Cerebus Vol 3: Church and State I (Graphic Novel)

By: Dave Sims & Gerhard


Publisher: Aardvark-Vanheim; 1st edition (June 1987)

Softcover 592 pages

           “You represent a triumph of the mundane over the sublime. A triumph which is extraordinary only because it is so irrevocably and so inherently tragic. Like some great masterwork of theater...some timeless drama, which suddenly transforms itself into a Punch and Judy show.”

In this volume we add the Canadian born artist Gerhard to the mix. Beginning with issue 65 “Anything Done for the First time is a Demon”, he provided background art for the series over which Sims added his characters. The transformation of the series artistically is immediate. It becomes more alive, more detailed, more real.  The two styles blend together perfectly, one complimenting the other. It is quite possible that if you weren’t told there were two artists at work here, you may not have realized.

    These also contain the issues which Marvel threatened a lawsuit over. The area of contention was in the Roach character, who is a constantly shifting parody of various comic book characters. He eventually morphed into the Wolveroach, an obvious take on Wolverine- who at the time was swiftly becoming Marvel’s most popular hero. So cease and desist letters were sent to the author, along with a significant amount of saber rattling.

Of course the law was against comic giant. A similar case being wrapped up in the 50s between DC and EC when they parodied Superman in their new comic Mad. The Superdooperman case ruled in favor of Educational Comics claiming that a parody was protected speech. And there was no doubt that the Wolverroach was a parody, the character previously lampooning Batman, the Hulk, Captain America, and Moon Knight. Eventually the case went nowhere, but it had to be noted that Sims dropped Wolveroach pretty quick. While they wouldn’t win, Marvel could drain his bank account in protracted legal proceedings if they wanted. And, from what former employees have said, they were vicious.

Marvel gained some revenge by then parodying Cerebus in the form of the demon S’ym, who appears in various X-Men and New Mutants comics and was one of the chief antagonists in their Inferno story arc. The name is derived from the author Dave Sim’s own and the character refers to himself in the third person, a trait shared by Cerebus. S'ym also has the same purple-grey coloration as Cerebus and the same vest.

Marvel Cerebus parody S'ym

This volume also contains the infamous baby throwing scene. While Cerebus is delivering a speech, a woman keeps shoving a baby at him, demanding that he bless it. Cerebus takes the baby blesses it and throws it high into the crowd. He claims this was to illustrate the point that, “You can get what you want and still be unhappy.”  

    Our anti-hero begins an extended stay with a character known as the Countess, a complex character. She holds the attributes of the motherly nurturer, but wants her independence, so that she will not cohabitate with someone on a permanent basis.  

Here we see the Cerebus-as-pawn theme emerging once again. Despite, or because of, his celestial significance, he is always being used. Cerebus is manipulated by the Weisshaupt, a machiavellian politician, into becoming Prime Minister of the City State of Inest again, which he only agrees to in order to obtain a divorce from his former barbarian paramore Red Sophia whom he had married in a drunken state. Realizing that he has no actual power, Cerebus goes with the flow and endures, doing whatever he’s told to do.

One of the covers that Marvel threatened to sue over.

    The Church of Tarim was in crisis having had to execute the last three popes due to heresy. The Eastern sect, which dominates the Western, nominates Cerebus to be the new pontiff, believing based on his recent non-activites that he will be as pliable a pope as he was a prime minister. This is a mistake.

       While the sophisticated educated people may scoff at religion and see as a necessary evil, Cerebus peasant upbringing allows to understand the power just handed to him. To those who believe, most of the common, he is the voice of the god. And once given that amount of power, Cerebus will not be bound to anyone.

“Absolute power corrupts absolutely” and our anti-hero is no exception to the rule. The returned religious fanatic Bran Mak Morn who enables Cerebus’s worst traits of arrogance and greed.

    One of his first acts is to announce that the god Tarim would destroy the world in fire in nine days if the people do not give him all of their gold. This is a lampoon of the well known televangelist Oral Roberts who in 1987 broadcast to his flock that if they didn’t raise 8 million dollars in thirty days God was going to “call him home”, ie. kill him. Cerebus command results in a run on available gold and collapses the economy, causing the government to attack the church.

