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The Drunken Odyssey

~ A Podcast About the Writing Life

The Drunken Odyssey

Monthly Archives: September 2018

Episode 334: Ben Gwin & Jared Silvia!

29 Saturday Sep 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Memoir, Music, Postmodernism

≈ Leave a comment

Episode 334 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I talk to novelist Ben Gwin about postmodern satire, addiction, whether MFAs ruin or sustain writers, and for some reason I insist that he needs to write poetry,

Ben Gwin 2_photo credit Jared Alan Smith

Photo by Jared Alan Smith.

plus I talk to Jared Silvia about synth music, Woody Guthrie, the vagaries of how folk music gets recorded, and Jared’s annual recording project every Labor Day.

jaredbio

TEXT DISCUSSED

Clean Time by Ben Gwin


Episode 334 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

The Curator of Schlock #243: Batman vs. Two-Face

28 Friday Sep 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Film, The Curator of Schlock

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Tags

Adam West, Batman vs. Two-Face, William Shatner

The Curator of Schlock #243 by Jeff Shuster

Batman vs. Two-Face

West and Shatner, together again for the first time.

There’s a new insult making its way throughout cyberspace. It’s all the rage right now to label people who may be the teensiest bit out of touch with modern culture and technology, boomers. If like listening to AC/DC or playing Quake on your Nintendo 64, you’d better watch out. Yeah, well, Quake was a good game and AC/DC is great to blast in the early hours of the morning! And, yes, I watched the series premier of the original Magnum P.I. and I liked it! That doesn’t make me a boomer! So shut up and read this review of a Batman cartoon featuring Adam West and Burt Ward.

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Yes, tonight’s movie is Batman vs. Two-Face from director Rick Morales, an animated feature that’s a tribute to the 1960s Batman series John King is so fond of. It features the voices of Adam West as Batman, Burt Ward as Robin, Julie Newmar as Catwoman, and William Shatner as the sinister Two-Face. For some reason, Two-Face had never made an appearance on the 1960s Batman series. Attempts were made at a script, one penned by the late Harlan Ellison, but the episode was never produced. Kudos to Warner Bros. Animation for finally getting this project off the ground and casting Shatner as Two-Face, the other leading man of 1960s prime time television with that Star Trek show he was on (which I’ve never watched).

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The movie begins with Professor Hugo Strange conducting an experiment at the Gotham State Penitentiary with Batman, Robin, District Attorney Harvey Dent, and a host of other law enforcement officials present. He’s created a machine called the Evil Extractor. By hooking the Joker, the Penguin, the Riddler, Mr. Freeze, and Egghead to the machine, he will extract the evil out of their bodies, turning them into righteous citizens. Unfortunately, there’s no machine on Earth that can handle the evil of this group of super criminals. The evil turns into a noxious green gas, but the machine can’t contain it! An explosions releases the evil gas onto District Attorney Harvey Dent who is now transformed into the villainous Two-Face, half of his face scarred into a monstrous visage.

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What follows is a title sequence showing Two-Face on various crime sprees with Batman and Robin in hot pursuit. It’s kind of like we’re seeing scenes from episodes that never got produced. Cool. Batman and Robin finally capture him, sending Two-Face to the slammer, but he makes a full recovery back to his old self with therapy and plastic surgery. They even offer him the job of Assistant to the Assistant District Attorney, a bit of demotion, but Harvey Dent is eager to regain the public’s trust. Who are we kidding? That’s embarrassing! Assistant to the Assistant District Attorney? Haha!

Batman and Robin tango with other super criminals such as King Tut and the Bookworm all while a shadowy figure lurks in the background, a man that looks and acts just like Two-Face, but how is this possible? Harvey Dent is cured! Or is he?

Whatever.

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You know what, this movie is a worth a look just to hear Adam West and William Shatner hamming it up. Unfortunately, Adam West passed away shortly after the production of this feature, but this is a fitting end to his career. Rest in peace, Caped Crusader.


Jeffrey Shuster 3

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Buzzed Books #71: Earthling

25 Tuesday Sep 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Buzzed Books, Poetry

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Buzzed Books #71 by Will Rincon

James Longenbach’s Earthling

Few poetry collections can connect with both poetry aficionados and newcomers alike the way Earthling does. Professor and critic, James Longenbach exemplifies contemporary poetry with his fifth collection, one that draws readers in with simplicity into the themes of childhood, mothers, and nihilism. The speakers of these poems wander between reality and metaphor, animals and forests, while memories of mother intrude in poems much like everyday life.

