm gonna stick with this mess for one more volume in the hopes that it's got a nice surprise or two in store. I really can't see Vertigo publishing it, otherwise.
2) Babel - Daniel Rushkoff & Liam Sharp
The third volume of Testament finds Rushkoff upping the ante on the already barely bearable cliché with even more gratuitous (female) nudity and--worse yet--extended depictions of the rapes of the two main female characters (and one minor one) played for as much titillation as the illustrator can wring from them. Make no mistake about it, this book comes with a serious trigger warning...unless you are the sort of reader who actually enjoys watching police brutalize women with billy clubs, then abandon them curled naked in the fetal position a cell, or pseudo-Japanese brutalization porn that ends up with the pregnant victim impaled and sobbing before her assailant rips her fetus from her abdomen. (These scenes are okay, I guess, because in the first instance the victim's first appearance post-assault finds her wearing pubis-baring jeans and an off-the-shoulder blouse (just like any other woman post-sexual assault), and in the second the woman realizes that she really still has feelings for her attacker.)
As for the third (and only other) female character in this series? She's pregnant. Guess Rushkoff never read this webcomic, because it's quite evident from the 11 pages of size-six font he appended to the volume that he's ever so pleased with his ability to be "edgy" and "envelope-pushing."
These "liner notes," as the book calls them, are also notable for professor-of-media-theory Rushkoff's inability to get the names of popular TV shows correct and his description of date rape as "a social situation" (PS: WTF?). Oh, and as far as the "story" is concerned, any author who needs to append 11 pages of size-six font to the end of his book so readers can understand what was meant to be going on in the narrative itself needs to consider a career change.
3) Zen Antics - Thomas Cleary
This slim volume contains Cleary's translations of "Zen antics"--not koans (so he claims, but there are plenty of koans here regardless), but the apparently illogical doings of Zen masters and adherents throughout the ages. It's an enjoyable book and a quick read (assuming you're reading for the sake of getting through it), and it contains many stories and anecdotes I haven't seen included anywhere else in the western Zen canon. It's definitely meant for the lay reader; Cleary offers no information whatsoever concerning the sources from which he's drawn the stories, let alone notes or commentary on their historical contexts. I have to admit this left me curious, both because I wanted to look the stories up in the original, and because I was often left guessing as to time period and word choice (e.g. are Cleary's "barons" daimyou?) At any rate, it's a nice little book worth perusing if you're interested in reading some unfamiliar stories (or unusual renditions of familiar ones) from the classical period of Japanese and Chinese Zen.
That will be all.
1) West of Eden - Daniel Rushkoff & Liam Sharp
It's quite evident from the second volume of Rushkoff's Testament series that he's aiming for Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore, but striking closer to Penthouse--both in terms of hackneyed writing, and ridiculous amounts of female nudity for the guys but precious little to amuse female readers. The book concludes with twelve pages of micro-font explaining what happened in the preceding 116 (perhaps at the behest of wiser heads at Vertigo who're worried that readers won't be able to make sense of Rushkoff's hurried and underdeveloped narrative without it). Aside from the grammatical and spelling errors, this afterward is notable for Rushkoff's admission that the story's modern-day actors play multiple biblical actors, which "isn't intended to confuse the readers as much to demonstrate that there isn't a one-on-one correspondence of Bible characters to our modern characters"...perhaps because Rushkoff is too lazy to bother constructing a storyline that contains one. I'm gonna stick with this mess for one more volume in the hopes that it's got a nice surprise or two in store. I really can't see Vertigo publishing it, otherwise.
2) Babel - Daniel Rushkoff & Liam Sharp
The third volume of Testament finds Rushkoff upping the ante on the already barely bearable cliché with even more gratuitous (female) nudity and--worse yet--extended depictions of the rapes of the two main female characters (and one minor one) played for as much titillation as the illustrator can wring from them. Make no mistake about it, this book comes with a serious trigger warning...unless you are the sort of reader who actually enjoys watching police brutalize women with billy clubs, then abandon them curled naked in the fetal position a cell, or pseudo-Japanese brutalization porn that ends up with the pregnant victim impaled and sobbing before her assailant rips her fetus from her abdomen. (These scenes are okay, I guess, because in the first instance the victim's first appearance post-assault finds her wearing pubis-baring jeans and an off-the-shoulder blouse (just like any other woman post-sexual assault), and in the second the woman realizes that she really still has feelings for her attacker.)
As for the third (and only other) female character in this series? She's pregnant. Guess Rushkoff never read this webcomic, because it's quite evident from the 11 pages of size-six font he appended to the volume that he's ever so pleased with his ability to be "edgy" and "envelope-pushing."
These "liner notes," as the book calls them, are also notable for professor-of-media-theory Rushkoff's inability to get the names of popular TV shows correct and his description of date rape as "a social situation" (PS: WTF?). Oh, and as far as the "story" is concerned, any author who needs to append 11 pages of size-six font to the end of his book so readers can understand what was meant to be going on in the narrative itself needs to consider a career change.
3) Zen Antics - Thomas Cleary
This slim volume contains Cleary's translations of "Zen antics"--not koans (so he claims, but there are plenty of koans here regardless), but the apparently illogical doings of Zen masters and adherents throughout the ages. It's an enjoyable book and a quick read (assuming you're reading for the sake of getting through it), and it contains many stories and anecdotes I haven't seen included anywhere else in the western Zen canon. It's definitely meant for the lay reader; Cleary offers no information whatsoever concerning the sources from which he's drawn the stories, let alone notes or commentary on their historical contexts. I have to admit this left me curious, both because I wanted to look the stories up in the original, and because I was often left guessing as to time period and word choice (e.g. are Cleary's "barons" daimyou?) At any rate, it's a nice little book worth perusing if you're interested in reading some unfamiliar stories (or unusual renditions of familiar ones) from the classical period of Japanese and Chinese Zen.
That will be all.