Author Dave Sim

Sniffing around on the story’s edges, we see the supernatural element with constant hints that a major event is brewing on a celestial level. Connected with the church and the Aardvark. The nature of Tarim is twofold and relates to the God and the prophet of the faith, and when the returned Bran Mak Morn uncovers a gold coin minted by the prophet, it begins to attract the other coins and meld them into a sphere. This and a series of dreams all foreshadow the ascension which will occur in the next volume. And that will lead to the great confrontation, as Cerebus discovers that there are two other Aardvarks (which in this setting magnify the events around them and set the psychic agenda for their world).

Finally we see the return of Jaka, the eternal love interest, now married and pregnant. She is the one who always gets away and this encounter is no different. . In a sense, besides different genders, she is Cerebus’s polar opposite. Born into privilege, she gives it all up and refuses all help because she wants to “make it on her own”. She says in a poor position despite everyone around her attempt to raise her up. Cerebus, born poor and with no aid, is constantly crawling his way up to the top, while everyone is attempting to drag him down. Rarely do they see eye-to-eye but their attraction is enflamed by the struggle and misses. Now once again, they reject each other, but only with great sadness.

       For more readings, try my collection of books. 

Cerebus Vol 2: High Society (Graphic Novel)

By: Dave Sim

Publisher: Aardvark-Vanheim; Reissue edition (November 1994)

Softcover 500 pages 

    Many often say that this is the best arc in the series. I disagree, my vote goes to the next two volumes Church and State I and II. The tone of the series shifts into a well written, highly intelligent story of power and greed, marked by humorous and bizarre elements to keep in touch with the original rhythm. It is an artful tale, expertly told. The art continues to grow, the author experimenting with different styles and presentation of material to create a new effect at the time. It is much copied, but seldom beaten.

There used to be a debate among creators and collectors on the place of the trade paperback of collected issues of comics, on how the graphic novel would affect sequential storytelling. Purists claimed that they would disrupt the flow of the stories, that the individual issues were not meant to be read immediately one after the other, and that a space between readings was needed to build anticipation. They also claimed that if the industry changed its writing style with the trade paperback in mind, it would make individual issues difficult to attract new readers who may not like entering into a story mid stream, like watching a film from the mid. Still another concern was that people would only purchase the trades, driving down sales of the single issues (at the time the bread-and-butter of the industry) and threaten the entire future of the medium.

    Cerebus, as always, was ahead of the curve and with this volume the series abandoned its single, double, and triple issue arcs. Here the author devoted twenty five issues to a single arc, “High Society”. Thus once again scoring a new first for the series. This story also  proved that the trade paperback could be viable and not significantly affect individual issue sales. The author began bundling the stories into large trade paperbacks, selling them direct market, even having a 1-800 number for orders. When the numbers came through, the big boys in marvel and DC  cautiously followed suit. Now it is expected that a series will be collected into a graphic novel. This was called “the Cerebus effect”.

    Cerebus evolves from the life of a barbarian and mercenary to accidently enter the realm of politics in the city-state of Inest - a near-bankrupt, corrupt theocracy on the verge of collapse.  While the action on the series has changed, Cerebus hasn’t. If anything the change of scenery emphasizes his more dislikable traits. Without the threat of violence against him he appears arrogant, evil-tempered, selfish, and a world-class alcoholic. He is in fact an anti-hero in many ways. He struggles day by day to succeed in a political system that he has no respect for and cares little about.

    It’s interesting that because of his inflexibility Cerebus becomes the least interesting character in his own series. Being so single minded, he is a pawn to the mighty and the graspers. His bid to become prime minister is a power play instigated by others, which he takes advantage of and eventually destroys. Power to him is an excuse to carve out an empire that he is incapable of managing.

