Broken Glass In The Frozen Grass

I don't use this journal anymore and no one really knows it's mine. So I guess I could post whatever I want on it.

 

Can't think of anything.

This kind of thing confuses me as much as it angers me. I know it's been going around for a while but it shouldn't be old news until it stops.

Huh?

There's only like sixteen hours left before I'm done with this place. I can't freaking wait.

Then it's home for a day and to Chicago for the weekend/half of next week.

I just blue myself.

Yeah.   What's up. You like my new icon? It was fun to make. I want to make more.

I'm staying up all night. Woo!

EDIT: Well, maybe not all night. Shut up.

Back from Florida!

Now to shitty Michigan State.

Oh, and by the way, here's my favorite outfit so far. Sara, look at your brother.

Guitar Hero.

I'm getting it.

Three days. Count 'em.

I've started another version of my project Growing Fiction as a community here on LJ...

The problems I'm going to face are: finding people with suitable writing ability/talent so that I can fill up a roster of potential perpetual posters, having a sort of "always updating" page where writers *should* feel obligated to step in when things are slow, convincing people who probably definitely shouldn't be worrying about being published anyway that the things they post are not going to be taken away from them (seriously, you people bug me), and basically I don't know what else. How about having zero writers posting? That would be another shitty ending to one of my projects. Woo. Big surprise.

Ok.

Also I just downloaded Semagic so I don't have to go to LJ to post, I can just post from a program on my desktop. Easy peasy.

I'm gonna go now.

Seriously though - if you complain to me about losing rights to the things you probably aren't going to post/publish anyway, just shut up and go away. I don't have time to try and convince paranoid people that the FBI isn't after them and that aliens really can't read their thoughts.

OMG.

LiveJournal = ICK! Watch my other blog here. RSS it or something.

I do like the new format...easy for people to post who don't know shit about shit about shit. Lessee...polls, tables, media...pretty fancy pants.

OMG.

Read my comics here. Ok, some of them.

OMG.

Watch my shitty Tube videos here.

OMG I'M BACK!!!!

Page seven of this.

Hey you guys. You know, that once I "finish" (who knows when/if that will happen) my Dream a Little Dream... comic, it's going on a page of it's own?

The forum I frequent, Global Comic Jam's, recently saw the addition of this image to my signature...



No link to where it goes...yet. Look for it soon.

Adam

About a year ago, in my Physics class, I found myself doodling notes...they were notes from the beginning of a story, a story that was to take place in some kind of other, fantastical world. Anyway, I just thought that it would be fun for you all if you could see what it was I'd doodled...so cool now that I have a scanner! Hahaha...

News on the Art front...which is really all I'm at liberty to deliver at this point. I got the twenty dollar scanner from Ebay yesterday. As in, it arrived at my house. And yes, it works. Now...now I just need something to scan. I would draw something, perhaps, if it wasn't 2 AM and my hands weren't still frozen from the hour I spent outdoors an hour ago. 3 AM now...yes, it really does take this long to post...I have to type with either my left pinky toe or my tongue. Tonight it was my tongue...blech. And I really don't feel like using my eyebrows to pinch a pencil so I can draw something (It's how I draw. So what?)...UNTIL LATER!!!!

Good night, Constant Reader. Or...good morning.

Dearest Roommate,

I have never felt this feeling before with as much intensity. It is not hate; I don't have the capacity for hate. It is, however, extreme dislike. Let us not quibble; ever since that day in which you angrily shushed me and then let your feelings known as you slammed the door behind you (all while you were fairly certain I was asleep), it has become no secret that we both would be content pushing the other one out of our non-opening window in our sleeps.

