Category / Books

by Jonathan M

Book Log for the First Half of 2011

It’s that time again… the year has turned and the first six months of 2011 have given way to the second tranche of annual decay and entropy.

As in previous years, I am listing all of the books that I have read in the last six months with links to where I have reviewed them.  Sadly, as one of the sites I review for regularly is undergoing problems, I will be unable to link to a lot of the reviews I have produced.  However, once the site is back up again, I shall return and fill in the links for anyone foolish enough to be curious.

 

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by Jonathan M

Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit… Stripp’d

Gestalt Mash have my column on Matoro Mase’s manga serial Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit.

My column draws on the first six volumes of what will be an eight volume run if Viz Media do actually translate the entire series.  Set in an alternate version of contemporary Japan, the series is about a society that has decided to force its population to make the most of life by killing one citizen in every thousand at random.  The series examines this ideas from two different perspectives; on the one hand, it examines the psychological impact of the death sentences on the victims and their families while, on the other hand, exploring what the effects of this policy are on the Japanese body politic.  The result is a series of graphic novels that paint exquisitely detailed pictures of human grief and suffering whilst also slowly creating the impression that such a society is monstrous and must be overthrown:

Death has the power not just to end lives, but also to change them. It can change them for the better by prompting people to make changes, and it can change things for the worse by fostering a crippling sense of futility and loss. Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit is an exploration of the tension between these two reactions to the revelation that we too shall someday be no more.

The series has also spawned a film adaptation, which I also wrote about a little while ago for Videovista.

by Jonathan M

REVIEW – The Dark Angel (1987)

Videovista have my review of The Dark Angel, a British TV miniseries based upon J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Uncle Silas (1864):

If judged as a thriller then The Dark Angel suffers for the fact that Uncle Silas is very much a book that is ‘of its time’.

While the TV series is, in and of itself, perfectly watchable, I could not quite get over the extent to which a) the plot reminded me of Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White (1859) and b) quite how superior The Woman in White is to the content of this series.

by Jonathan M

Cyclonopedia (2008) By Reza Negarestani – Madness/Theory/Truth/Nonsense

I once attended an academic conference where a member of the audience repeated a criticism made by the author of a rather successful book. In response to this criticism, the paper-giver smiled and began his response by saying “While I think that professor X should be praised for producing such an accessible work on the subject…” before going on to explain at great length why it was that he thought that professor X was both wrong and a grotesquely ugly freak. Though I cannot remember the subject of the paper, or the criticism made of its position, or the response given to said criticism, I can still remember the audible intake of breath and the appreciative tittering from the audience when the speaker applied the word ‘accessible’ to the work of another academic. The dynamics of this withering intellectual put-down are easy enough to unpack: if a work is accessible then it means that it is written with a non-specialist audience in mind and if a work is intended to be consumed by people who are new to the subject then it cannot hope to break new-ground. However, if the aesthetics of accessibility are ‘wrong’ then what are the right aesthetics?

 

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by Jonathan M

The Chimpanzee Complex… Stripp’d

Gestalt Mash have the first issue of my new column Stripp’d!

Stripp’d is devoted to independent and/or translated series of comics and graphic novels.  The aim is to celebrate the diverse ways in which different comics, manga, graphic novels and sequential art approach ideas from the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror in an attempt to help open the field up to influences from other cultures and other forms of media.

For my first column, I decided to take a look at Richard Marazano and Jean-Michel Ponzio’s trilogy of science fiction graphic novels The Chimpanzee Complex. Originally published in French and translated by Cinebook, The Chimpanzee Complex is about the search for consolation in narratives of conspiracy.

by Jonathan M

Ooku: The Inner Chambers – Volume 5

Gestalt Mash have my fifth piece on Fumi Yoshinaga’s excellent Ooku: The Inner Chambers.

The fifth volume (the last one translated to date) of the series slows the pace down after the brisk historical jaunting of the previous volume. Again, the primary concern is the failure of the Shogun to provide the sort of leadership required to steer Japan through troubled times but Yoshinaga subtly shifts the emphasis of the book opening up whole new vistas. Indeed, while the previous volumes have been all about the need for the Japanese ruling elite to reflect the changed demographics of Japanese society, enough time has now passed that we are on (at least) the second generation of female rule. In Yoshinaga’s alternative Edo period Japan, women now have exclusive control over all aspects of society. This changes the power dynamic between the sexes and so presents Japanese culture with another ‘fact’ that it needs to reflect.

by Jonathan M

Ooku: The Inner Chambers – Volume 4

Gestalt Mash have my fourth piece on Fumi Yoshinaga’s alt-historical manga epic Ooku: The Inner Chambers.

Volume 4 shifts the timeline forward in order to see how later Shoguns fare with the task of managing a changing Japan.  By allowing us to see the ways in which these later Shoguns struggle to fill the first female Shogun’s sandles, Yoshinaga not only invites a more generous appraisal of the first Shogun, she also shifts the series register away from an explicitly feminist analysis of gender differences and towards a more general political analysis of the responsibilities that accompany power.

Oh… and the book ends on a spectacular cliffhanger!

by Jonathan M

Ooku: The Inner Chambers – Volume 3

Gestalt Mash has my third piece on Fumi Yoshinaga’s alternate history manga Ooku: The Inner Chambers.

Following hot on the heels of the second volume in the series, volume three teases out a political conflict at the heart of the Shogun’s court.  A conflict in which the forces of conservatism battle the forces of social progress for control of both Japan and the mind of the Shogun.  Beautifully drawn, exquisitely written and awesome in the power of its insights into contemporary attitudes towards gender and sexuality, Ooku continues to be a fantastic piece of sequential art.

by Jonathan M

Ooku: The Inner Chambers – Volume 2

Gestalt Mash has the second of my pieces about Fumi Yoshinaga’s excellent Ooku: The Inner Chambers.

Having introduced us, in the first volume, to an alternative history of Edo-period Japan in which 75% of the male population has been killed off by disease, Yoshinaga goes about trying to explain why it is that this culture allows women to rule while also paying lip service to the idea of masculine superiority.  Intelligent, insightful and quite moving, Ooku: The Inner Chambers continues to be a very rewarding read.

by Jonathan M

Ooku: The Inner Chambers – Volume 1

Gestalt Mash has recently relaunched itself and it brings with it the first in a series of posts about Fumi Yoshinaga’s Tiptree Award-winning manga series Ooku: The Inner Chambers.

Set in an alternate Edo-period Japan in which the male population has been decimated by a terrible disease, the series is an examination of why it is that old values (in particular the myth of masculine supremacy) outlive their utility in the face of social and demographic change.