    Joining the cast, we have the character of Astoria (named for actress Mary Astor) and a revamped Jaka. While Jaka was in the first volume, her character is essentially different here. Before she was a tavern dancer who referred to herself in the third person. In this volume (the character does evolve) she’s the true love/perfect woman character for the protagonist. Their encounters are awkward, Jaka trying to bring Cerebus back to his roots, while our hero brags to her about how rich and important he is, blissfully unaware of her wealthy upbringing. She returns his sword as a remembrance of why she fell in love with him and warns him of his danger. It’s interesting that true love characters often only have two characteristics, being beautiful and supportive. Jaka, like Agnes in David Copperfield, is nearly a manikin that speaks.

Her foil is Astoria. Capable, ruthless, power hungry, she is a Hillary Clinton character, a political mover that props up men in order to rule behind the scenes. First she uses the Roach character (here lampooning Moon Knight) to wipe out some political and religious enemies, then latches onto Cerebus’s rising star. While she is a capable power player, she doesn’t have the charisma to get there on her own. Without her Cerebus would have been back to killing people for beer money. We will see more of her soon and, like Laura Palmer, she’s filled with secrets.   

Author Dave Sim

    In the backdrop of the political climate lurks the religious element, the true masters of the civilized world here, though largely unseen in this arc. We are given hints on the Cirinist movement waiting in the wings, who are taking a special interest in Cerebus, and the Church of Tarim, which for most of the arc has sequestered itself in an “inward exodus” due to a religious prophecy and the murder of its Grand Inquisitor. Both will emerge in the next few books to reveal their nature. For this story the religious aspect is mostly shown in the character of Bran Mak Mufin (the one mocking Bran Mac Morn by Robert AE. Howard), who reappears minus tribal regalia to serve the “Earth Pig born”. He is convinced that Cerebus is a return prophet messianic figure and convinces our hero to run for office, then to declare a war which leads to Cerebus’s ruin.

And always lurking in the background is the insidious figure of Suenteus Po (some have mused that his name is a take on the Roman historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus whose work Robert Graves I, Claudius was based on). Not seen yet in his full form, we encounter his disembodied voice in Ming Game II, where Cerebus and Po trade insults and interrogate each other. In this world the name is a common one, so there is deliberate ambiguity here as to where the important character is actually interacting in the story.  But as he is creator of the Illusionist Tradition (more on that in later posts) it seems fitting. I always found Po to be the most interesting character in the series. He knows much, but cares little.

       For more readings, try my collection of books. 

 

Cerebus (Graphic Novel)

By: Dave Sim

Publisher: Aardvark-Vanheim (January 1991)

Softcover 534 pages  

“He came to our city in the early dawn… thought later we would be called the finest warrior to enter our gates, at the time he was but a curiosity… you see he stood only five hands high, had a lengthy snout, a long tail, and was covered with short grey fur. He was, in short, Cerebus the Aardvark.”

Thus begins the epic 6000 page long graphic novel Cerebus, broken up into 16 ½ graphic novels, which ran 27 years, from 1977 to 2004. It is a single unique achievement in the history of comics, the longest run ever done with the same author and illustrator. Though for some reason the author is not lauded more.

My New Year’s resolution for 2017 was to read the whole of Cerebus straight through from beginning to end. People have either expressed their doubts that I will finish it or have claimed that I am a masochist. Whichever way, a mere six months later I have cleared enough of my previously scheduled reading to begin volume one, collecting the first 25 issues.

Cover for issue 1

We see in these issues the beginnings of what will be the mythology of the Cerebus world. It is established early on that the world he inhabits is Earth, presumably in some forgotten past, in part of the 97% of human history lost to the sands of time. Originally the comic was intended as a parody of swords and sorcery Robert E. Howard characters, which were very popular in 1977 when the book was first published. Cerebus is the counter to Conan, and we see alternates of Red Sonja (Red Sophia) and Bran Mac Morn (Bran Mak Muffin), as well as others such as Elrod of Melvinbone (Moorcock’s Elric) and the Roach (which is used to mock various comic characters - this collection it is Batman and Captain America). And for those with questions about the name Cerebus, yes it was initially supposed to be Cerberus- the three headed dog warder of Hades, but the author, being young and in a rush, misspelled it. Talk about a mistake following you your entire life.