Which, cleverly, brings me to this morning. As you know, you often go to sleep around eleven at night, switching off the lights without a care as to how it may affect me or my work (drawing, reading, and writing, you have decided, do not require the ability to see). I stay awake, as my body's clock does not wind down until somewhere near three in the morning. Which is why, for my sake, no class (for me) begins earlier than eleven-thirty in the morning. And it would be kind of you to observe that while you may feel like traipsing around the room, muttering unintelligible syllables as you futilely try to understand why you can't remember just what it is you're looking for, at seven ten in the morning,(about forty minutes after, by some miracle of chance, my brain finally let me drift off into some semblance of distended reality usually referred to as sleep), it makes me very angry. Coupled with the fact that even though I'm in the room, and even though the bathroom is just down the hall, you find it necessary to lock the door (a process you can't seem to understand shouldn't take more than ten seconds, and shouldn't sound like that), you make me scream to the empty room or to any of those who may be passing in the hall:

"MOTHERF***ER! I just fell asleep FORTY minutes ago! And now I'm wide awake AGAIN! MOTHERF***ER!"

I would like to suggest some alternatives that would make our relationship a bit happier; something that is enjoyable for both of us.

1. When your alarm clock goes off, and you hear it, please do not just lay there listening to the Olympics Update report until I have to kick your bed to get you moving. It pisses me off that you jump from the bed, further knocking me from my slumber, hit the snooze button, and then climb drunkenly back up into bed. Upon further repeats of this action, do not be surprised if I offer you an angry noise to let you know that I would get up and hit you if I weren't only in my underwear. And, most importantly, do not shush me for doing so. It is your own fault if you can't get yourself out of bed at the insane hour at which you choose to set your alarm. Do not anger me further; I fear what I might do.

2. Sleeping. You make my life hell if we are trying to sleep at the same time, and this is one of the many reasons why my cycle is different from yours. You toss and turn indiscriminantly, seemingly not trying to find a comfortable place to stop, but to move the bed as far away from the wall as possible by making it hop. This makes me angry, especially if I'm in bed trying to sleep and it feels like some ghost is trying to rape me, which is what I've equated the feeling to. When you are asleep you are even harder to stand. You snore loudly, which is not bad at all. My father snores. It's the liquidy and crunchy noises that freak the hell out of me. The liquidy noises remind me of what it might sound like if a horse was licking the inside of another horse's mouth. The crunchy noises remind me of what it might sound like if a horse was eating multiple ice cubes at the same time, as well as its own teeth. Yes, you sound like an animal when you sleep. Not to mention the crazy points in time during which you spout random and seemingly nonsensical words and phrases. You don't talk this often when you are awake, and it scares me.

3. DON'T LOCK THE DOOR EVERY TIME YOU LEAVE IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO EAT OR TO CLASS. If you haven't noticed, no one beside you or I has even tried to open our door all year. Ever. So the idea that you think someone might break in, see me in the room, and STILL try to steal all of your things while you are taking a piss seems to make you a bit paranoid. And more importantly, IT WAKES ME UP. AND I HATE IT.

4. Please do not feel the need, at seven A.M., to go to the vending machines on the first floor and retrieve a foot tall can that is calling itself an energy drink. Don't feel the need to slurp it for half an hour precious hours before my most important math final. Don't be surprised if you suddenly hear me yelling that "IF YOU DON'T DRINK THAT ALL RIGHT NOW I'LL STUFF THAT CAN DOWN YOUR THROAT!" And don't be suprised when I do.

5. One last thing. It is not okay to clip your toenails on your desk only feet away from where I am working. Stop doing it.

The field below me opened up, a giant mouth of hot soil and fiery crimson petals. The breath it took first blew me upward, buffeting me against walls of wind and swirls of red. Then it was as if gravity and another force took hold of me, first wrapping its tendrils around my left ankle and right hand and then pulling me down, the reverse in direction so sudden that my eyes clenched shut and both of my ears popped. Rose petals whipped against my face, slicing my skin. When I opened my eyes again, the darkness lay below me like a giant bed of nothing. I could feel the blood being sucked out of my ears, and my stomach opened up, spilling itself through my screaming mouth.

“Mr. Crim! Open up, I’ve got to talk to you!”

No, something had changed. The wounding petals had voices, and they screamed at me. Crim! Crim! Crim! And I fell faster, a magnet for the bottom of the void

“Mr Crim? Is anyone in there? It’s your landlord!”