Longenbach Earthling

“The Crocodile” explores the perspective of the “pebble worm” and the speaker’s final moments with his mother. “I survived the great extinctions, / I pretended to be myself.”  But, beyond that, primeval themes of hunting, evolution, and self-discovery are explored through the giant lizard. “If called to, I could wait beneath the water a long time. / I could let a bird pick leeches from my tongue…My throat / Was capable of many different sounds but the pleasure / was in keeping it silent, letting parts of me be seen.” The style and the analogy is deft.

Reality is often bent when entering the forest throughout this collection. Dogs disappear with “no shadow, no narrative,” wear raincoats, and run free. They desire to escape, and we are to follow their example, remember what it was to run free in our youth. Subtly, readers find themselves wishing to be lost in the woods and not be tied to the leashes of employment and responsibilities. “Running in circles, / getting tangled in the leash. // It’s hard remaining human in the forest.”  Longenbach’s symbolism is haunting throughout. Dogs and death reappear, echoing the untamed. His love for nature is often reminiscent of Robert Frost with a similar sullen air that reminds us of where we come from.

Ultimately, Longenbach explores what it is to be an earthling with calm, controlled poems rooted in soul and wonder. The truth in his words should make an impression on any reader: “I love you, earth. / What space I inhabit / You’ll fill with water or sky.”


Will Rincon.jpg

Will Rincon is an MFA candidate for fiction at the University of Central Florida. When he is not depriving himself of sleep, he enjoys board games, anime, and spending time with his family. He highly recommends you watch Battlestar Galactica.

Episode 333: Peter Kuper!

22 Saturday Sep 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Episode, Graphic Novels

≈ 1 Comment

Episode 333 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I talk to Peter Kuper about Kafka, the remarkable art form of comic books, the indie comic book scene in the late 1980s, Spy Vs. Spy, finding your Muse when it leaves the marketplace, and so much more.

Kuper author photo Gray

TEXTS DISCUSSED

Kafkaesque Final color frontRuins- Cover Peter Kuper.jpg

NOTES

Check out Brian Turner, Jared Silvia, recordings of Elise Kusnetz, and others in a performance of The Interplanetary Acoustic Team at the Timucua White House in Orlando, Florida on Tuesday, September 25th.

Check out Kyle Eagle’s impeccable new jazz podcast, The Major Scale. If you search the iTunes store, you can find it there as a free download you can and should subscribe to.

Leslie Salas reviewed Peter Kuper’s adaptation of The Metamorphosis for the Drunken Odyssey back in 2013.

Details from Kafkaesque:

Kafkaesque 1Kafkaesque 2


Episode 333 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

The Curator of Schlock #242: Batman Ninja

21 Friday Sep 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in animation, Anime, Film, The Curator of Schlock

≈ 2 Comments

The Curator of Schlock #242 by Jeff Shuster

Batman Ninja

Batman + Ancient Japan = Awesome!

Batman Day has come and gone. The Sewer King display at The Museum of Schlock was a resounding success with a whole five patrons’ eyes transfixed on the five animation cells from The Underdwellers episode of Batman: The Animated Series that John King purchased for around $76,000.

Now, while the Sewer King may be my favorite Batman villain, Gorilla Grodd is my favorite DC villain of all time. He’s the Flash’s arch-nemesis, a hyper-intelligent, evolved gorilla with psychic powers. What more can you ask for in a super villain? Imagine my elation that he’s front and center in the Japanese-animated production, Batman Ninja (Ninja Battoman in Japan), from director Junpei Mizusaki with character designs from Takashi Okazaki, the creator of Afro Samurai.

The animation is among the best ever created anywhere.

We will be covering the Japanese language version of this movie not the English language dub which features a different script.

Ninja1

I don’t even know where to start with this film. There’s a scene toward the end where a giant Batman (composed of thousands of monkeys and flying bats) fist-fights a giant Joker robot composed of mechanized Japanese castles to the tune of Japanese hip hop. It’s movies like these that remind me of why I do what I do.

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Batman Ninja begins with Gorilla Grodd (voiced by Takehito Koyasu) testing out a time/space machine at Arkham Asylum with the inmates as test subjects.  Batman interferes, the machine gets damaged, Batman gets sucked through a vortex, and ends up in Feudal Japan. He skirmishes with some local samurai wearing Joker masks, tries to grapple hook out of there before realizing there are no buildings higher than two stories in the town.