Sidenote: I just misspelled the word as well above, but the author did not have to luxury of a spellchecker

Eventually the series became its own unique self, but it started as parody. The term “Cerebus Syndrome” was coined to mark this type of evolution, when a series initially comedic or superficial, gradually becomes more serious, complex and dramatic. Debate ranges about when it happens. Most claim that it makes the switch around issue 20 "mind Game", but my opinion is that it occurs in issue 14 "The Walls of Palnu". But if you want to read the comic from the beginning, you must wade through the tongue-in-cheek material.

Not that it is much of a chore, as parodies go it is above average. The material has an odd tone to it, a sense of deadly seriousness mixed with some insanity. It never presents itself as being above the material it is caricaturing, mostly stemming from the presentation of Cerebus. In bad parodies, the protagonist doesn’t take his situation seriously, breaks the 4th wall to make a dumb joke or a remark about how silly it all is. Cerebus is deadly serious at all times. His killing and looting is very important to him.

Cover for issue 3

The early issues also flow very well with the serious storyline, believe it or not. The only real inconsistency I can notice is in the early issues Cerebus makes several comment on how “humans are” as if he isn’t familiar with them. Later on it is established that his parents were human and that the Aardvark, or Earth Pig, is a great celestial herald of change, a weird chosen one condition, like Christopher Lambert’s character at the end of the first Highlander film. I imagine the author, when first starting, had envisioned the Aardvark as a barbarian race hidden in the North, but eventually changed his mind after his LSD overdose.

The chosen one, or great influencer, angle is actually foreshadowed in an early issue “The Idol” where we see a primitive tribe worshiping a statue of an Earth Pig that is several thousand years old. But more importantly, we see the themes that will become more prevalent as the series develops.

Author Dave Sim

First is the theme of Cerebus as pawn. Herald that he is, Cerebus is never in charge of his own fate and never desires much beyond gratification of his base desires: booze, war, the occasional woman, and enough gold to keep doing the previous three. He is thrust into positions of power, but only when others plan to use him and manipulate him. To his credit, Cerebus always recognizes the manipulation and usually goes along only to see what he can get from it. While he is the catalyst, a magnifier of events, he is hampered by his own lack of imagination and scope of vision. And we will see, later on when he is no longer useful to those in power or seeking power, then Cerebus accomplishes nothing.  

Second is the theme of the struggle between masculine and feminine ideals, or “form and void” as it is coined. Form being the masculine (symbolized by the phallus) and void as feminine (as envisioned in the vagina). The form is the builder, while void is the destroyer. Masculine is the concrete, real elements, and feminine the perfumed nothing, the illusion of completeness, yet essentially hollow.  Cerebus (SPOILERS, this will not be discovered for a while yet) being a hermaphrodite, embodies both elements but seems to lead closer to the destruction and womanish element.

Cover for issue 17

However, the greatest development here is watching the evolution of the art over issues. Take a look at the first page, then take a gander at the last. You would swear it was not done by the same person. Initially the protagonist sticks out like a sore thumb, drawn in thick bigfoot lines, severely contrasting the realistic style of the rest of the page. Issue by issue, Cerebus become more defined and in step with the rest of the art. More specifically his nose and ears become shorter and shorter, until he is the irascible earth pig we all know today. The greatest jumps occurring between issues 4 and 5 (“Deaths Dark Tread” & “The Idol”), where the author really begins to use shadow to set mood and moral ambiguity; and issues 10 and 11 (“Merchant of Unshib” & “Merchant and the Cockroach”) in which the author pays more attention to background detail, making the cities now feel like real cities, giving a sense of culture and individualism to his world.