The swallowing black then became a little brighter, and I picked up speed, hurtling end over end to the center of the world. It grew bright then, a slow red grade of light that seemed to bend around me, and a warmth akin to sunlight danced on my skin. The rushing air whistled through my busted eardrums, and then it ended. I was falling, racing with gravity and the demon force that yanked me down, and then I was sitting in a chair. Sitting at a desk, my hands driving a pencil across a field of white. Behind me,a series of muffled explosions sounded, and I recognized the sound of fists against wood. Turn around, I thought, there’s someone at the door. But my hands wrote on, and with a fluid ease that brought me a feeling of pure joy.

“Mrs. Crim, you in there? Either one of you works, I ain’t picky. Just gotta talk about the rent. You can’t hide from me forever, and I know you’re in there because I see all the traffic around here and you haven’t been out lately! Open the door!”

It wasn’t right; not the thing that was supposed to happen. The man behind the door behind me was not going away. And already the joy of writing was fading. I frowned; I wasn’t supposed to be interrupted. So I put down the

The old man opened his eyes. He stared at his hand, the one gripping the ballpoint pen. He watched as the tip, pressed into the paper so hard that it was heavily dented, snapped off and set the metallic black goo loose. His mind was empty, the only thing happening behind his eyes the process that inverted the images he saw. Finally a synapse fired, dropping a thought into his head with such violence that he sat forward, head swivelling as he tried to focus on everything at once, tried to find the source of the thought that had ejected him from his vegetation. It had been a picture, a mental image. A tall rectangle, dark and with a shiny…a shiny thing that stuck out. The old man was panicked in his confusion, but how could he know it? It was an unnameable distress, an incomprehensible feeling. His eyes filled with wetness at the corners, dropping tears down the wrinkled planes of his cheeks, and he continued his frantic and fruitless search for the thing that would make that feeling go away.

A sharp noise sounded at his shoulder, and he turned, finally seeing the thing from his thought. A thought snapped through his head, door, then another one, man behind door, these two followed by a hundred-million other little pieces of unconnected information that ultimately made up the man whose name was Jordan Crim.

It felt like his sanity was being returned lazily, a tiny piece at a time, and it was more painful, more mentally agonizing, than anything he’d ever gone through in his life. Which is why, when the process completed itself, his mind discarded every memory of it.

“I’ll stand here as long as I need to, it won’t help to pretend you’re not there. Mr. and Mrs. Crim, I need you to open the door!” More banging.

Of course, Crim thought idly, someone at the door. He rose from his chair, only faintly aware of the soreness in his hand and the neat little pool of ink flooding the pad of paper before him. He stepped across the gathered piles of similar pads, all full of the same dark, looping script (that much, already? Huh.), and came easily to the door. Pushing a few stray pads out of the way with his foot, he pulled the knob and stuck his head out the opening.

And found, looking up at him, the little man that managed the housing circle. Squinting red-faced through a pair of greasy glasses that made his eyes even beadier, the man Crim recognized as Hen Marshall was finally rewarded with the leathery visage of his current quarry. He was breathing hard, and gave Crim a half-satisfied look.

“…Ah, Mr. Crim. I’m here to collect the rent. You’re late by a week, and I’m going to have to get it sometime soon or…well, you’ve been here a long time but if you’re going to have trouble paying the rent, you might have to be put out. I don’t want that to happen…”

His steam running short, the little man looked up into Crim’s face, seeking help. What he found was a disconcerting blank stare, a stare of recognition and acceptance but not much more. There was none of the hurry-up condescension his other tenants had down to a science. Hen knew that, could stand against that. But this, what the man in front of him was doing, gave him the creeps. Crim was looking at him, recognizing him, and at the same time looking through him.

Hen momentarily shook off the vibe and his nostrils flared, catching the hot stink of rot. Meat?

“Oh, Christ. What is that smell?”

