Bill Wallace > Recent Status Updates

A single day in the life of Everyman told by a supremely talented graphic artist. Comparison to ULYSSES is inevitable, but the aims are different here. Instead of Joyce's obsessions with history and literature, the concerns here are the bounds of social interaction in a an mis-connected age, among other sources of contemporary angst.

The rare book I couldn't finish. Too conservative, too religious, too many leaps of logic, too disorganized, too many errors in the text.

Not as dazzling as MONICA, but I'm a hard-sell for time travel stories. This one gets points for weirdness and a few bizarre twists that work well within the surreal physics of the plot.

Another beautiful issue of HELLEBORE, this one a special number dedicated to ghosts and hauntings, appropriate for the Yule season. Every issue is a welcome arrival in my mail box, a perfect mix of design and erudition and one of the brightest lights in the field of journal publishing today.

Excellent history of the exciting parts of the 17th Century in England sets the Civil Wars in an expanded context that sorts through some of the chaos around those decades. Healey's writing is detailed and lively, often much funnier than one might expect in a book about this subject. Like any great work of history this one has sent me off in a dozen or so directions I want to know more about.

Picked off the library shelf, unfamiliar with the series, this wasn't a very good place to start. Amusing enough short pieces but they are likely the bits between the real stories and not of much interest without a prior knowledge of the characters. I wasn't amused enough to want more.

Amusing though disjointed. I finally read enough of these to appreciate the versatility and quality of Liam Sharp's artwork.

Cooke's art is ideally suited to Westlake's no nonsense prose here, little vignettes of midcentury nightclubs and rough motels drawn in precise lines. I read most of the Parker novels decades ago but remember them with fondness. This is a terrific way to revisit them.

Recommended.

The psychogeography of a city on the same map as Dublin and Döblin's Berlin, its history written like stories tattooed on a man, bleeding words. Fragments of the old weird land, murder, drownings at the falls, witchcraft, a cloud of legends that echo, retold in the poet's failing life. In America, in Paterson.

Recommended.

The king of lysergic poster art defined the visual style of California 1960s hip. This is a great, if slender collection of Griffin's posters, art, and comix and is a pretty good introduction to his work though I'd love to see Taschen or someone comparable publish a definitive volume.

Hear that rooster?
Imperative images blown to atoms or a handful of dust. Sleep shattered, restless with a touch of the bucolic. Fragments of fragments reassembled into the daylight imperative, briefly transcribed then gone.
It’s time to wake up.

Disappointing to me since I was reading it looking for information on Albin Grau and there's precious little of that here. As interesting as I find occult history, the details of occult practice wear thin very quickly. While I was reading this, I was also reading MASTERS OF ATLANTIS, which is an esoteric tradition considerably more amusing.

The stories of four lives disrupted by the rise of Nazi Germany, told in Sebald's unique blend of history, fictionalized biography, travel chronicles, and dreams. I like the fourth one the best because it is closest to the genius of The Rings of Saturn but all four are evocative, powerful, and magical.

A fine little graphic novel that tells the story of the Bauhaus and its artists. The prose is crisp and informed and the graphics make use of Bauhaus design elements and primary colors. Really an excellent use of the medium to impart history that too few Americans know.