jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Alison Bechdel’s “family tragicomic” memoir tells the story of her childhood, her closeted father and her own homosexuality, in a nifty layered & literary approach. Full of delights.

• Amazon Page for Fun Home
• Alison Bechdel on flickr
• Dykes to Watch Out For
• DTWOF Blog
• Alison Bechdel on Wikipedia — her brother plays keyboard for Ministry!

After Breaking Open the Head, Daniel Pinchbeck is now gearing up to become the Leary/McKenna of the Oughts. Contemporary shamanism, I suppose, is the word. He takes his trip pretty far out in the new book: the regular iboga/ayahuasca explorations are back, told with blunt first-person honesty, and solid scholarly work that touches on anybody who’s even remotely relevant, from obvious ones like Castaneda and Fritjof Capra to more obscure figures such as Rudolf Steiner. There are chapters on quantum mechanics that shouldn’t thrill no one any longer, there are UFOs, Stonehendge, Hopi prophecies, and of course–much to my chagrain*–the Mayan calendar. The general theory here is that the end of the Long Count on December 21, 2012 will usher in some sort of revolution of global consciousness, activation of the noosphere, what have you. I was particularly taken with his treatise on crop circles, on which I’ll soon post more. Interesting for a mind-bending ride, expert synthesis of hermetic traditions, and very revealing personal stories from Burning Man, Amazon villages, and the depths of DPT trips. Recommended, even just for the jolt of Pinchbeck’s courage to go very far out there.

* Ever since Tikal, I’ve been wanting to do something with the end of the Long Count. He got there first, next is Mel Gibson….

A couple of links.

Pretty sure I read this as a kid, and then saw a million adaptations (including Alan Moore’s terrific League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), but something propelled me to go back and take another look at Captain Nemo. Turns out that he stays fairly mysterious throughout the amazing underwater adventures of Professor Aronnax, Ned Land, and the good Conseil. The lost continent of Atlantis, the South Pole, and of course giant kraken are part of the neverending series of wonders. Apparently Nemo is more fleshed out in The Mysterious Island, which I also have here with me. Verne’s imagination is still fantastic even though most of his inventions are now common-place.

The first part of Jason Lutes’ sprawling graphic novel introduces a surprisingly large number of characters and ties them to historical events in the late 1920. The drawings are detailed and sharp; the plot is heavy with emotion and a creeping sadness. Not as focused as Jar of Fools, but it’s not supposed to be. I hope he hurries up with the second installment.

Günter Grass’s recent novella about the Wilhelm Gustloff, the largest shipping disaster in history, which somehow got a lot less publicity than the Titanic because it was a Nazi ship. Over 10,000 refugees–about a third of them children–died in the icy waters of the Baltic on January 30, 1945 when the former KdF ship was torpedoed by a Russian sub. In the novella, Grass recounts the real events but couches them in a fictional story about the presistance of guilt and revenge. It’s very good.