That Time Of The Year

Little Ruthie hid behind the stairs and watched the big red man tinkering beside the tree.

It was a little past 2AM and her parents had been asleep for ages. She'd managed to stay up solely because of the large shot of coffee she'd managed to slop for herself from mommy's espresso maker.

The big red man grunted once and Ruthie shivered with delight - it was true! Johnny had kept on saying Christmas was a big lie but Ruthie knew now; she'd tell him!

There was a soft clump as the big red man overturned the small plate of cookies that had been lying on the table beside the tree.

Ruthie finally dredged up the courage to go up to him.

"Mister Santy Claus, sir?"

The big red man started upright and clonked his head on a heavy ornament hanging from the tree; the branch from which it had been hanging rent into two with a dry crack. He jumped again before finally turning to face the little girl.

"For fuck's sake," he said testily. "Not again."

Ruthie gasped - Santy had just said one of the Big Bads! She opened her mouth to reprimand him when the razor finally caught the glint of firelight.

Ruthie choked a little then.

"Hold still, kid. This won't hurt at all."

"But-but that's what Mister Sandman does!" Ruthie found the glint of the straight edge almost hypnotic. "You're supposed to be a good guy, Santy!"

"Those old myths were badly in need of an update," the big red man said. Up close, his beard was more faded yellow than white, his clothes a congealed red rather than the bright crimson she'd seen from the stairwell. "Besides, this would probably mean one less brat to lose my sleep over next year."

Ruthie tried to scream but the big red man was surprisingly fast.

Then it was over as suddenly as it had begun.

The big red man wiped his razor on his sleeve. The motion bore an easy fluidity that only comes from practice.

Then he set off across the room towards the chimney, taking care to pick up the grubby parcel he'd left beside the tree.

There was a spring in his step that had not been there before, and if you listened closely you could hear him humming the same monosyllable over and over.
"Ho," said the big red man. "Ho. Ho. Ho."

Then he said to a radio clipped to his vest: "What do you mean you're nipping out for a drink? Come back before I skin ye bastards alive."

The radio squawked, after which it said: "Go fuck yerself, Nicky."

The big red man said: "I'm getting you neutered first thing tomorrow, Rudolph."

The cobbled chimney protested as the big red man clambered fitfully in again.

Then nobody said anything at all.

Dénouement

Then he pulled the trigger.

Then he closed his eyes.

Nitin swayed for a moment, dancing to some unheard music, far away from the grotesque tableau of which he was currently a part.

“It is too late for that now, Otto.” He took in a deep breath. “Can you feel it? In the air around you? It is all coming together. The strands are all resolving themselves.”

“It was an honest mistake! We were kids, don’t you get it? We were just kids!”

Otto was babbling faster and faster – his mind was finally coming to terms with what his heart had been screaming for the past five minutes, the past hour, the whole three weeks he’d known Nitin.

“I’ll-I’ll make it up to you! I’ll make it up to her!”

“I happen to be shooting pool with my cousin as we speak.”

“I think I will, Otto. You see, I’m not even here.

He looked back at the pickup but five steps seemed like a billion miles.

“You won’t get away with this!” A thin trail of spittle flew from the corner of Otto’s mouth.

“I know what you’ve done.” Nitin cocked the revolver. “All I am looking for is payback.”

“I’m not here for your confession. I know what you are.

“Get what?”

“You still don’t get it, do you, Otto?”

“Otto, Otto, Otto.” Nitin grinned in the darkness. “I love saying your name. It sounds the same forwards and back, did you know that?

“You can prove nothing,” Otto declared. “I wasn’t even here that night. I was shooting pool with my cousin. I’ve already testified once, and-”

“Her brother was a wastrel and a layabout, Otto. But he was around. Still is, in fact.”

“She wasn’t alone in the world, Otto. The papers said she was an orphan but they didn’t say anything about siblings.

“Where do you figure in all of this?”

“Nothing much. Except she destroyed the rest of her life that night.” Nitin scratched his chin with the barrel of the gun. “You know the details already, Otto. Need we waste our time?”

“And so what if she was?”

“Resisting your advances but too drunk to care too much.”