He pushed his head into the narrow crack that seperated Crim and the door, taking in as much information as his eyes could process. Notebooks scattered everywhere, ground littered with clothes and bags.

A change came over Crim then, so suddenly that Hen felt it in the goosebumps that broke out over his skin.

The old man’s head jerked back, and his eyes became lucid. He turned away from the door, closing it in the same motion; forcing Hen’s head back out. The little man’s mouth hung open for a moment, and then he closed it and began to speak again, all former timidness gone in an instant.

“I’ll need the rent by the end of the week, Mr. Crim! And if you’re doing drugs in there or something, that’s not allowed and I’ll have to come back later and make a report.” With a small “hmmph,” Hen Marshall turned and waddled back across the street, to the house he shared with no one.

Crim’s sudden change in demeanor was due to something that might seem insignificant to anyone else. It was a wetting of the mouth, saliva glands pumping as if in response to the smell of food. A craving, but not for food. As he had stood looking down at the little man whose purpose had seemed so unimportant, Crim’s hand twitched, and his mouth flooded with saliva. There’s something I need to be doing. In the same breath he’d started turning, and the door he closed behind him was then utterly forgotten. Marshall’s voice fell on deaf ears.

He saw his desk, the broken bleeding pen. Ah. A moment away from resuming his position in the chair, his bladder shouted up to him. It was full, achingly so. When was the last time I went to the bathroom? Or had anything to drink, for that matter? His answering throught was vague on the subject; he couldn’t recall a single specific memory of doing either one.

So, moving over things littering the floor as if he’d memorized their positions, he stepped into the little bathroom and sighed, dropping his pants. The seat was cold on his old flesh, and his bones had creaked mightily as he’d dropped all of his weight onto it. It irritated him, having to sit down to pee, but as old as he was he supposed it was a miracle he could still pee at all. The feeling of relief from the fluid’s exit was impossibly great, and Crim’s brows furrowed in consternation. He’d not noticed his bladder five minutes earlier, when he’d been getting the door or when he’d been sitting in front of his…his work. His hand twitched and impatiently waited for his urine flow to stop. I need it. I need to be sitting there, writing. Because something happens…to me. Something amazing. He drummed his fingers on the side of the toilet bowl, directing his gaze everywhere around the little bathroom. A tuft of white fabric got his attention. It was in the bathtub, floating toward the top of the water. That’s odd. The bathtub isn’t supposed to be full. Presently his urine store dried up, and he found himself free to indulge his curiousity.

What he found in the tub doubled his consternation. The head of a mop, without its pole, plugging up the drain. The whole tub filled almost to the rim.

“Marjorie! Did you put this mop in the bathtub?” He waited for the reply, the little footsteps hurrying toward him to make certain she knew what he was talking about, but they didn’t come. The store? She must be at the store. Shrugging, he reached his arm into the tepid water and gripped the mop, pulling it away from the drain. But it held fast, the suction of the drain overpowering Crim’s efforts. He tugged three times, each time harder than the last, and was a little surprised when his tugs yielded only a knocking sound. A rock striking the porcelain of the tub? But he could see nothing but the head of the mop and he gave one final heave, ripping the fabric and seperating the portion stuck in the drain from the rest. The water drained slowly, its exit hindered by the fabric still lodged in the opening. Crim knelt by the tub, panting. When Marjorie gets home…She must be getting senile, throwing mops in bathtubs.

His hand twitched again, and he stopped thinking about the mop at once.

Before he pulled a fresh notebook from the pile, he dropped the broken pen onto the ground and opened the drawer, gettting a new one from the stockpile he’d created. Then he leaned in and let his eyes skim over the last things he’d written.

The man behind the door behind me was not going away. And already the joy of writing was fading. I frowned; I wasn’t supposed to be interrupted. So I put down the

Where the word “pen” should have been was an inky mess.

A minute later the old man’s hand was working again, and his face had molded into an enormous grin.