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Turns out the Joker (voiced by Wataru Takagi) and Harley Quinn (voiced by Rie Kugimiya) are in charge of this part of Japan. In fact, several of Batman’s rogues gallery are lords in charge of different territories. These include Two-Face, The Penguin, Poison Ivy, and Deathstroke. Batman learns all of this from Catwoman (voiced by Ai Kakuma) who informs him that she, the villains, and the whole Bat Family arrived in Japan two years before Batman showed up, something about him being the furthest away from the time portal. The Bat Family consists of Nightwing, Robin, Red Robin (I don’t know who that is.), Red Hood (Isn’t he a bad guy?), and Alfred Pennyworth. Alfred has been busy trying to recreate his fine English cooking in Feudal Japan, even going so far as to ferment green tea leaves to make black tea.

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There’s a Bat Ninja clan who believe in a prophesy that a man dressed as a Bat will travel from the future (obviously) and save Japan, restoring order from the chaos.

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What else? Gorilla Grodd wants to turn Japan into a safe haven for simians from all over the world. The Joker and Harley Quinn become poor Japanese farmers after losing their memories only to regain them and become super villains once again. There’s the aforementioned battle between the giant Batman and the giant Joker robot. Robin gets a pet monkey. Or does Red Robin get a pet monkey? I don’t know.

My mind is a scramble right now. Maybe it was seeing Bane portrayed as a sumo wrestler. Or maybe it was that hot springs scene with Gorilla Grodd.

But it was all worth it. Every single human being must watch this masterpiece.


Jeffrey Shuster 2

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Buzzed Books #70: Pulse/Pulso: In Remembrance of Orlando

18 Tuesday Sep 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Buzzed Books, Poetry

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Buzzed Books #70 by Amy Watkins

Pulse/Pulso: In Remembrance of Orlando,

edited by Roy G. Guzmán and Miguel M. Morales

In the aftermath of tragedy, there’s poetry. I don’t know if that’s a universal truth, but it looks like one. Gregory Orr says that poetry exists at the threshold, which is why we feel compelled to write poems in moments of great emotional disturbance, when we’re pushed to our limits, forced to change or confront a hard truth. The Pulse nightclub shooting was a moment of incredible emotional disturbance for Orlando and LGBTQ and Latinx communities worldwide, and it’s no wonder poetry has been part of confronting and expressing shock, anger, sadness, fear, and defiance in the two years since. Pulse/Pulso: In Remembrance of Orlando (Damaged Goods, 2018), edited by Roy G. Guzmán and Miguel M. Morales, is one artifact of that emotional poetic work.

Pulso-Antho-Front-Cover.png

For anyone with even a tangential connection to Pulse, it’s likely to be a hard read. One poet quotes the text messages victims sent their loved ones that night. Another writes in the persona of a mother whose son is killed. Another quotes a family member who says, “They got what they deserved.” But it’s not all fear and sorrow. Many poets in the anthology write about the joys of community, sex and love, self-knowledge and acceptance. Others write defiantly about claiming their places in the world, including the world of poetry, and call out those who would silence their voices or appropriate their experience. Though the anthology is chapbook-sized (and priced), the slim volume took me almost a month to read; each poem carries such raw emotion that I could only read one or two at a time.

In the book’s foreword, the editors write, “We left the typical constraints and expectations of MFA workshops away from our selection process, and for that we are proud.” Some of the poems in the anthology are extremely polished, in the MFA workshop sense; others seem more visceral, less filtered. Some of the poets have significant publishing histories; others are newer to poetry or their accomplishments are in performance rather than page poetry. All of their perspectives are valuable, especially since this anthology serves as both art and artifact. A work of witness, such as this book is, has different requirements, a different job to do than the average anthology or journal issue.

In “Intruder (Home as A Fallacy),” June Beshea writes, “no, love does not protect us against bullets / all this dance and joy do not protect against destruction.” After the Pulse shooting, a mural went up in Orlando: rainbow stripes, 49 birds, Marvin Gaye’s face, and the words “Love conquers hate.” I appreciate the sentiment, but love won’t conquer hate if love is platitudes. If love conquers hate, it will be messy, sorrowing, angry, defiant love–love expressed in all these poems and small acts of kindness, in celebrations and protests, in voting for better political leaders and standing up to small and large-scale bullies. That love might eventually turn civilization toward a better future.

