Rising Up and Rising Down
I didn’t put Rising Up and Rising Down on my holiday list, because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to convince anybody to spend $120 on a 7-volume treatise on whether the means of violence can ever be justified by the ends. Not to mention the odd looks I knew I’d get.
But I’m a huge fan of William T. Vollmann, and I’ll be saving up my own hard-earned money for this, even if I can’t imagine finding the time to read it for some months to come…
31 December 2003 | uncategorized |
The Usual Gang of Idiots
Among the books I received as presents this Christmas: Mad Art, a whirlwind tour of most of the artists who’ve drawn for Mad at one point or another over the years. Now, I haven’t actually read an issue of the magazine since junior high, so I had no idea, for example, that Drew Friedman and Sherry Flenniken had been drawing for the magazine…or that, if the samples of recent artwork are to be believed, the target audience may have shifted up by about 5-10 years. I actually remember a lot of stuff they show from the late 1970s and early ’80s, though I didn’t know from Mort Drucker and Jack Davis back then.
My only complaints? I wouldn’t have minded seeing more of the classic stuff, especially more Dave Berg, and in many cases I wouldn’t mind bigger reproductions. But otherwise I think the book’s just swell. Go buy it already.
31 December 2003 | uncategorized |
Our Endless and Proper Work is my new book with Belt Publishing about starting (and sticking to) a productive writing practice. 