“I was telling you a story,” he continued. “Where was I? Ah, yes. Party spot. And this was where you first met her, didn't you? Dancing with her schoolmates. Young and hopeless.

Something chrome gleamed in his hand.

“Looking for this?” Nitin said.

He had already began searching in his pockets for the Magnum he always carried on him but it was nowhere to be found.

“I don’t see where you’re going with this,” Otto whispered.

“Five coyote maulings in eighteen months. But of course, that didn’t stop teenaged vagabonds from coming out here to party.”

“They moved the rest stop a couple miles down the road,” Nitin offered. “This one happened to be located too close to the woods to be safe.

They both knew who the she was.

“Who?” Otto swirled around to face the other man, but his voice belied the fact that the question was a redundant one.

“Neither did she,” Nitin quietly replied.

“I don’t like this place,” he said to Nitin.

Otto shuddered.

The Servo billboard in the background had faded almost completely to white, the lettering and the car barely visible, the eyes of the driver quite deliberately ripped open with a hunting knife that had a four-lettered name scratched upon its ratty scabbard.

The building looked like it hadn’t seen any visitors in decades.

“Yeah. This is it.” Nitin got out in front of the rest stop.

That was the important bit taken care of.

“Are you sure?” He looked doubtful, but he’d stopped the truck.

Otto stomped down on the brakes and the pickup cluttered to a halt.

“This is it,” Nitin said at length.

Otto grunted again, and after that they drove in silence for a while longer.

“I mean the dénouement. You know, the part where all the interweaving plotlines are resolved for the benefit of everyone keeping score at home.”

He fancied he could see the silhouettes of the household sitting down to dinner.

“No, not the ending, per se.” he stared at a dimly-lit farmhouse passing to their right.

“The ending?” Otto hazarded.

“The interpersonal dynamics are all very fine,” Nitin lumbered on, “And I get how it is an organic medium. But it sucks that the good parts are generally held back until the end.”

Intelligent discourse wasn’t exactly his forté.

Otto grunted but kept his eyes on the road.

“You know what I hate about theatre?” he asked suddenly.

Nitin looked at his watch again (9:24PM; hardly after hours) and wished for some divine intervention, some deus ex machina that would let him skip forward to the end of their journey.

Otto chuckled.

“I’m fine,” he finally responded through gritted teeth. “Mind if I stick my head outta the window?”

This just happened to be Otto’s idea of a joke.

They were both sitting in the front, like they had been for the whole four hour duration of the ride.

“All right back there?” Otto asked for the fifth time, and Nitin fought off a wild urge to rip his throat out.

His hands trembled slightly in his lap, but that was about it.

To give him due credit he kept his composure.

He was too old for that, for one; and the guy behind the wheel was too damn large to be ignored anyway.

He could hardly pretend he was alone in the car, could he?

Nitin stared out of the window for a bit but then it got old.

They drove in silence for a while.

Empty House

This is not exactly a happy sort of day to be posting.

The morning started out ok. Woke up at 9. Showered. Dressed. Takes me a while to come to terms with the world, so don't remember much about the morning till then. Dadi looked slightly off, but she's looked slightly off before. Nothing that another dozen colored pills won't solve, right?

Wrong.

The only significant interaction I had with her was after I put on a shirt. Went up to her room, asked her how I looked (wearing a shirt is a bit of a ritual, since I generally don't do it too often). She said she had no clue.

Not a downer by itself-she's been putting up with my retarded fashion choices way too long-but her responses are generally more positive.
Either way.

Put on a Tshirt instead (white, Harry Potter motif, old reliable) and off to college it was.

Here's what I did in college today:

1.) Mooching about

2.) Marxism

3.) Mooching about

4.) Ice-cream

5.) Mooching about

6.) Gaming arena (Call of Duty, let's kill us some motherhumpers)

7.) Mooching about

8.) Going Home

Called home from Kashmiri Gate - my Mausi resides at Connaught Place, a visit is long overdue, and have been instructed to call home in case I am delayed for some reason.

Mom said she had some work for me. Told me to come home.

Her voice didn't quiver.

Her laughter did not sound contrived.

I came back to an empty house.