    For those who are interested in purchasing this book, I have to recommend the 11th edition above all else, as it is the first one to include the “Silver Spoons” strips. Without the flow of the comic, which until then had a decent pace, takes a jarring jump in action between issues 13 and 14, where Cerebus enters Palnu for the first time and becomes employed by Lord Julius- destined to become a major character and based on Groucho Marx. 
         Again I have had debates with people who state that you can easily skip the first book and dive headlong into the the second. That may be true for some, but this novels sets up many essential characters to the story and for a deep understanding of the material, my opinion is to begin at the beginning.

       For more readings, try my collection of books. 

 

The Sellout (Drama)

By: Paul Beatty

Publisher: Picador; Reprint edition (March 1, 2016)

Softcover 304 pages 

        “We lived in Dickens, a ghetto community on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles, and as odd as it may sound, I grew up on a farm in the inner city. Founded in 1868, Dickens, like most California towns except for Irvine, which was established as a breeding ground for stupid, fat, ugly, white, Republicans and the chihuahuas and East Asian refugees that love them, started out as an agrarian community. The city’s original charter stipulated that ‘Dickens shall remain free of Chinamen, Spanish of all shades, dialects, and hats, Frenchmen, redheads, city slickers, and unskilled Jews’ However the founders, in their somewhat limited wisdom, also provided that the five hundred acres bordering the canal be forever zoned for something referred to as ‘residential agriculture’, and thus my neighborhood, a ten square section of Dickens unofficially known as The Farms was born.”

        An incredibly satirical novel about a black man who tries to reestablish his town, after it is invisibly absorbed by the greater city of Los Angeles. That’s the simple summary, the text is much, much more.  Keep in mind this is a “read”- not a toss out in two nights book. It has an intense, dense style, where nearly every page, every line, is filled with a satirical comment or bizarre observation, which creates a broad picture of this world, flushing out ridiculous characters in a lifelike portrait. This is a book that needs time to digest.

         The text does, as I’m sure you can tell from the quote provided above, discuss race and race relations all through it’s 304 pages, but it is not a “get whitey” novel by a black male author- where the protagonist is the best at what he does, but is just brought down by “the man” and a racist society. It casts equal aspersions at the educated black community, paying token homage to the plight of their “brothers” once a month at a donut shop, before driving back to their ivory towers, and the poorer ones looking to get by. The last is personified by the character of Hominy Jenkins, last of the surviving Little Rascals, who demands to become the protagonist’s slave so that he doesn’t have to worry about life or the future anymore. “This is the very bus from which Hominy Jenkins, the last Little Rascal, asserted that the rights of African-Americans were neither God-given nor constitutional, but immaterial.”

Author Paul Beatty

        The protagonist is caught between these two extremes, presenting his world in a nihilistic tongue-in-cheek manner. Growing up with an maniac social scientist father who spent the main character’s childhood performing various Jungian experiments on him, the rest of the older educated black community dump on him for not parroting their rhetoric, calling him “The Sellout”, and the poorer folks who are under the impression that he is bougie, believing that he is better than them. The protagonist seems to identify with neither side, and perceives the problem of race relations in that the black society is too wrapped up in white perspective.

His solution is to bring back those elements that defined blackness in America: slavery and segregation. This inevitably brings about protests, riots, arrests, culminating in a Supreme Court hearing- all of which parody many Civil Rights moments.

         If there is a drawback in the style is the overuse of cultural references, political, social, and entertainment allusions are rampant through the text. Which may be a problem with those too lazy to google the terms, and doing such things always reduces a text’s shelf life in my opinion. Eventually causing it to be dated that much faster. But that’s just my point of view, and as I recognized what he was referring to most of the time, and wikipedia filled in the gaps, it may not have a problem with your reading enjoyment.

        For more readings, try my collection of books. 

The Complete Elfquest Volume 3 (Graphic Novel) (Fantasy)

By: Wendy & Richard Pini

Publisher: Dark Horse Books (November 15, 2016)

Softcover 432 pages  



         Say what you want about Elfquest but they are a style, and nearly a genre, of their own. And it has staying power, being nearly 40 years since the publication of their first black and white magazine in 1978. They are now currently wrapping up the series in The Final Quest arc, but that’s not what this review’s about. If it must be given a label, I suppose you could call it fantasy (with some Sci-Fi elements in there), but it is not your standard fantasy series. It stands as a truly unique product.

