everything is better in black and white

Even though i had flipped through a copy in a bookstore, and read an issue in Mcsweeney's Quarterly Concern, I wasn't at all impressed until i had my own hardcover and could read Black Hole in one sitting. The art mutates every panel into an awful and shiny acid trip - this is definitely teen angst at it's most lethal. I'm pretty satisfied with an indie comic for once here, coming from someone who can't stand chris ware. Black Hole is also going to look fantastic on my shelf especially now that i've shed the dust jacket - as is my wont.
perhaps that's shallow.

also picked up the ultimates hardcover vol 1, and morrison's marvel boy tpb this week. marvel boy especially was a pleasant surprise.....pretty flawless little series, just when i thought i had all th e morrison i could handle.
remind me not to go to the comic book shop on a whim anymore.

future acquisitions and recent articles

articles:
in the shadow of the millennium

an exchange on afflicted powers: capital and spectacle in the new age of war

soon to greet the shelf:

That other moon is actually a large black man

well that was a quick 800 pages. During a phase of writer's block the hero (the Kid) realizes that due to his notoriety, and the lack of culture in the post-apocalypse, that his book of poetry (Brass Orchids) would have sold just as well if it were a grocery list. if Delaney wrote an 800 pg grocery list, i'd be the first to grab a copy. I can't help but compare Dhalgren to Burrough's Cities of the Red Night (probably due to all the homoeroticism, i admit). Delaney manages to curtail any magical formulae of his own, unlike Burroughs, who utilizes cut-ups and strategies that exist (at least to him) as magical workings. But Delaney's devices seem purely literary, not mathematical or randomized, giving the passages warmth (as systematical is to cold). it helps that despite the "impenetrable fortress" criticism, it's a much more cohesive work than Burroughs or Joyce. i could easily convince myself that i should now try to read everything the author has done, but that's an unhealthy tendency and i dont have the spare months.

quick description: some guy (mental patient?) wanders an unknown city right after some sort of apocalypse (the rest of the country is fine), has lots of sex and a few adventures, becomes a legend/poet, has more sex, wanders around and gets confused, decides he'd better get some more sex.
awesome.