Because while I was away, this is what my grandma had been up to:

1.) Dizzying spells

2.) Disorientation

3.) Nausea

4.) Bouts of confusion

5.) A complete loss of will power.

That last one means she could not even muster the strength to get out of bed.
And you thought you were having a bad morning, eh? Ha ha ha. What a card you are.

Try building a joke around the punchline provided.

Ready? Set? Go.

Brain hemorrhage.

She was hospitalized somewhere between 1.30 and 2PM, which means mom already knew when I called her in the afternoon.

Dad thought it would be best if I wasn't told over the phone.

Apparently they did not want me running over to the hospital and making a nuisance of myself.

They are currently in the process of shifting her to Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital. And while I can see why they wouldn't want me turning up and being a hindrance rather than a help, it pains me slightly to note I cannot read my own parents. We tell ourselves how we're keen judges of human response, how we can read our friends' tells without breaking a sweat, and here I am, a stranger to the house of my father, so to speak.

And while on the subject of the fallacy of human nature (I am going to assume the rest of the human race is as inept and retarded as I am), who am I going to talk to, about this? My closest friends from yesterday are either as insensate as I am or out of touch (through no fault of their own, let me tell you - I would fall out of touch if I were them, and since they're obviously not smart enough I have no qualms making the call for them). The ones I made today are nice people. Do not want to dump this upon them, because I don't know how they'd respond. I mean, I wouldn't know if I were them, either.

So that leaves You. Who have read this far because either

A.) You have nothing better to do, or

B.) You thought I had something worthwhile to say.

Do you have something comforting to say? The one other person I told said I should buck up. He talked about how I'd been the one he turned to when he lost someone close to him. He also said that while RML has the best neurosurgeons in the world, I should prepare for the worst.

Could you do better?

Didn't think so.

Are you still here?

Good.

Here is what I have to say to you:

A.) Do something more productive. Life is a fleeting bitch and you have no clue what she'll throw at you next; and

B.) The amphitheater of your world is running empty. So stop listening to the lines that the actors keep spouting. Watch their body language instead.

Words can be fickle bastards.

Now fuck off and let me brood in peace.

Cat's Cradle

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Kurt Vonnegut is not exactly a familiar name when it comes to the impact left upon a modern reader's psyche; inquire about him and you get either blank stares, or, at the most, a mumbled response about how Slaughterhouse-Five wasn't half bad. And yet, if one were to look through the dusty annals of the twentieth century, they'd find Vonnegut among the few people who captured the essence of their times without making it look difficult.

The subject of this review first came out in 1961, a time when the Cold War was gathering momentum and the world was in very real danger of nuclear destruction. It is appropriate, then, that the central plot point in Cat's Cradle is a crystalline compound called ice-nine that can freeze all the water upon earth in seconds.It is created as a lark by one of the men who invented the Atom Bomb; after his death, his three children divide the compound among themselves. The novel follows the exploits of Jonah, a cynical novelist, as he searches a remote Caribbean island for the crystals. Woven into the plot are the teachings of Bokononism (a fictitious religion practiced by the people on the island) and a multitude of deftly-woven characters that bring out the undercurrent of madness that runs through our lives.

Cat's Cradle deals with the colossal magnitude of human folly, and the dangers of progress for the sake of progress. Along the way it deals out insight into love, hate and religion, among other things. Vonnegut's acerbic wit inspires no laughter except for the hysterical kind; the humor is served pitch black. But along the way we get a look at the landscape of those times... A bleak portrait, but a riveting one nonetheless.

Of special mention is the ingenuity of the story itself: the plot hums along at a steady pace, retaining its flow even as the narrator sets off on frequent tangents to point out the attractions there. The novel is compact (like most of Vonnegut's other works) but one doesn't feel short-changed at the end; the conclusion is surprising without being abrupt, and the final lines linger on long after the novel itself.

<quotation snipped to avoid spoilers.>

During the latter half of his career,Vonnegut wrote an autobiographical collage called Palm Sunday. Amongst its interesting (if haphazard) contents was a report card saying how he ranked his works with respect to one another. Slaughterhouse-Five was one of the books he'd given an A+.

Cat's Cradle was the other.

