Reviewed: Arcade of Cruelty

I received review copy of this book in the mail a few weeks ago. I've had a hard time reviewing it since then, and here's why: I find it hard to accept that this book is real. I know it exists, but it seems like an elaborate hoax, or possibly a practical joke. Or possibly concept art. Those things are all basically the same thing.

You know those coffee table books that get released upon the death or career turning point of major artist? The ones that collect all their unpublished work for fans to drool and obsess over. That is what Arcade of Cruelty most resembles in style and format, but here's the twist; the book is not about a major artist. It's about Joseph Patrick Larkin, a nonfamous, not particularly successful youngish man who may or may not consider himself a cartoonist.

Arcade of Cruelty is a hateful, self-aggrandizing, self-immolating, intensely exhibitionist celebration of Joseph Patrick Larkin, by Joseph Patrick Larkin, and very possibly for Joseph Patrick Larkin. It collects a wide-cross section of anything Larkin has produced since he was about about eight years old. This includes defaced high school yearbook photos, collages designed for aid in masturbation ("Excerpts From Joseph Patrick Larkin's Beat Off Binders"), visual art so pretentious it may be parody, and an entire chapter of 9-11 jokes.

It would be easy to label this book as a vanity project produced by a crazy person, but for two factors. First of all, some of the material is really funny. While Arcade of Cruelty isn't something I would ever consider reading cover to cover (did I mention it's long?), each section has something that made me smile, chuckle knowlingly, or even LOL. The personage of Joseph Patrick Larkin as represented in this book is a mean-spirited loser, a man who despises women almost as much as he fears them, and whose go-to topics of comedic inspiration include rape, domestic violence, and 9-11. And some of those 9-11 jokes are really funny. Your reception of his humor will probably be best received by A) suicidal misogynists or B) people who enjoy terribly dark humor and who see the whole thing as straight-faced self-parody. I come down more on the B side, but I still feel kind of bad for enjoying so much of it.

The second thing that separates this book from any other sort of self-published wingnut zine is how expensive and fancypants the production is. It's self-published by Larkin's one-man company, Also-Ran, which judging from the website appears to mostly distribute Larkin's personal mixtapes. And yet the book is extremely well designed with a sense of seriousness and professionalism that can be found in absolutely none of the book's content. Each piece in the book is labeled with a Fine Arts Museum style title, caption and date. In the aforementioned Beat Off Binder chapter, every masturbation collage is accompanied by the same caption: "This is deeply troubling." As far as caption-based running gags go, this is pretty good. Also this section includes a really great picture of Fairuza Balk, which may be worth the price of the entire book, which by the way is $7.49 used on Amazon.

What sort of cognative split does one need to undergo to publish the contents of one's attic as if it was going to be sold at the MOMA gift shop? Maybe it will! I am not sure of anything after receiving this book in the mail. End of review.

Photos: Friday at the 2009 BookExpo America

Though the bulk of our collective attention may be split between the siren songs of DVR, the internet, and video games, I think most geeks maintain a special place in their hearts for regular old books. It's certainly true of me, and it's why I love the BookExpo America, North America's biggest book publishing convention. The sheer concentration of booths filling the Javits Center in Manhattan makes the NY Comic Con look like the Montgomery Flea Market.

I was able to pick up review copies of a few upcoming comics (including the very awesome looking Pixu) and I'll be posting about those soon. In the meantime, here are some Friday highlights (frilights?) from the convention floor...

As you may already know, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies from Quirk Books is a paperback best-seller, cultural phenom, and further proof that geek memes are pushing their way into the cultural mainstream. The formula is fiendishly simple; take the ultimate romance novel, insert zombie mayhem, and publish to a waiting nation of zombie fanatics. Love that public domain!

At the Quirk Books booth, publishing reps were promoting a new Deluxe Edition of PPZ coming out this winter, which will include "30% more zombies". I half-jokingly asked the rep if this addition was a concession to reader demands, and she answered in all seriousness, "Yes, we got a lot of reader feedback on the subject."