***

Hen Marshall stared up at the dark of the ceiling, replaying his encounter with the old man in his head. Thinking about it made his heart skitter, like a flat stone over a still pond. Something is wrong, he thought, and if I were any sort of responsible landlord I’d go over there right now and find out what it is. He checked his watch, and noted that it was after one in the morning already. Too late to do anything, too late. Of course, he could have gone during the eight-o-clock movie, but it’d been too long since he’d seen the Goonies, and my, wasn’t that big weirdo a funny looking guy. At ten-o-clock he’d watched a news-magazine sponsored mystery, and that had been fairly interesting. It was about a man who went missing in his own backyard one day; a whole search party spent a week combing the fields behind his house, and turned up nothing. Police suspected his wife, and his wife suspected aliens. Nothing came of either suspicion. Three years later one of his kids was out playing and tripped over a bit of metal sticking out of the ground. He cleared away some of the grass and found the cover to a hatch of an old abandoned bomb shelter. After his mama had called the police, and they came out to open it, everyone was pretty sure they were going to find the guy’s dead body down there. Thing is, the guy was alive. He’d found the hatch just the same way as his son, opened it, and went down to investigate and the thing got locked behind him. He’d had enough to eat, somehow, but pretty quick his brain turned to mush and they pulled him out more or less an animal. It was interesting enough of a mystery, but every time the commercials started Hen had turned his head to the window, staring across the court at the house with one light on, in the downstairs living room. I should do something, he had thought. He contemplated calling the police, but the notion of picking up the phone and dialing 911 made him nervous. Time piled onto itself, and now it was one in the morning and the moonlight danced off his watch and onto the ceiling, but tonight he just wasn’t amused. Will I even sleep tonight? He groaned and rolled over, stuffing his head into the pillow and trying to make his mind blank. First thing in the morning, I’ll go over. I promise. Just let me sleep. And after an hour or so of certainty that it would not, sleep came.

***

The morning is cold, the air sour in his nostrils. He stands on Crim’s porch, heart in his throat. Another deep breath and then knock, knock. The sound against the still of morning is grand, and he shudders. Waiting, hands in pockets now, a good three steps back from the door should it swing open, waiting for the gaunt height of an old man whose eyes are telescopes. Checking his watch now, two minutes spent waiting, not a sound from within the house. Should I, or come back later? Another moment then knock,knock,knock. Then “Mr. Crim! Open the door, it’s your landlord again. I, uh…I’m back for the rent, uh, I was wrong, I need it today and not the end of the week. Mr Crim?” His voice a cracked notion of its past self, he feels in it his fear. Of what? What am I afraid of? He’s just an old man, but something’s happened. That smell… That smell charges from beneath the door and drives up at him, gathering around his head like a swarm of beastly rotting bees. Five minutes now, he’s waited long enough. The doorknob is limp and cold in his hand, and when he turns it something clicks and the door pulls open easily, like he’s said a magic word. Oh God what were they feeling when they opened that hatch, was it like this? He breathes heavily through his nose; a mistake immediately recognized as he retches, hand over his mouth to hold it in. His eyes are watering now, he’s managed to repress his gag reflex and his mouth hangs open gulping dead air. Another moment and he’s ready.

“Mr. Crim, are you here? Mrs. Crim? Is anyone here? I’m coming in now; don’t be afraid it’s just me, your landlord. I’m going to leave the door open, ok?” For me as much as for anyone else, he thinks. Three steps put him among the clutter, clothes and notebooks and dishes and half-eaten foods becoming the stagnant water through which he wades. To the left is a hallway, and a door half-open. He wades there, following a trail of notebooks. He picks one up, opens it. It is full, each page nearly black with ink, each line of writing perfectly small and even. All the notebooks are like this, all of them. Dear God. It’s that thing, where you go crazy and write all the time. What did they call that? The word escapes him and he pushes the door in and here he is, the vulture of a man slumped over a notebook, dead. Crim’s arms lay out before him, his right hand still clutching a pen. Marshall doesn’t gasp, doesn’t dare; he had to be expecting this, hadn’t he? He’s dead. Of course he’s dead. He finds himself wading closer to the body, squinting to make out the last of Crim’s writing. Reads three lines, and his vision swims. He reads them again.