In fact, the University of Chicago (which had earlier dismissed Vonnegut's master's thesis as frivolous) awarded him his degree on the merit of this novel, which they felt was an apt analysis of the human condition. And while that endorsement might not lend too much credence to the novel, it is certainly a reminder that this book is more relevant than your average piece of fiction.

I remembered The Fourteenth Book of Bokonon, which I had read in its entirety the night before. The Fourteenth Book is entitled, "What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?" It doesn't take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period. This is it: "Nothing."

Hungry Hearts

Read a short story by one Franz Kafka a few minutes back (read quite a few, actually, but I'm afraid some of his more urbane nuances tend to get a bit lost in translation). And just when I was about to give up ol' Franny as One-of-Those-Guys-I-Ain't-Gonna-Understand, along comes this one story that literally blows me away.

The story in question was called A Hunger Artist. It was the third or fourth story I flipped to, on account of Indrajit Hazra making a passing reference to it in his column way back when our babe Ramdev was fasting and everyone had an opinion on him, one way or the other. The reference was fleeting and ironical; the story was laden with irony too, only it was as fleeting as a freight train to the back of one's head.

Anyway, lengthy intro paras aside: the story is about a professional hunger artist, a man who ekes out his existence by living in an iron cage and not eating anything for stretches lasting forty days on end (not because of any limits to his endurance-the public simply loses interest after that).

The hunger artist fasts because of some nagging dissatisfaction he has with his life; he wants to fast for longer and longer periods but is hindered by a lack of commercial viability. Eventually, however, the public loses interest; and the hunger artist loses his impresario and his ragtag entourage of suspicious souls. He ends up as a circus sideshow; and finally released by the constant scrutiny and unhealthy interest of his spectators, he manages to fast out to his heart's content (or to the end of his life, although the two are implied to be one and the same).

Finally, as the circus overseer looks to clear out his straw-studded deathbed to make space for a panther, the hunger artist finally reveals the reason why he fasts:

It turns out he never really got the food he wanted.

These turn out to be his last words.

And after an unceremonious burial and a quick once-over, the cage is refilled and life goes on.

There can, of course, be multiple ways of interpreting this tale; however, going with the conclusions I drew, I think the hunger artist represents every creator who ever longed for recognition... Or even a chance to practice his art, or say whatever he wanted to say. We all go through our lives with a nagging sense of unease, a slight crinkle of unfulfilled desire at the corner of our eyes.

The hunger artist wastes away in his anticipation.

We merely die a little every day.

Why do we lead such unsatisfying lives? Why do we fast for longer and longer periods, when it is not food but nourishment that we actually need? There's a million references I could throw at you right now-Taare Zameen Par and some brash lovesong by the INXS and every frigging Rocky movie ever made-but I don't really need to do that, do I?

You already know what I'm talking about.

You've known all along, in fact. This is why we root for the underdog. And it is also the reason behind the populace's disinterest and suspicion when it comes to the hunger artist-because the mirror he holds up to their faces is so woefully accurate. They can all see a little bit of themselves in the artist; and at the same time they are unable to provide him the food he needs above all others.

Since you've read this far, let us try an experiment.

I'll assume I hold your unadulterated, undivided attention.

And you can assume I keep soliloquizing on the magic of Kafka (although I really think I need to go read the rest of that collection - I might miss a lot of the finer points, but ol' Frannypack is equally comfortable swapping his fine chisel for a sledgehammer).

There. We just freed up fifteen minutes (or fourteen, if you're still reading). Take these fourteen minutes, and put 'em where they'll give you the maximum amount of joy... Go listen to those songs you heard when you were young(er) and carefree. Read the first two pages of that paperback you were saving up for a rainy day.

Or if your activity of choice will take more than that to accomplish, write it down somewhere. That way, the next time you're about to blow two hours watching No Entry again on television, you can get off the couch and go painting instead. Or any of the wonderful things that give you peace.

Now. Go.

It might not make much of a difference... But it is a really small slice of your life, ain't it?

And this happens to be the only one you've got.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go draw up a bucket list for July 10 to July 16th... We'll talk about it in detail some other time.

On Writing

So this is not going to be a review.

