O my brothers

Book: A Clockwork Orange

Author: Anthony Burgess

Published: 1986 (this edition--Norton Paperbacks)

Pages: 212

There's nothing to fear about this book; the slang is omnipresent but easily penetrated, while at the same time enough to keep the violence at an abstract distance. Which I guess is one facet of the point, another of course being the extra chapter that  was originally left out of the American edition (and, consequently, Stanley Kubrick's movie adaptation).

(Side note: After reading this, I want to watch the Kubrick movie to see how it stacks up to The Great Shining Debate, which is when Liberry Tom says Kubrick's The Shining is a great movie because it's shot so well and I say it sucks because it completely misses the point of the source material.)

I wasn't super shocked by anything in here. It's a fairly straightforward plot: brutal young man gets off on doing violent things to people, gets caught, gets put into mind-altering therapy that gives him visceral reactions to violence, tries to get right back into it, gets depressed and tired of it. 

That's not to say I didn't like reading about all that. It's still a fascinating journey, and it's all in the narrator. This book is one of the strongest arguments I've read for the importance of unique character voice. Alex goes from simple to sick to existential, all his confusion wrapped in his comforting blanket of slang whose familiarity isn't nearly enough to protect him from the changes forced on his emotions. He remains a sympathetic character in a way that makes me feel like a terrible person for saying that, which means he's very well-written. A well-written sociopath.

The last chapter--I don't see how it's such a controversy. It's the logical, if somewhat muted, continuation of Alex's life. Leaving it out could be seen as approving such violence that he's gotten back into, or at least saying that it's an inevitable part of decaying society, but it's made clear that even though he's pushed past his conditioning, Alex won't be able to sustain his sociopathic behavior for much longer without it taking an even more crushing toll.

Anyway, go read this and see if you can tease out the metaphor for clockwork oranges. I didn't get that bit.

Crazypants tour of Arkham part 1!

Book: Batman: Joker’s Asylum

Writers: Arvid Nelson, Jason Aaron, JT Krul, Joe Harris, and David Hine

Artists: Alex Sanchez, Jason Pearson, Guillem March, Juan Doe, and Andy Clarke

Published: 2008 (DC)

Pages: 124

From my limited first-hand (first-eyes?) experience with comics, I know that I like the Batman universe. I also know that the Joker is my favorite villain and Arkham Asylum is my favorite setting because they’re both so damn gleefully creepy. Therefore, I thought this slim volume of Joker-narrated, one-off villain-led tales would be a good start as my own venture into the gi-fucking-normous continuity, the first superhero comic I have not read by trading off on my boyfriend’s assurance that it’s awesome. (Although I still love those recommendations because 1. he’s always right about them and 2. they mean I get to make him read lit fic novels that he will end up enjoying too.)

I was right! Although such choosing logic doesn’t allow for the unexpected emotional left hook I’m always looking for, I did get several expected taps to the chin from this. Each story is drawn and written by different people, so the weak morality tale of the first story (everybody fears the Joker but he’s not the monster this time! It’s YOU PEOPLE and all he’s doing is exposing your own bloodlust through reality TV!) and the Lady or the Tiger? ending of the last (the reader flips a coin to see how deeply Two-Face has affected a guy with his same burn condition!) are isolated incidents. The Penguin’s story is my favorite, drawn rounded with parallels that visually connect his past and present in an obvious psychological path without getting him monologing. Oh, except for these couple of panels where he’s talking about this girl he’s fallen in love with while his henchmen get thrown around in front of him, and then Batman drops down and says he’ll be watching him and the Penguin goes, all day-dreamy distracted, “Yes, yes, see you next week.”

But then he discovers that he can’t, in fact, overcome his past after all, and he returns to form by taking out his anger on the one thing that was starting to rebuild his humanity. It was pretty sweet.

Poison Ivy’s is basically an origin story with naked leafy ass, and the Scarecrow gets some neat deco art but a disappointingly thin connection between his talk about harnessing fear and the actual action. All enjoyable, and I believe there is a Volume II on the shelves.