          The Complete Elfquest Vol. 3 collects various issues of the Hidden Years series, which came out right after Kings of the Broken Wheel,  but for some reason excludes issues 6 and 7- not that it is much of a loss, after issue five the series took a serious downward spiral. The Pini’s, overworked from simultaneous projects, farmed out the writing and art to new people with a mixed bag of results. The writing was actually good, however without Wendy Pini’s art Elfquest loses its flavor. And the art in issues 8 and 9 here, compared to the five before it, feels flat and lifeless, and just off from what a reader of the series is used to. I know all comic art is technically flat, but it shouldn’t feel that way.

          The first five issues however are some of the best art I’ve ever seen Elfquest produce. They are in full color, designed to be in full color, which is a rarity for the series. And beautifully mesh art, action, story, and words together. It took me awhile to get through these issues due to my stopping and staring at for half an hour at each gorgeous page. I was so swept up in the art that I sometimes forgot the plot to the story.

          The Hidden Years issues do not compromise a story arc, but are independent stories which focus on a different character in the times between when Kings of the Broken Wheel concluded. But it is not necessary to have read any of those previous issues in order to enjoy the stories. Just keep on and you will pick up the gist of the meta-plot. They are well crafted stories in their own right.

          The last 150 pages are taken up by the Dreamtime story, originally published in Elfquest II in the mid 1990s. It is a string of stories, in black and white, each focusing on a different member of the Wolfrider tribe and the dreams they had during the long sleep (over 10,000 years) they endured chasing the villain Rayek. It is a fun story, very dreamlike as it should be, and utilizes different artistic styles and points of view than the rest of the series. Some may find it to become tedious after about fifty pages, I certainly did, only because I was expecting something to happen, but this story is more about character introspection than character action.

          This is more a collection of interlude stories. The next main arc Shards should be included in the next collected volume. Despite that, there are some fantastic tales in this volume and I encourage you to take a look.

       For more readings, try my collection of books. 

Junky: The Definitive Text of "Junk" (William Burroughs)

By William S. Burroughs (with the 1952 & 1977 introductions by Alan Ginseburg) (and the 1953 & 1964 forwards by Carl Solomon)

Publisher: Grove Press (November 13, 2012) (originally published by Ace Books in 1953)

Softcover 256 pages

          “The questions of course could be asked: Why did you ever try narcotics? Why did you continue using it long enough to become an addict? You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in any other direction. Junk wins by default. I tried it as a matter of curiosity. I drifted along taking shots when I could score. I ended up hooked. Most addicts I have talked to report a similar experience. They did not start using any reason they can remember. They just drifted along until they got hooked. If you have never been addicted, you can have no clear idea what it means to need junk with the addict’s special need. You don’t decide to be an addict. One morning you wake up sick and you’re an addict.”

          Thus begins William S. Burroughs’s first published book, dedicated to his one true love, drugs. This work is unlike any of his other writings (except for a few selected essays) in that it maintains a coherent focus and timeline. It does not devolve into hallucinogenic insanity as does his later texts. Though we do see a few precursor snippets of Naked Lunch within the story. The pusher Bill Gains and the narco cop Hauser appear, both the same brutal caricatures. The Mexican drug queen Lupita is a prominent figure in the later parts of Junky. Never seen, she is constantly lurking in the background, controlling his supply of morphine. The police detective trailing someone in a white trenchcoat, making him easy for others to spot, occurs here as well. These are all small, but memorable parts, of what will be his seminal work.

Author William S. Burroughs

            Junky came out at a time when a series of lurid tell-all books appeared on the subject- H is for Heroin and The Man with the Golden Arm. This book differed significantly because the tone is so flat, almost amoral. The heavy handed morality play or exploitation luridness is nonexistent. “Here are the facts,” Burroughs writes and he gives them, without social comment and without emotion.