There is a book by the given title (a short guidebook for the aspiring writer by Stephen King: GET IT NOW) but it does not merit a review, if only for the sole reason that I can find no flaws in it. It is short, awesome, hard-hitting, and helpful without being overbearing. Of special note is King's deadpan humour, which gets...

...But I digress.

This short little ditty is about the act of writing itself.

It is currently 3:25AM in the morning. I do not exactly have a healthy sleep pattern, but I generally call it a day at 2 or 3 by the latest (by calling it a day I mean crawling into bed to play Angry Birds or read some short stories on Kindle, but screw it).

Tonight, however, I feel pumped. I feel alive. I feel like the king of all I survey.

And that's simply because of writing.

You see, I started this short story last week. It was meant to be around 5,000 words; two nights worth of effort, three at the most. I worked on it for three days, wrote all the offbeat humour and random violence, and then... Stopped. Somewhere near the 4,000 word mark.

Because I now had to write about normal human interaction; something I do not happen to be very good at. I left the story alone for the next two nights (wrote a poem one day and watched Up the next-awesome flick!) and was going to work on the next one tonight before I thought

I'll be damned if I give up on the one thing I really honestly want to be good at.

Mr King has no illusions of grandeur about the actual act of writing: in his book he speaks of writers using their creativity as an excuse for their other flaws (melancholia and alcoholism amongst them) and also of muses that shit on the writer's head (long story).

One thing he stresses upon, however, is not to give up. He says stories will mostly be fun to write, but that one must not get discouraged at the tough parts, either. Because writing isn't always gonna be a bed of roses.

I stuck by my story (it was mine, after all: who else would stick by it?) and have worked on it for four hours before coming here to pour my incoherent heart out.

At the time of writing, The Last Laugh finally lies in a state of completion: not polished, yet (that shall come later) but in working condition. Readable from start to end. My baby's 6,500 words long (I was never good with estimates) and went for 18 pages of hoots when I read her over again (dunno if everyone else will like it, though).

I might not make it big for a long time to come - heck, for the rest of my life if I'm really unlucky. But right now I honestly think I wouldn't mind. Because as long as fiction, or poetry, or rambling prose (like this one) gives me as much of a kick as it did tonight, it will always be the one drug I'll need to feel truly alive.

Would rant a bit more but I need to mail her off for dad to take a print. Tomorrow I shall edit her a bit, try to keep her soul and trim off a bit of flab, and then maybe I'll post a short excerpt here for your perusal.

Thank you for reading this far. Dunno where a writer would be without his reader(s), but I'm willing to bet it would not be too happy a place.

Peace.

UR

And so we finally come to this.

To be honest it wasn’t supposed to go like this; the review on the cards for tonight was Blockade Billy, a stunning novella by Stephen King, about baseball – one of the things he loves so.

However, by virtue of the fact that the title of this blog professes to contain the views of a so-called bastard of the cynical variety, it wouldn’t have been kosher, so to speak.

You see, this blog was originally started with the intention of bashing upon badly-made films and badly-programmed video games and (perhaps most cathartically) badly-written books. We’d have us a couple drinks (cold coffee, if you must know), lounge about in the living room, and make light of the things that piss us off.

The first two entries veered more towards the Oh-Look-Here’s-A-Lesser-Known-Jewel persuasion; and while that is not a bad thing for a blog to be, the readers (yes, someone did read the goddarn thing already – my shock exceeded yours. Honest) found the less-popular subject matter a bit too obscure for their liking.

And that brings us to tonight’s rant. For the novella I am about to bash (spoiler alert) is not too well known, either. But it is Shite. So we get to cut loose.

UR is a rather recent work of fiction by (hold your horses, folks) Stephen King. The same guy who gave us sublime horror and literary fiction and a most enlightening guide for the aspiring author called On Writing. UR was released as a promotional title for the Amazon Kindle, and was exclusive to that platform-and therein lies the crux of the matter.

