Totems and Taboos

by Jason V. Brock

This is a poetry/art book that combines social, sexual and horror themes with some amazing artwork. One of the more interesting pieces, "God's Desktop", is a triptych (three-piece) of God's daily computer tasks, including IMs with Satan, Jesus and the Pope. It is a riot of humor, yet with a biting realism that punches home the message. Some of the works are centered around Animal Rights, human injustice and Native American themes, while others are beautifully romantic and personal. The illustrations run the gamut from Italian Renaissance to hand-drawn horror to psycho-sexual collage. The balance between politics, pain and beauty are perfectly executed verbally and visually. If you like sweet and sour, dark and light, heavy melodies and pain with pleasure, you will love this book.

74 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

BLURBS:

“Jason V Brock… A bold new voice in American fiction. Watch this man! You may be in at the birth of a legend.”
--William F. Nolan (co-author of "Logan’s Run"; screenwriter for "Burnt Offerings")

“[Brock] makes the fantastic utterly believable… a fine writer, indeed.”
--George Clayton Johnson (writer for "Star Trek" and "The Twilight Zone"; co-author, "Logan’s Run")

“Bravo!”
--Ray Bradbury (author of "Fahrenheit 451" and "The Martian Chronicles")

“…a clever young man, Jason Brock.”
--Harlan Ellison (author of "Deathbird Stories" and "A Boy and His Dog")

“[Brock] knows how to tell a story… [he] has heart… real emotion… [it’s] a strong part of writing that most writers never capture.”
--James Robert Smith (author of "The Flock" and "Hissmelina")

“[Brock] takes… characters into places I never expected…”
--Richard Matheson (author of "Somewhere in Time" and "I Am Legend")

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Writer ("Weird Fiction Review"; "Like Water for Quarks"; "Fangoria"), filmmaker ("Charles Beaumont: The Short Life of Twilight Zone's Magic Man"; "The AckerMonster Chronicles!"; "Image, Reflection, Shadow: Artists of the Fantastic"), guitarist/composer/singer (ChiaroscurO), artist/designer. Worked with "Dark Discoveries" magazine as Managing Editor/Art Director. Publisher (Cycatrix Press; "[NameL3ss] Digest (http://www.NamelessMag.com)") /Co-Editor of "The Bleeding Edge" and "The Devil's Coattails" with William F. Nolan. Lead Story/Costume Design for Bluewater Comics's "Logan's Run: Last Day"; also a writer on one of their horror titles. Member, PMA, SPFE, CPC, HWA, SFWA.

More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_V_...

Reviews

[Stephanie M. Wytovich · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first opened Totems and Taboos, I was met by a piece of art titled, “Release.” Drawn to the deep red background contrasted against the dancing, soft pink outlines of the female form, I stayed on this page for a few minutes, thinking, analyzing. The piece vibrates with sexual energy, yet there’s a subtle violence to it that screams—and screams louder—the longer you look at it. Colors blend and reshape images on the page, and visuals that I didn’t initially notice showed up and questioned me to go further. To dig deeper.

And that’s what Brock’s collection is about.

Going deeper, and not being afraid of what you find when you get to the bottom.

Brock brings the horror genre to a new light as he tackles stereotypes, social conventions, physical and psychological break—whether through love or hate—and fashions them together to bring out a product that is charged with an honest brutality. Yet, I use that word as an noun o f extremes because in some cases, it’s love that consumes the art, taking over the body of prose and engulfing it metaphor by metaphor such as in his piece, “Papillion.” But then again, in a piece like “Victim,”—a personal favorite of mine—readers see a nightmare come to life as the narrator states, “Anger is a gift: use it” (Brock 47).

The collection balances the lover and the fighter and asks what it means to hide in plain sight. It shows how society sees too much and responds too little. There’s death and rebirth, resurrection and murder, and Brock ties it up and presents it in a way that makes readers stop, and not only reread, or take another look at what he’s written or created, but start to ask questions as well. How do we, as people, as consumers, as artists, live, love, respond and die? And why does it matter? Mind you, he won’t give you the answers, but he’ll lead you down the path to find them; he’ll take your hand and show you the tragedies and the beauties that the world has to offer.

Totems and Taboos is a striking collaboration of art and poetry, and the two work together as they create and form intellectual battles of the brain and the heart. I know I’ve read something beautiful—something meaningful—when it makes me question the way I look at something, whether it is a political or social issue, or even a dream that I’d dismissed the night before. Good art—good literature—takes you to places that you might not want to go, and in the places that you do, shows you the sublime, the uncanny realities of what you missed at first glance.

So I implore you, take a walk through the wild, the esoteric. Look at the stars and read their messages. See the world, live in it and take chances. Look at the good, see the bad, and then understand how and why you feel like you do.

And then—and maybe most importantly—react, respond.

-Stephanie M. Wtyovich