          In a sense this is not an autobiographical work, as you do not get a sense of eh man behind the pen. He is in fact a dead slate. It comes as a surprise later in the work when it is revealed that he has a wife. And you would never guess that, except in one throwaway line, that there were two children dragged along into the gays bars and shooting galleries of New York, New Orleans, and Mexico City. A line near the end of the text, “My wife and I were separated,” is the only cryptic indicator of the infamous William Tell incident, where he drunkenly shot her in the head. This separation is permanent. All that is presented is one man and his junk.

          This is not uncommon for old school autobiographies, the fifties were just beginning to tilt that narrative. Despite his rejection of it, the Victorian values of upper crust educated WASP society had left an indelible mark on Burrough’s style. Simply put, you do not air your family laundry in public. Being gay and a drug user was one thing, that was him, but the rest of the family was out of bounds. 

Original cover, title, and nom de plume from the 1953 Ace publication.

          Burroughs loves his drug habit. “Junk does not cause addiction,” he writes, “exposure does.” A very thin hair there. The only emotion he displays here is anger towards those who prevent him from scoring and the psychiatrists who regularly ask him why he feels he needs it. “I need it to get up in the morning,” is part of the standard reply. As I have said previously in my review of his other book and that of his son's, had no one prevented him from getting drugs, Burroughs would almost have no opinions on anything at all.

          His views on homosexuals are interesting. He seems to have an absolute dislike for them, despite being gay himself. “A room full of fags gives me the horrors. They jerk around like puppets on invisible strings, galvanized into hideous activity that is the negation of everything living and spontaneous.” He reports on this several times, only seeming to go to such places when drunk and horny, but otherwise abjuring them in preference to dark junk filled holes and bars on the outskirts of poor areas. His disregard for women is also well know. Even his common law wife. “We give them too much power. It’s some left over Southern chivalry that we need to jettison.”

          Included is the glossary that was part of the original edition. Nowadays it’s rather laughable because all of the hip slang terms of the time are now so ingrained in our common vocabulary that an explanation isn’t needed. Idioms like “cold turkey”, “kick a habit”, “coke”, “weed” are all spelled out for the 1950’s “square”.  

Cover the 1977 edition

        Two additional chapters written for the original version have been included. One detailing a stop Burroughs makes between New Orleans and Mexico City, the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. He goes on for some length detailing its decay over the years and its cultural stagnation. The tone is totally different from the rest of the text. In the second he details the idiot ideas of Wilhelm Reich and how the orgone accumulator could cure cancer, as well as number of other illnesses. These assertions of Reich eventually lead to the death of several children and the burning of all of his works, ordered by the FDA. He describes building an orgone accumulator and curing a junk habit with its use. It also was removed due to its tonal shift from the rest of the text and for repetition, as parts of what he states in the chapter has distributed elsewhere in the book.

          In becoming the “definitive” edition the book has ironically left something out. In the original edition there were copious editors notes placed in the text, which clarified or disagreed with the facts that Burroughs put forth. These were omitted as they were not the author’s words. I still would have liked an appendix which stated what these editorial blurbs stated.

                For more readings, try my collection of books. 

Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography (Non Fiction)

By: Roger Shattuck

Publisher: Harvest Books; 1 edition (September 15, 1997)

Softcover 384 pages

          “A contradiction or paradox lies buried in the title of this book, Forbidden Knowledge. If we are familiar enough with any entity or domain to call the result “knowledge” then we already know too much about it to apply the adjective forbidden. The taboo or prohibition has already been broken, the obstacle or risk of knowledge still unlocated, unnamed, unexplored, possibly closed to us. ‘How,’ Meno asked Socrates, ‘will you look for something when you don’t in the least know what it is?’ These paradoxes do not disqualify the phrase ‘forbidden knowledge’ On the contrary, the phrase remains with us and carries meaning by its long association with particular stories and case histories.”