You see, UR is nothing but a two-hundred-page-long love letter for the Amazon Kindle. The book meanders through a vague (or mediocre, if we follow the author’s lead and slap the word upon every page) account of an English teacher whose girl leaves him because he does not have an... Amazon Kindle. The book begins by him attempting to spite her by buying an... Amazon Kindle (which, incidentally, has to be the most mediocre way of spiting someone I’ve ever seen. Kinda like putting a horsehair brush in a jockey’s bed to send a message). The whole tale revolves around something that is off-kilter with his... Choice of Lifestyle. Oops, sorry folks, I meant his motherlovin’ AMAZON KINDLE.

Stephen King has already forayed into the realm of e-literature by releasing a story called Riding The Bullet as an eBook exclusive (it has since appeared in the collection Everything’s Eventual and is pretty darn awesome, all things considered). However, he noted with displeasure that people were more interested in his choice of medium than whatever it was he actually had to say.

I can’t say I don’t sympathize with him; writers need to take a firm stand regarding the treatment of their creative output. but UR is the literary equivalent of bending over and praying one doesn’t stay sore for too long afterwards. The lead character is shown to be a traditional Books-Belong-On-Paper sorta guy, but subsequent events bury his preferences under a torrent of Hemingway and Poe and a bunch of other guys, all of whom have undiscovered works in some phantom dimension that happens to be KINDLE-EXCLUSIVE.

A couple of moments were chilly- the take on world events in other worlds, for example-but one expects King’s work to be packed with such moments; any relevant message he might have had is buried under walk-on characters mouthing a single line about how THE KINDLE IS THE EARTHLY MANIFESTATION OF GOD and YES, YOU NEED TO USE A LITTLE LUBRICANT BEFORE THINGS GET GROOVEH (pardon the cringe-worthy metaphors but the picture that pops in my head is even more disturbing) before vanishing somewhere in the background –a Chinese sweatshop where they make Kindles for an angry population, most probably.

Anyway, apart from the blatant advertising spots, there were a couple more irksome things that I despised.

Firstly, why thrust supernatural creatures of judgement into an otherwise-sane story at the eleventh hour (Spoiler Alert)? The way they kept referring to the circular notion of things and the significance of the Tower were both sickening, to say the least. I mean, obviously your regular fanboys won’t really buy something so derivative; and those unaware of the Dark Tower mythos will only pick their noses and ponder for a brief moment before going back to reading their SPANKING NEW STEPHEN KING EXCLUSIVE on their AMAZON KINDLE.

Secondly, after everything has died down and the guy has finally disposed of his Kindle on grounds of sanity, what do you get? A picture of his girl in the local paper (Spoiler Alert!) And a pathetic desire to call her up right then. I mean, you take the one likable character in a crappy story (that's the english teacher's girl), build them up to the point where a satisfactory conclusion would do verra-well, thankee, and then abandon them with no sense of closure whatsoever.

The cumulative effect is that of banging your head on a wall, if the wall were a freight train and your head was, oh, I don’t know-THE AMAZON KINDLE?!?!

In conclusion: This is a crappy book that serves as a crappy advertisement for a device that was outdated the second it rolled off the conveyor belt. I read this whole novella on the Kindle app for Android (it has a 16-bit colour display and can-gasp!-access the internet and play music, among other things) and am now thankful I did not pay for it.

Seriously, though, if you’re looking for a mad old time, you could always print the story out on paper and then read it-a book about the Kindle read by a bunch of guys with no electronic assistance.

Way to be ironic, Danny boy; now pass the bottle of absinthe.

Meanwhile, I shall finally call it a day-thank you for reading this far. Do drop in from time to time, and pray keep your eyes open for Blockade Billy. He’ll probably make his appearance after my brain stops feeling as clunky and overheated as, say, an AMAZON KINDLE.

Peace.

Transmetropolitan

Let us begin with a history lesson, fellers.

Ever heard of a guy named Hunter S. Thomson? Wrote a bunch of swell books. Most famous one was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. They even made a movie starring Depp and Benicio del Torro out of it.

Anyway, Thomson was famous even in non-fiction-reading-circles (read: tightass prudes) because of his writing style, which is now famous as Gonzo Journalism. It works by putting the reporter in the center of things rather than the peripheri, making him an active participant rather than a mute spectator. This lends Gonzo journalism a personalized touch that helps endear it to the masses (although endear is probably the wrong word in this context).

