Darger's Resources

by Michael Moon

Henry Darger (1892–1973) was a hospital janitor and an immensely productive artist and writer. In the first decades of adulthood, he wrote a 15,145-page fictional epic, In the Realms of the Unreal . He spent much of the rest of his long life illustrating it in astonishing drawings and watercolors. In Darger's unfolding saga, pastoral utopias are repeatedly savaged by extreme violence directed at children, particularly girls. Given his disturbing subject matter and the extreme solitude he maintained throughout his life, critics have characterized Darger as eccentric, deranged, and even dangerous, as an outsider artist compelled to create a fantasy universe. Contesting such pathologizing interpretations, Michael Moon looks to Darger's resources, to the narratives and materials that inspired him and often found their way into his writing, drawings, and paintings. Moon finds an artist who reveled in the burgeoning popular culture of the early twentieth century, in its newspaper comic strips, pulp fiction, illustrated children's books, and mass-produced religious art. Moon contends that Darger's work deserves and rewards comparison with that of contemporaries of his, such as the "pulp historians" H. P. Lovecraft and Robert Howard, the Oz chronicler L. Frank Baum, and the newspaper cartoonist Bud Fisher.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Art History

168 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Boots LookingLand · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moon does a pretty good job of "rescuing" Darger from the clutches of psychoanalytic readings that would make him out to be a latent (or overt) child-killer sexual-sadist, with some very astute observations about the popular culture of Darger's formative years. I don't agree with everything Moon says and I think he still misses a few critical points, but for its intention, I think this book is excellent.

I had to knock off a star because this is pretty dense academic reading and some of it feels a bit much to me (a whole chapter half-devoted to Branwell Bronte could have made its point in half the pages). Also, there's a lot of proletarian blah blah blah that (for me) just detracts with too much speculation from the essential goal, which seems to be to normalize (insofar as it can be) Darger's work.

Overall a necessary first step in appreciating Darger's impetus without calling him out as some kind of creepy fiend. The weakest piece of the book lays in comparisons to the pulps of the 20s-30s (Lovecraft, Bloch, and Howard); point taken that lurid entertainment was prevalent, but given that there's no evidence that Darger ever read this stuff (and no discussion of that point by Moon), rather than serve as some kind of "evidence", it actually raised more questions for me.

This book will not make sense unless you have some grounding in Darger and his work. Watch Yu's documentary In the Realms of the Unreal first, or read MacGregor's monumental work Henry J. Darger and the Realms of the Unreal. Without a grasp of the scope and emotion of Darger's writing and art, and at least some sense of MacGregor's analysis, Moon's book might leave readers grasping.

[Dan Kelly]

Moon comes up with a few interesting suggestions about what motivated Darger and where he got his ideas, but like many another researcher he's trying to be the first to define a human cipher by pure speculation. I agree with his notion that it's ridiculous to assume Darger was a serial killer or an idiot savant, and he makes good points (and I can testify to this, coming from a Chicago Catholic background) that Darger's gore-filled work seems less strange, sadistic, and out of the blue when you consider the saint hagiographies and fairy tales he undoubtedly encountered throughout his life. Once you learn that he had a collection of Oz books (his favorite series) and regularly scrapbooked comic strips like Little Annie Rooney, the picture further comes into focus. Moon goes off the tracks however when he tries to draw parallels with, for instance, Branwell Brontë's (along with his better-known sisters') long-term and bloodied "fanfic" about a group of toy soldiers given to them by their father. Surely, it's an interesting side-by-side comparison, but it smacks of trying to legitimize and make Darger more palatable, raising him to artiste from his current freak status. Other flights of fancy include a brief chapter about H.P. Lovecraft and Seabury Quinn's work (without ever saying whether or not Darger encountered their stories...I find it unlikely), Ed Gein's human crafts projects, a severely irrelevant tangent about Wonder Woman's pervy creator, and more. I think Moon mostly wants to make the predictable point that Henry wasn't so weird in the context of our sick, sick world. Not a compelling or unique viewpoint.

As a Facebook friend pointed out, Darger is amazing because he can never BE legitimate. He is unlike anyone else, even other outsider artists. His work is a unique synthesis of (as Moon proves, I think) popular fiction, sentimental art, and the socially permissible horrors of religious iconography. Moon and most of Darger's other researchers and biographers fail to address, however, how that daffy, lonely old garbage picker managed to turn out a series of murals breathtaking for both their high weirdness and undeniable skill (his sense of color and composition, which seems unlikely to have been developed by trial and error, was amazing). But Henry has been forever silenced, and didn't say much when he was around anyway. Even those who knew him couldn't tell us much about what motivated and made him. That hasn't stopped a slew of art critics, biographers, and academicians from essentially pushing him to side and saying, "I'LL take it from here, Henry!"

[Steev Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading as a companion to the biography "Henry Darger, Throwaway Boy" by Jim Elledge. It's fascinating how different writers/researchers/critics see Darger. Moon's short, dense collection of essays places Darger's work in the cultural milieu of early 20th century pop culture, discussing "In the realms of the unreal" in relation to pulp writers like H.P. Lovecraft, newspaper comic strips, stories of Catholic martyrs, and the juvenelia of Bramwell Bronte. This last is a particularly rich idea that certainly bears further research; although Bronte's work was written in a very different time and place, the similarities between the themes of the two men are striking. There are lots of good ideas in Moon's book and it's nice to have authors like Moon and Elledge seeking to place Darger within his proper historical and cultural context rather than seeing him as part of the "outsider artist" machine. Elledge's book humanizes Darger and Moon's offers some provocative interpretations of Darger's work. Recommended for those interested in early American "low-brow" art, nascent pop culture history, and of course fans of Darger's work.

[Nik Maack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very dry, very academic. However, there are enough odd & tantalizing facts about Darger that make the book interesting. I long for an affordable text that includes more of Darger's writing first hand. It's frustrating to have an author talk ABOUT Darger, without getting a chance to read him.

This is not a great book & unless your Darwr obsessed, don't bother. Still, the lives of saints, weird Lovecraft details, talk of bondage, the pulps - a lot of fun weirdness. Just described in a dull academic way, unfortunately.

[LMM Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a bit of an uneven book, but much of it does a genuinely great job of contextualizing the odd or frightening parts of Darger's writings that others have previously blamed on pathologies. However, it does suffer from replacing armchair psychoanalysis of Darger specifically with armchair psychoanalysis of the general human condition. The last chapter analyzing the potential shared connection Darger's work has to certain strands of pulp misogyny is particularly strained. Even so, I found this gave me a much better understanding of a figure who's long fascinated me.

[Patty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Glad I finally got around to reading this. Yes, it is somewhat dense and academic--hello, it's published by a university press (the one I am employed by). I am no Darger scholar, but I've been fascinated by his work for years, and Moon definitely gives a perspective and understanding that I have not been exposed to anywhere else. I look forward to watching Jessica Yu's "In the Realms of the Unreal" again, with Moon's book in mind.

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is really more about contextualizing Darger than it is purely about the resources he used, and the prose tends toward a certain irksome academic pomposity. That said, Moon raises some fascinating points about Darger vis a vis Weird Horror and sequelating prose and comics; it's a valuable book almost in spite of itself.