          Many claim that this book is somewhat overwritten, I disagree. It is a heavy read, but it is easy to see that the author enjoyed crafting aspects of the text very much and was genuinely interested in the intellectual debate. Be that as it may, the first portion of the text does rely heavily on assumed knowledge. The author expects that the reader is familiar with various literary texts. That they have read Faust, Doctor Faustus, Frankenstein, Billy Budd, The Stranger the poems of Emily Dickenson, the essays of Michel de Montaigne- or at least have a working idea of the thematic elements present in each one. If you do not, you may want to skip the first five chapters and go straight to Part Two, which deals with case histories of the arguments surrounding forbidden knowledge.

          The book begins with a classic examination of the ancient’s attitudes towards man’s pursuit of knowledge and what limitations should be placed upon it. Essentially we have the cautionary tales of man giving into his curiosity, reaching too far, offending the divine, and being slapped down by the Almighty. Stories like Pandora, the Garden of Eden, and the Tower of Babel all warn mankind to curb their inquisitiveness lest it lead them into ruin.  

Author Roger Shattuck

          Until modern times these ideas of forbidden knowledge meant less about scientific discoveries and focused almost exclusively on heretical religious ideas and philosophies. For this the banned registry of the Catholic Church was founded, on which texts were alternately placed on and removed from over the centuries. The common herd must be protected from dangerous ideas and heretical thoughts. It’s why so many of the enlightenment liberals were against the idea. That a free flow of ideas was most important.

          However the idea of forbidden knowledge changes as medical and scientific breakthroughs create physically dangerous concoctions and devices. All of a sudden it becomes important to restrict that information. Should everyone know how to make dynamite, or refine heroin, or modify an assault rifle to become fully automatic?

          The author expressed this notion with two examples, the atomic bomb and the Human Genome Project (which was still being mapped when the text was published). These two present different aspects of the scientific question, one having been finished and many of its creators horrified by the results. The other has many fears swirling around it, about the dangers that might be done in meddling with the fundamental aspects of humanity.

          When it comes to the atomic bomb and all its offspring, the scientists who developed it have put blinkers on their eyes. They knew they were developing a weapon during war time. What did they think was going to be done with the device? As for the Human Genome Project, X-files linking it to an alien invasion aside, it really hasn’t yielded all that much. It has considerably sped up some aspects of cancer research and investigation into various other diseases and physical disorders, plus it added to the development of evolutionary theory. But no monsters or super-viruses have resulted from the project.

          The question of whether knowledge should be sought after becomes a moot point.  Inevitably if the information is within grasp, man, like Eve plucking the apple, will search it out. Time has shown us this. The idea of remaining ignorant is almost universally rejected by anyone who is curious.

          The enquiry becomes more interesting when it is applied to the most extreme examples of literature, namely the books of the Marquis De Sade. These books paradoxically have never been out of print since first being published in the late 18^th century, but also very rarely were available to the general public. There have been many attempts over the 20^th century to rehabilitate the image of the Divine Marquis, Camille Paglia being the most recent, and cast his evil shadow in a different light. However as the author points out, and I completely agree, all attempts at this fall flat upon a cursory glance at the actual text. The morality of DeSade’s work is immorality. It is sadistic porn, a glorification of cruelty and narcissism, with a half digested attempt at a philosophical reasoning tacked on. After reading all of his work myself I can say, sexual violence and rape is not presented in the work to emphasize a moral, political, or philosophical point. The point of his work is sexual violence and rape which occurs at length on nearly every third page. The rest is just framing.

Only known portrait of De Sade circa1760

          As such do we limit access to the works of De Sade, who essentially was the first and worst murder-porn writer. Do we create a new registry and have the texts locked away for only a chosen few to gaze upon? Or should it be freely available to all at all libraries? If neither option appeals to you, then what is the middle ground? Should there be an age limit? If so, then what is to prevent other age limits being slapped on other works, perhaps for religious or political reasons? The best answer seems to lie in a free market censorship. Publishers are reluctant to put out the book due to bad publicity, book stores are likewise resultant to stock the book, so distribution is limited. Thus reducing the chances of someone who is not looking for the text to accidentally stumble across it.

       For more readings, try my collection of books.