End of history lesson.

This long-winded monologue leads up to Transmetropolitan, whose narrative and presentation style both pay homage to Thomson and his brainchild. It deals with the (mis)adventures of Spider Jerusalem, a famous reporter who is yanked out of exile by an unfulfilled literary contract. The series follows Spider as he goes about exposing the uglier face of a city that is pretty darn repulsive to begin with.

Oh, and it is set in the 23rd Century. Bring on the cyberpunk!

The comic itself is built around the experiences of Spider, and subsequent entries in the column he writes ("I Hate It Here") for his local newsfeed (The Word). The comic itself reads like an eclectic seizure of outrageous events, punctuated by strangely haunting moments.
"Journalism is just a gun. It's only got one bullet in it, but if you aim right, that's all you need. Aim it right, and you can blow a kneecap off the world."

Spider Jerusalem himself is a Nihilist, an arrogant prick, a junkie, a sadistic asshole. But once he starts writing he becomes the center of his own universe: everything else just falls away. And a deranged man becomes the voice of reason in a dark, dystopic time. That has to be what sets this book apart from all others.

Transmetropolitan was the tour de force of Warren Ellis, the acclaimed comic writer and novelist who'd earlier worked on cult titles such as Hellblazer and The Authority. His friend Garth Ennis claims the series was inspired by Ellis's own frustrations while working on mainstream titles and not being taken seriously. You can certainly see where he's coming from-bizarre issues such as cryogenic revivals and posthuman secessionist movements are used as metaphors for the more familiar themes of alienation and discrimination, to give an example.
Or maybe the writer just enjoys being a complete lunatic.

Either way, Ellis's warped vision is brought to life by the by the stunning wizardry of penciller Darick Robertson, who brings alive the seamy underbelly with his art. The panels are heavily populated with cutaway gags and obscure pop cult references in the style of Bill Elders, although the actual artistic merit is Robertson's own.

At the time of writing I have reached only the fifteenth issue in a run that lasted five years; however, both the comic and the wikipedia page suggest that all issues following the twelfth will tie into the theme of the new presidency campaign and subsequent shenanigans of the Smiler (read the book!) and Spider's attempts to stop him; in which case, I guess this is the right time to give out first impressions-before they'll buried under an avalanche of meta-references and grand story arcs.

Not that I'm complaining, of course: Hunter S. Thomson's most critically-acclaimed book was the non-fiction Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, and I can't wait to see how Ellis tackles the challenge of finding a big enough mirror for modern society.

In conclusion: read Transmetropolitan. If you can buy back-issues of Archie comics or download the Batman/Deadpool bibliographies (wait, that's me), you can spare a few hundred bucks/a little bandwidth to try out something that is at once too moving to be just a comic book and too graphic to be anything else.

"These are the new streets of this city, where the New Scum try to live. You and me. And here in these streets are the things that we want: sex and birth, votes and traits, money and guilt, television and teddy bears.

But all we've actually got is each other.

You decide what that means."

The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger

The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.

Fantasy has always been something of an oddity, as far as discussions of genre are concerned. Unlike a murder mystery (which tends to follow a set of basic checkpoints: murder, suspects, motives, vital-clues-revealed-at-random-points) or even historical novels (which tend to be themed around exotic times and places whose differences from our own time and place are highlighted), there is no tangible way of actually describing what fantasy is. You could mutter something about dwarves and elves and ogres, but that would just be you describing the mark left on the literary landscape by Tolkien and his ilk. Fantasy is Quidditch, or a dragon’s egg discovered by a farmhand, or a sly genie toying with a cocky young magician, or a world where strange and wonderful things happen because of Dust falling from-

Okay, tell you what, Danny Boy: go stand in a corner until you can stop dribbling; we’re trying to have a serious discussion here.

Now.

Fantasy is anything that is strange (or fantastic) without becoming completely unlike the world which we inhabit. You could write about a bunch of semi-developed merpeople flouncing about in the primordial ooze; but it only crosses into the realm of fantasy if they have some quirky mannerisms that we can associate with real people. And Stephen King – a man who has now spent over five decades writing weird and wonderful things (even though he is still mostly associated with horror because that’s where some of his best work has been) – manages to do exactly that with the Gunslinger.