The proceeds from the sale of the anthology will be donated to QTPOC organizations.


Amy Watkins

Amy Watkins (Episodes 124, 161, 164, 192, and 209) grew up in the Central Florida scrub, surrounded by armadillos and palmetto brush and a big, loud, oddly religious family, a situation that’s produced generations of Southern writers. She married her high school sweetheart, had a baby girl and earned her MFA in poetry from Spalding University. She is the author of Milk & Water (Yellow Flag Press, 2014) and the art editor for Animal: A Beast of a Literary Magazine.

Pensive Prowler #23: Of Film and Book

17 Monday Sep 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Pensive Prowler

≈ 1 Comment

Pensive Prowler #23 by Dmetri Kakmi

Of Film and Book

A friend recently asked me to take part in a 10-day movie challenge on Facebook.

In case you live under a rock, this is one of those dubious social media memes that spreads like a virus and infects any one with idle hands. They’re probably started by an algorithm that wants to figure how you think so that it can sell you more blu-rays.

The point of the game is simple. Every day for ten days you choose a movie that ‘has impacted’ you and present it without explanation. (I wager ten days is how long it takes for the algorithm to colonise your thought processes and behavioural patterns.)

Being a cinephile, I leaped on board, being aware all along of the spurious nature of such lists. Under different circumstances, or different states of inebriation, I’d probably pick a different lot of films. As a pedant, I also changed the irksome and inaccurate noun ‘impact’ to ‘affect’ on my posts because the verb more accurately describes the effect the following movies had on me when I saw them.

A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson, 1956), Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1957), Le Samurai (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967), Dersu Uzala (Akira Kurosawa, 1975), Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976), In the Realm of the Senses (Nagisa Oshima, 1976), Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977), Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999), In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000), Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012).

It’s an eclectic list, one that perhaps self-consciously focuses on ‘foreign cinema’. (Foreign for whom?) For me, the list highlights ‘pure cinema’. That is to say films that rely heavily on vision and movement, rather than dialogue, for story telling. In other words, it’s a return to the medium’s elemental origins.

Half way through the ten-day challenge (which was no challenge at all), I had a revelation. I’m a writer, I thought. I ought to be putting together a list of books that affect me. And why don’t such memes circulate more often?

Probably because, I went on to tell myself, cinema is the primary art form of the last two centuries. Not jazz, as some claim. The novel features only for those who think they have a novel in them when it’s really only gas.

If I were to put together a list for a ten-day book challenge, what would I choose?

Weirdly, the list of films came easier than the list of books. A lot more thought went into choosing the books I will soon put before you, which tells me I’m probably more in tune with cinema than literature. Which, in turn, suggests two things:

1: I’m not cut out to be a writer. Or, more accurately…

2: So powerful and overwhelming is the influence of cinema on the popular imagination it has ‘impacted’ every other art form, which may account for why writing schools nowadays encourage students to write a novel as if they are writing a film script (short, sharp sentences and paragraphs, lots of dialogue, story beats that are more suited to cinematic story telling than the flow of a novel, and so on) and to have their eye on the holy grail of film adaptation.

In certain quarters, writing a novel for the sake of writing a novel is no longer enough. It must be ‘cinematic’ — think of the number of times a book reviewer positively cites a novel’s ‘cinematic qualities’. When was the last time a reviewer observed that so and so utilises ‘novelistic details’ in his or her film?

Or maybe I had a hard time putting together my ten best books list because the novel’s innate qualities reach deeper than film and we must therefore excavate the substrata to find the source?

In any case, here is the list of ten books that have affected me over the years. Keep in mind that under different circumstances, or under different states of inebriation, I’d probably pick a completely different lot films. I mean books.

The Arabian Nights, the Richard Burton translation, Metamorphoses, Ovid, To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf, The Song of the World, Jean Giono, The Violent Bear it Away, Flannery O’Connor, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson, Therese Raquin, Emile Zola, Tirra Lirra by the River, Jessica Anderson, The Tree of Man, Patrick White, The Complete Short Novels, Anton Chekhov.