The big news is that on July 15th, the next "...With Zombies" title will be announced. The only hints I could get out of the rep were:

1. It won't be another Jane Austen book
2. It will take place in the Regency era (I'm guessing they'll stick with the Romance genre too)

I'll call it now: Jane Eyre With Zombies. Maybe cause that's the only Regency era book I can think of that isn't Jane Austen.



Neil Gaiman was signing copies of The Graveyard Book at the Harper Collins booth, bringing fans to tears with a mere word or touch of his hand. The autograph line was absolutely soul-crushing, so I just snapped a picture and moved on. We're BFF on twitter, though.

Life-sized Clifford is actually pretty frightening.


Let's talk bookmarks. Old and busted.....

NEW HOTNESS:
It took me a minute to understand the point of an XMarxit, but it's actually pretty smart. You point the dot at the spot you stopped reading, so when you open up the book you know exactly where you left off. Boom. Elegant it's simplicity.

And if you ever need to prove that you're a bigger nerd than someone else, whipping out a speciality bookmark is going to be your ace in the hole.


The idea of making a tiny Ultimate Fighting ring for the Ultimate Fighting book to live in is totally adorable, but I question whether it's a good idea to give Beat-Em-Up gloves to a person who is so obsessed with Ultimate Fighting that they'd want this thing in their house. Someone in that house is going to get punched, that's all I'm saying.


From the publisher's notes: "Meet all these cute baby animals that find clever ways to solve their not-so-small problems". I have a problem with crying when I read children's books. I didn't even try to read these on the floor because there would have been trouble.


Oh look, it's a little tiny novelty book!

Or is it....?I can't decide if this is a great idea or not. Playaway is a self-contained audiobook - you'd just get it from the library or as a gift, plug headphones in, and listen to it like an iPod. It's kind of cool to not have to transfer CDs to your computer to your music player before listening to something, and the "tiny book" visual impact is definitely appealing.

My biggest problem is the packaging...

WHAT THE HELL? Why would you create a giant VHS sized package for something that's smaller than a cellphone? Just because something is going to be housed in a library doesn't mean it HAS to look uncool.


In case you were wondering what to get your mom for Christmas. My mom might actually like this, actually.

Neil Gaiman Gives It Away

Neil Gaiman has my lifelong allegiance for having written Sandman, the ten volume tome that helped to remind me in my formative college years that comics could be brilliant and were worth taking seriously. Starting today Neil Gaiman's similarly deity-themed book, American Gods, is available in it's entirety on Harper Collin's website, a promotion intended to celebrate the seventh anniversary of Gaiman's blog. Gaiman fans were able to vote for which of his book's would be available for free, and American Gods won by a landslide. This creates a neat little narrative circle, as the blog itself was born out of a promotional stunt to document the writing process of a little book called....American Gods. Ah, closure! You can read the book by clicking the "browse" button on this handy widget...



Analysis after the jump...


This book was very in vogue within my circle of friends circa the summer of 2001. I loved the first few chapters but eventually grew tired of the main character, a strong silent type whose still waters never seemed to run terribly deep. I made it past the part where he gets tied to a tree for a few days (awesome, by the way) and left it at that. But I just may reread it now that it's so aggressively available. There doesn't appear to be anyway to download the text, so you've got to read it on Harper Collin's bookviewer, which is a pretty bare-bones eBook interface. Every time you turn the page a little loading screen pops up for about .5 seconds, which is annoying but is probably not a problem for those with a better internet connection than I. Several booknerds I'm acquainted with hate reading anything on a screen, but I think my aversion to that was cured when I started downloading comics- er, legal comics, I mean, like you know, Zuda. That's a real thing, right? Anyway, if anyone loved or hated American Gods, let me know if you think I'll like it now that I've grown more refined in my tastes and my attention span has decreased by about %45 due to our friend and overlord the internet.