Write a credible fantasy, I mean. Not something about merpeople. That one’s still on the table.

The Gunslinger is the story of Roland Deschain – the eponymous lawbringer in King’s dystopic realm – who also happens to be the last of his kind. He is laconic, single-minded and unimaginative: a plodder and a bludgeoner, as he describes himself. But his skill with his trusty revolvers is unmatched; and his grit and determination make him the only one who can ever hope of reaching the Dark Tower, which happens to be the central theme to the entire saga. The novel (which is actually a collection of five related pieces in chronological order) deals with Roland’s pursuit of the Man in Black, and a few glimpses at his illustrious past. On the way we meet a bevy of believable characters and are offered a glimpse at ourselves through a funhouse mirror – which is the hallmark of a good piece of fantasy writing.

The world of Roland and the Dark Tower is shown to be a dusty, dying place: the once-proud land of the gunslingers has fallen into decay, with sparse settlements in the harsh environments of deserts and mountains. But it is the small touches connecting this world to ours that make the story enthralling and somehow disturbing; for instance, the song Hey, Jude repeats in the background at many crucial junctures in the story, serving to remind us that this unforgiving land might be our own world in the distant future.

Both the back cover of the book and King’s afterword remind us that the current volume is only the first in a much larger work that will follow; so perhaps the world will be fleshed out further as we progress through the story. But the story itself is not the prime concern here. It travels through a fulfilling arc and reaches a satisfactory conclusion (for now), but the focus remains on the characters in general, and the titular gunslinger in particular.

Roland’s character is lovingly crafted into a credible antihero – you may or may not like him, but he does manage to earn your respect by the time the tale (almost, but not quite) ends. There are shades of Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name, and also of the Childe Roland from Robert Browning’s poem (who was the chief inspiration behind his conception). The other characters are also fleshed out well – from the townsfolk of Tull to the two birds who play a vital role in the story (you read right). My favourite aspect of the characterization has to be the interplay between Jake, Roland and the Man In Black: the white, grey and black who both define and challenge the roles they’re meant to embody.

Speaking of Roland, his own back-story is far from complete at this point-we’re only told of how he became an apprentice, not the last gunslinger-but something tells me he will not be touched upon in so much detail in further volumes – he will remain the protagonist, of course, but as King introduces an ever-growing roster of characters (it is like a trademark of his) we will probably be subjected to the occasional flashbacks rather than the full-fledged detours that this volume afforded.

All the more reason to cherish the beginning, I guess.

The Gunslinger was written over a period of twelve and a half years, one segment at a time, while

King worked on larger pieces in the interim. He confessed that while the story seemed almost impossible to finish at his current pace (the afterword suggests a further length of around 3000 pages to follow) he had bright plans for it’s future.

At the time of writing this review, it has been almost six years since the last volume of the Dark Tower saga came out (the first edition of the Gunslinger was published a decade before I was born) and to be sure, I shall discuss the rest of the books as soon as I get my hands on them. But before I conclude, I would like to admit a small grouse: It seems King recently rewrote the Gunslinger in order to bring the cultural references up-to-date, and also to correct a few inconsistencies with future volumes. But while looking up the differences online (the copy I’ve read is a tattered old first edition) I thought they removed some of the grey aspects of Roland and made him... Well, a whiter character, so to speak. Plus I’m not exactly a fan of rewrites, per se: if the writer found it fit for publication to begin with, he has to respect his own decision.

So I would like to finish with a solid recommendation for this book: if you want to see what mature fantasy can be like – with dark undertones and minus the heavy reliance on Tolkien’s mindscapes – try the Gunslinger. An original, unrevised edition, if you can find it. Because it is a fine example of King at his prime, with a significant amount of literary weight minus the pretensions that sometimes go with the genre. And also because a new companion novel is due next year, and you owe it to yourself to be up-to-date with a phenomenon that precedes Potter, Bartimaeus, LEP Recon, Lyra, and everyone else on the spectrum.

There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met

To view the last of me, a living frame

For one more picture! in a sheet of flame

I saw them and I knew them all. And yet

Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,

And blew "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."