I have a visitor today. My landlord, Mr. Marshall. Hello, Mr. Marshall, how are you? I’m afraid I’m busy today and won’t be able to do much talking, but I’ll have Marjorie make you some coffee. I can spare a few minutes I suppose, is that all right?

Marshall’s head is shaking now, droplets are welling at the corners of his eyes.

And then, almost immediately everything is all right again. He is smiling; it is clear. “I am dreaming. How clever. I can’t usually read in dreams.” He reads the rest of what is written on the page.

I’m afraid Marjorie is in the bath. Maybe you should go and get her, and I’ll have her make you some coffee. Doesn’t that sound swell, Mr. Marshall?

Marshall laughs. “Why of course it does! Coffee would be very good right now. The bathroom’s up the stairs, am I right?” He waits, for the man’s dead hand to move, to write a response. But of course it does not. He laughs again, amused at his own expectations and then turns on a heel, bounding out of the room.

“I’m dreaming,” he says to himself as he bounces to the foot of the stairs. “It’s not a very nice dream, but I’ll wake up soon enough.”

The stairs pose only a few moments’ effort, and now he stands at the bathroom door, which is curiously open, staring in. The smell, which he’d thought was getting better, has in fact worsened. He wrinkles his nose. “Mrs. Crim, your husband wanted me to get you out of the bath so you could make me some coffee. You see, I’m visiting.” He steps into the room, and his shoes fill with water. He can see the bathtub in the far corner; it’s filled all the way up. “Mrs. Crim,” he says as he moves closer, then his stomach heaves and his mouth fills with bile. He vomits, and looks again. “No, this is too bad.” He slaps himself, across the face. He slaps himself again, harder. He’s crying, now, sobbing to wake up. He’s slapping himself rapidly, yelping in pain and sobbing as his feeble mind lets go.

Downstairs, as Marshall begins to scream, Jordan Crim’s pen-clutching claw begins to move.

Thank you for visiting, Mr. Marshall. Come again, very soon.

I like libraries. I like libraries because libraries have books, and I love books. Also, it's free to read them. Whoever came up with the idea that books should be free to those who want to read them, I would like to dig that person up and shake his hand. Well, maybe saying that I'd like to do such a thing is enough, and will prevent me from actually doing said thing. Maybe.

I'm talking about libraries because I found myself with about an hour to kill between my two classes and home was a little far to go and come back from in that amount of time. Ergo, I went to the library. I walked straight to the east wing, jogged up four stories, and proceeded to fill my arms with books. My mental appetite is apparently quite large.

My muscles straining from the extra thirty pounds on my back, I carted these books all the way to class and then back home again. Whose work did I lug the most?

The winner, with a grand total of four novels, is Paul Auster.

City of Glass (novel version)
Ghosts
The Locked Room
Mr. Vertigo

In second place is Mr. Kurt Vonnegut, whose work I've not yet read but about which I've heard great things.

Slaughterhouse Five
Cat's Cradle

The rest were just incidental pick ups.

Joseph Heller's Catch 22 - I want to read this and find out what all the fuss is about.
Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Is it really that screwed up?
And finally Carl Sagan's Contact - I'm just into that sort of thing. Leave me alone.

Well, it's Monday and I've got a few books I'd like to share with you. Two of them are graphic novels, but we won't hold that against them. All books I've finished this week, they're fresh in my mind and I hope I can do them justice. Bear with me.



The first book I want to get to is called The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffennegger.

I was a bit wary of this book at first, thinking it would be a harlequin romance in a sci-fi skin, but after the first twenty or so pages I saw otherwise. This is not a romance; nor is it a sci-fi novel. It is one of those rare occurences that can't be classified into any genre; save "life fiction," and we wouldn't generally put books involving time travel there either.

