Sunday, April 10, 2011

No Snark Left Behind



This baffling stanzel of my GN version of The Hunting of the Snark ( a stanzel known to Continental snarkologists as the Pons Asinorum) presents the illustrator of all things Lewis Carrollian with a genuine head-scratcher.

Unlike some illustrators who like to resort to a stylistic and conceptual flight behind the faux-ironic concealment of an adorably semi-infantile aesthetic when confronted by any text more complex than, let us say, the plot précis of a sharp blow to the head, this illustrator (pauses to take a deep breath and a swift gulp of the restorative gin gimlet splashed upon him by the nubile Assamese hootch-kootchie girl languishing pool-side at his every beck and call), this illustrator likes to give his public some honest value for their hard-earned money.

And since this Hunting of the Snark is being offered to the general public for roughly the price of a movie ticket in most bookstores and the internets, I think you better just much your popcorn in sullen silence and listen to whatever malarkey I'm about to come up with as an explanation for the above panel.



Frankly, it’s all hokum, every last bit of it. Lewis Carroll has clearly described some sort of mathematical thingum-a-jig and all I’ve come up with is a hazy, second-hand memory of an obscure Magritte semiopictulum of Edward James (see above) going through a looking glass and finding that the more you turn around to face oneself, the more you must turn one’s back on all that.

Or something like that. Mirrors and mathematics alike give me a headache with their slavish devotion to reality and all that sort of thing, each claiming to demonstrate only that which is perfectly and exactly true. There's more true mathematics to be found in a well-made gin gimlet than in any of your so-called books, sirrah!

The creepily eagle-eyed reader will notice that a copy of E.A. Poe’s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is lurking in Magritte’s painting, a novel which this author boldly and a bit drunkenly asserts to be the Great American Novel. Take that, you big fat white whale! And if this opinion does not please you, sirrah, my Assamese spitfire is perfectly willing to fight you upon any terms you please!

2 comments:

  1. Your blog writing is superbly literate, thought-provoking and entertaining. However the idiocy at its core has not escaped your readers. Your description of the baffling nature of your Magritte-moshing panel ignores the fact (?) that Snark is purposely baffling nonsense. In your drunken need to fill the page, you forgot that your insane graphic novel provided the perfect visual accompaniment to the insane Snarkian text.

    By the way, your The Hunting of the Snark is the best graphic novel I have ever read, bar none. I read it over and over (sipping gin gimlets) and always find some new deeper level of insane brilliance. I salute you, sir!

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  2. Thanks, Martin. Your semi-demented comments lend a certain air of a fresh of breathy newness to my fear of an undercrowded page. Good gin, eh?

    readers who enjoy this sort of thing should be aware that Martin had a book coming out next month … THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF HELL … which is guaranteed to make you laugh and spit up bile at once.

    It's certain to upset your parents, offend co-workers, distress religious mentors and really baffle your parole officer

    and it has lovely pictures by Tony Millionaire (ausgezeichnet!) and myself …

    go here for info:
    http://feralhouse.com/encyclopaedia-of-hell/

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