Must I explain them to you as well? How tedious you are. Let me see…

In short, the first two contain stories I absorbed by osmosis as a boy. If you’re born on a Greek-Turkish island in the Aegean Sea you naturally imbibe not only the Greek myths of creation and transformation recounted in Ovid, but you also get a taste for tales of the djinn and desert sands. With her fifth novel Woolf captures lightening in a bottle and made me want to be a writer. In pure, simple language, Giono’s epic perfectly evokes man’s symbiosis with nature. The Americans O’Connor and Jackson are exemplars of the stylised novel. Both toss out the window every rule about novel writing and still manage to produce books that stand the test of time. Zola is ruthless in his forensics of mind and body. Anderson is melancholy, beguiling as she draws you into a hornet’s nest. White evokes a new mythology of becoming in a new, though hardly uninhabited, land. As for Chekhov, he’s there because he can do no wrong in my eyes.

Now go away and read them all before we next speak. You will be tested.


dmetri-kakmi

Dmetri Kakmi (Episode 158) is a writer and editor based in Melbourne, Australia. The memoir Mother Land was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia; and is published in England and Turkey. His essays and short stories appear in anthologies and journals. You can find out more about him here.

Episode #332: A Craft Discussion of Stranger Than Fiction, with Vanessa Blakeslee!

15 Saturday Sep 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Craft of Fiction Writing, Episode

≈ 3 Comments

Episode 332 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I talk with Vanessa Blakeslee about Chuck Palahniuk’s Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories.

Stranger Than FictionDamned by Chuck PalahniukSurvivorChoke


Episode 332 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

The Curator of Schlock #241: Batman: Assault on Arkham

14 Friday Sep 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #241 by Jeff Shuster

Batman: Assault on Arkham

More like Deadshot: Assault on Arkham

Welcome back to Batman Month here at The Museum of Schlock, a celebration of all things Batman. I’ve got a great idea for a Batman villain. His name is Mr. Murder. His main gimmick is that he murders people: little old grandmothers, schoolchildren, dog whisperers, personal trainers, you name it. And every time he would taunt Batman about how Batman doesn’t kill the bad guys by the Batman code: don’t kill the bad guy no matter how awful he is. And then Batman will cry as Mr. Murder gets sent to jail promising to break free and murder even more people. I’m going to turn it into a graphic narrative and get it adapted into the next big feature from Warner Bros. Ben Affleck will surely sign on.

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Tonight’s cartoon—I mean animated motion picture—is 2014’s Batman: Assault on Arkham from directors Jay Oliva and Ethan Spaulding. Don’t be expecting too much Batman in this movie. I know it may have Batman in the title, but he’s strictly a side character. This is okay, as there’s some cool stuff in this movie, namely Task Force X, also known as the Suicide Squad. It’s basically a team of incarcerated super villains who the US government employs for dangerous missions in exchange for reduced sentences. Amanda Waller (voiced by CCH Pounder) heads the secret government organization named ARGUS. The movie starts with her sending a black ops team to capture the Riddler at his hideout when Batman (voiced by Kevin Conroy) shows up, beats up the whole team, and rescues the Riddler. Waller gets annoyed and assembles the Suicide Squad.

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We’ve got Deadshot (voiced by Neal McDonough), an international assassin, but he’s the father of a little girl that he wants to get back to so he’s not all bad. There’s KGBeast, a Soviet of some sort who kills people, Black Spider, a vigilante who only kills criminals, Killer Frost, a sexy femme fatale who can freeze people to death with her hands, King Shark, a scary anthropomorphic shark man that likes to eat humans and bathe in their blood, Captain Boomerang, some Aussie guy who can throw any object just like a boomerang, and Harley Quinn, the Joker’s ex-girlfriend who’s a bit unbalanced herself.

Amanda Waller wants them to sneak into Arkham Asylum and find some intelligence files the Riddler stole from ARGUS. All members of the Suicide Squad have explosive nanobots embedded in the back of their necks or some such nonsense. In other words, their heads will explode if they try to make a run for it or disobey a direct order. She makes an example of KGBeast when he tries to leave and his head promptly explodes. We like exploding heads here at The Museum of Schlock (Scanners forever!), so this movie gets a passing grade.

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Meanwhile, Batman is trying to find the location of a dirty bomb the Joker plans to use on Gotham City which leads him to Arkham Asylum. Still, make no mistake, this is Deadshot’s movie. It’s odd having a villain as a protagonist in a Batman movie, but at least he’s not a violent psychopath like the inmates of Arkham Asylum and you’ll be rooting for him when he goes toe to toe with the Joker at the film’s climax. A solid effort from Warner Bros. animation.