Let's talk about story. Henry DeTamble is a man with a genetic disorder, one that throws him backward and forward in time, without any clothing. For a science fiction writer, this might be enough of a seed for a short story. It's a new way to look at time travel, an original idea that deserves a lot of credit for initiative. But Niffennegger doesn't stop there. Henry appears at the residence of Clare Abshire, in a meadow outside her house when she is six years old. She meets with him and he leaves, giving her a list of dates when he'll be back. As Clare grows up, Henry continues to visit her in the meadow, and she falls in love with him. Later, when Clare finds Henry in real time, he doesn't remember her and she's known him all his life. This is because all of the backwards traveling by Henry is done after he's found and falls in love with Clare.

The reality of this novel was startling; the characters I felt I had known for the longest time, each with heroic characteristics as well as not-so heroic characteristics. And yes, I think we'll agree that while the occurrences in the book are not quite possible (unless they really happened and Niffennegger is really Clare) somehow this doesn't take away from any of the truth of the novel.

I'd like to note, for any time travel nut out there, that this book is not free of paradoxes. There are a lot of questionable events, which raise questions about how they happened. For example, an older Henry travels back in time to teach his younger self valuable skills for surviving as a a time traveler (like a time he returns to teach himself to pickpocket from strangers). There's a small problem with this logic, however. If he only ever had himself teach himself how to do things, how did he learn the skill in the first place (without the answer being "himself")? Issues like these can be overlooked when faced with the quality of the novel, and I think that in this case they should be.

Recommended. 5/5.




The second book I have for you is called City of Glass. Formerly a novel by Paul Auster, this is an adaptation into the graphic form by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli. And it takes about an hour to read through.

We follow the story of writer Daniel Quinn, a mystery novelist who publishes books about his detective protagonist Max Work under the pseudonym of William Wilson. Confusing? Maybe. Anyway, Quinn's going through depression as he's unsure where his life is going, when he gets a phone call. Some man asking for Auster, Paul Auster. Quinn tells him he has the wrong number. A few nights later the man calls back. This time, Quinn pretends to be Auster. The man on the other line is Peter Stillman, a herky-jerky creepy weirdo guy who is how he is because he was locked in a room for nine years by his father.

Peter Stillman's father, a man convinced that if only the human being could be cleansed of all knowledge of speech by men, he could learn to the original language of God, was arrested and and yet paroled. It's Daniel's job to keep Peter Stillman Sr. away from Peter Stillman Jr. because it's said the old man sent a letter to the younger declaring that there would be a day of reckoning.

As Daniel Quinn becomes more and more involved with the case, we see the breakdown of his sanity as well as his detective work. Eventually I can't even tell what's going on anymore. The ending is vague, and I feel like there was an intended point to get from the book, but I think I missed it. It almost makes me want to read the original Auster novel, but since I know the plot I don't think I will. Oh well.

Good art, nice page design.

3.5/5




And finally, V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd.

I liked this book. It's not better than my other favorite graphic novel, also by Alan Moore, Watchmen, but it's still good.

Centering itself in a world where 1980's Britain has become a totalitarian fascist government, the book introduces us to V, a character in a Guy Fawkes mask who uses terrorist tactics to bring down the government.

Over the course of the book you learn his backstory, and it's quite intricate and fun. So I won't tell you.

Much of the book has to do with freeing the mind of a scared young woman, Evelyn Hammond. About to be raped and murdered in the beginning of the book, V shows up and dispatches the assailants and takes Evey to his lair, aptly named the Shadow Gallery. I had some issues with the portrayal of Evey as a stupid, naive girl, but accounting for the fact that this book was written twenty five years ago when that was about the only way anyone depicted women in comic books, it's not too bad.

I don't really want to say anything more about the plot, but I'd like to talk about the images used in the book. They're incredibly inked, utilizing a confidence of brush I've not seen, and David Lloyd uses an incredible array of watercolor to make the images come to life in a way you don't normally experience with a comic book. I'll admit that at first it was distracting, but after five or six pages I was hooked.

This book's worth a read, if only just to have read it.

4/5.