Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Mama, don't take my Kodachrome Snark away!



After last week's completely unprovoked and shameless casting of aspersions upon the English, for which the management apologizes (a freak neurological short-circuit in a rogue flying-monkey-ninja-research-department-intern), we turn instead to casting aspersions at someone who is far better equipped to both take 'em and dish 'em out in return … yes, you know whom I mean …

Still trapped as we are in the stasis field of page 42+1 of Lewis Carroll's Hunting of the Snark, and to be more precise, in the Barrister's Dream of Fit the Sixth, it is only fitting that we also stop and take measure of the author of our entropic dilemma, Mister Carroll himself.

Were you aware that Lewis Carroll was a genuinely talented photographer and a pioneer in the subtle and difficult genre of child portraiture? If you don't believe me, I urge you to explore some of the links on the right, under the General Carrolliana heading.

If you do believe me, then you will also believe me when I inform you that according to The Dream Book of Mister Pyridine, those who dream of photography are dreaming of the one who is dreaming them (if one partakes of the Hindu view of things) and hence they are double illusions, similar in metaphysical nature to a photograph itself, which is itself the positive illusion of the negative illusion of the world-maya illusion itself.

Ordinarily, such I reserve such zenlike insights for the other listless habitues of the various saloons and vans-down-by-the-river which I am wont to frequent in my leisure hours but since this is the holiday season and all that, I thought it best to share and enjoy!
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NB. Hans Rickheit has commenced a 600-pg. (yow!) magnum opus, Ectopiary … he is posting pages as he goes and I recommend them to you. His Squirrel Machine, for me at least, was the best and most original thing in American comix in a long while. Ectopiary should be well worth visiting for a long time to come!

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for the link to Ectopiary... and thanks for the recommendation of Squirrel Machine, it looks really cool.

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  2. Yes, Han's work really excites me … a sort of intimate, New England Bellmeresque variant of Surrealism

    more & more, I'm loathe to use the word Surrealism but for the sake of brevity, nothing else seems to do

    Han's work is not at all what Breton had in mind, which is one of his strengths

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