Jeffrey Shuster 1

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Buzzed Books #69: Home After Dark

11 Tuesday Sep 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Buzzed Books, Graphic Novels

≈ Leave a comment

Buzzed Books #69 by Joshua Begley

David Small’s Home After Dark

We often forget that growing up is a terrifying process. As adults, looking at children, all we can see is the amazing vistas of possibility. A child has the potential to be anything, and when you’re long past childhood, that plethora of potentiality is alluring, almost intoxicating, and we sometimes wish we could go back to that time, before we became locked into who we are now.

That point of view is part truth and part romantic fantasizing. For many children, the future is a terrifying prospect. It’s the terror of the unknown, the terror of having too many choices. The terror of going against parents, friends, and society to forge a new and different path.

David Small Home After Dark

This terror permeates David Small’s Home After Dark (Liveright, 2018). Set in the 1950s, the graphic novel follows Russel, a thirteen-year-old boy. After his mother runs away with his father’s best friend, Russel and his father travel to California to forge a new life.

At first, the plan is to stay with his Aunt June in Pasadena. For reasons unknown, June refuses to let them stay when they finally arrive. She tells Russel’s father that there are no jobs in Southern California, and he should head north. They end up in a small town called Marshfield and end up renting a room with the Mahs, a Chinese immigrant family who own a restaurant in Little China Harbor.

Things seem to pick up when Russel’s father finds a job teaching English at San Quentin penitentiary (“Teaching Shakespeare to the inmates, huh?”). He gets a G.I. loan and buys a house, and Russel settles in as best he can into this new life. What follows is a tale of increasing quiet desperation as Russel’s father grows more and more bitter with his life and situation, and Russel struggles to discover who he is and what he wants out of life. The compelling and sad truth to this story is neither of them truly discover the answers to those questions.

Again, it all comes back to the future and the potential it holds. Russel’s father thought going west would allow for him to carve out a better future, but he was wrong. Instead of an uplifting Horatio Alger story of pulling himself up by his bootstraps, Russel’s father self-sabotages himself at every turn. The comic never puts us in his head, because it’s all from Russel’s point of view, but there’s a real sense of a man trapped in a world not of his making, but still of his own design. The scars of the past and the coping mechanisms of the present give way to a systematic dismantling of the future, and the greater tragedy here is that Russel might well be on the same path.

Tied into all of this is the question of masculinity. Russel—a frightened boy whose life gets upended time and time again—doesn’t fit the cultural script of 1950s masculinity, and because of that, he’s perpetually bullied and his sexuality questioned. He even experiences a homosexual encounter with the first friend he makes, and immediately shuns the friend afterward. I’d like to tell you that at the end Russel discovers who he is, what he wants, and learns to stand on his own two feet, but this isn’t that type of story. Home After Dark poses questions and doesn’t provide any easy answers, and it’s all the stronger for it. Like Russel, like his father, like his friends, you have to discover your own truth and your own path. No one can do that for you.

Home After Dark Detail

Small employs a loose artistic style to tell this tale—more cartoony than photorealistic. The style works for the story, because it fits the narrative and overall premise. For the most part, the backgrounds aren’t filled in, save for a few specific images to anchor the pages, and the minimalist style for the characters helps Small define them in as few lines as possible. Small also uses a great deal of negative space and plays around with the gutters depending upon the emotional context of the page. It’s a style that, at first blush, looks simple and perhaps a little unsophisticated, but it’s actually nothing of the sort. Every line has purpose in this piece, and it’s one of the aspects that makes this such a compelling work of fiction.

The back cover of this work features a quote from the legendary Jules Feiffer, who compares this work to The Lord of the Flies and Catcher in the Rye. While I can see that, I couldn’t help but think of The Outsiders more than those other two works. The main difference here is that I have no idea if Russel will “stay golden.” I’m not even sure that he was golden in the first place. I’d like to think so. I’d like to think that he goes on and finds himself, but that might just be wishful thinking on my part.


Joshiua Begley

Joshua Begley (Episode 284) teaches Creative Writing at Full Sail University. He has been published in Ghost Parachute, The Cut-Thru Review, and in the anthology Other Orlandos. He also writes reviews for The Fandom Post and Inside Pulse.

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  • Episode 529: Kathryn Harlan!
  • The Curator of Schlock #387: The House on the Edge of the Park
  • Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #180: Doing Something to the Trend
  • Episode #528: A Discussion of Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends with Rachael Tillman!
  • The Curator of Schlock #386: Hitch-Hike

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