The Acme Novelty Library #20 by Chris Ware

The Acme Novelty Library #20 Reviews

• 
  Ademption

  Plots are not Chris Ware's strong suit. His specialty is observing the entire life of a solitary loser or asshole in minute detail. Ware's latest subject is Jordan Lint, a bully who flowers into an asshole. Not the kind of asshole people love. Not a Barney Stinson or a Dr. House. Jordan is just a no-account douche, who is otherwise perpetually confused about how to live.
  
  Without exaggeration, this probably the best graphic novel I have ever read. Not for the story: Jordan is born into an upper middle-class Omaha family. Jordan does nothing much with his life, treats others badly, and drifts into different identities assigned to him by others who usually care for him or try their best to help him along. Jordan is nearly uninteresting.
  
  But this book is amazing, because Ware is evolving graphic storytelling in disturbingly innovative ways. He begins Jordan's story at birth. The initial images are jarring, pixelated, lacking in detail. The dialogue is nonsense or single syllables. The sophistication of the images grows with Jordan as he proceeds through childhood, teen years, college, middle age, and elderly life. Sex, infidelity, births, lawsuits, divorce, and deaths happen during different periods of Jordan's life. Sometimes these events are barely mentioned and some happen between pages. The reader sees and deals with only as much tragedy and ensuing fallout as Jordan can apprehend and process, which is very little, but the results of the events are clear.
  
  Ware uses foreground panels to depict the quotidian nature of Jordan's existence, while the white space and panels within panels depict Jordan's inner life, which is sometimes mere impressions of an idealized self, sex fantasies and complex emotional states that he never manages to share with others. Ware also catches the moments people look at themselves in passing reflections off windows, computer screens, digital photos on cell phones, and in Google results.
  
  Acme Novelty Library #20 is a triumph of artistry. The prosaic jerk is painstakingly explored with rigorous technique. Ware is a master, fleshing out the inner and outer life of an asshole with the assurance of civil engineer planning a municipal bridge. Ware approaches his unworthy subject knowing it has to be perfectly rendered, driven by professional obligation and personal obsession to make a peerless object, even if the object is so pragmatic that it could be simultaneously used and ignored by thousands blithely unaware of the craftsmanship that went into such an object.
  
  Ware shows you the asshole no one likes. Jordan isn't a clever or complex asshole. He is just an average asshole with no special talent and not much to give, and Ware explains how someone may have lived this sort of life. Ware wants to render him to encapsulate him or understand him. I'm not sure which, but I think both goals are met as far as one can currently capture a single life as a visual narrative. The book is Jordan and Jordan is the book insofar as a man can be a book.
• 
  connor

  Since Acme Novelty Library made the transition from a "pamphlet" or "chapbook" format (issues 1-15) to an annual (mostly) hardcover book series, there has been less miscellaneous material and it has mostly served to serialize portions of two works which will eventually be published as full-length works a la
  Jimmy Corrigan: Rusty Brown and Building Stories.
  
  Issues
  16 and
  17 were essentially parts one and two of Rusty Brown, and they very much felt like segments of an ongoing work. Since then, something peculiar has happened-- each new book has felt like it could easily be a stand-alone work.
  
  Beginning with
  Issue 18-- a segment of Building Stories and possibly the strongest single book Ware has ever produced-- it was easy to imagine a reader, unaware of the connection to any ongoing larger project, reading the story and perceiving it as a complete "Graphic Novel," something that would have been unimaginable with almost any serialized segment of Jimmy Corrigan or Rusty Brown that had been published up to that point.
  
  Then came
  Issue 19-- a chapter of Rusty Brown that diverged from the elementary school stories of the two-part prologue and focused on Rusty's father. This, too, felt like a work that could exist on its own, to the point that it made me wonder where it fell in the larger narrative of the eventual Rusty Brown "graphic novel." Would it immediately follow the prologue? Or would it occur later in the narrative? How massive was this book gonna BE?
  
  Now we arrive at Issue 20, which essentially tells the life story of Jordan Lint, who seemed up to this point to be a very minor supporting character in the tale of Rusty Brown. And by "life story", I mean his ENTIRE LIFE, from birth to death-- each year of his life is given one page, focusing on a single day, and the reader is left to fill in the gaps. On one page, we see Jordan having marital difficulties. One page later, he is in a new relationship, in a new apartment. And while some pages portray a big event in Jordan's life, just as many focus on some mundane aspect. The effect is as if Ware had produced a chronicle of every single moment in Lint's life and then picked out a page-per-year, blindfolded, knowing that it would somehow add up to telling the full story of a character's life.
  
  From a formal/technical standpoint, it's hugely ambitious. This should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Ware's comics. He seems to thrive on telling stories in new and challenging ways that seem like they would have required a punishing amount of effort to accomplish. If there's a common complaint directed at Ware as a storyteller, it's that his stories tend to be unremittingly depressing, bleak tales of pathetic characters living unsatisfying lives.
  
  With "Jordan Lint", Ware almost seems to be challenging critics to attack him in this way. For one thing, Lint is probably the least sympathetic character Ware has featured in a lead role in one of his issues. A bully who grows up to work in real estate speculation and "financial products", Lint is a failure as a husband and father on multiple counts, and he seems to gradually alienate everyone he comes into contact with. Lint is a different type of "loser" than Rusty or Jimmy, who are picked on as children and never seem to catch a break. Jordan seems to have more things go his way, and is able to bounce back plenty of times after pissing away relationships and opportunities that fall into his lap. It's just harder to feel sorry for him. Rusty Brown grows up to be a complete weirdo, unpleasant and socially maladjusted, but even at his worst, he still doesn't seem like as much of an asshole as Jordan Lint.
  
  I get the feeling that Ware himself doesn't have much affection for Lint, and yet he isn't unfair to him. We see Lint's childhood traumas and how they continue to affect him even in later life. We see him in moments where he is at his best, where it almost seems like he's going to prioritize his life in the right ways, only to somehow screw it up a few years (pages) later. We get a sense of a full life, and it's perhaps the starkest example of what is probably one of Ware's main obsessions-- the devastating, unstoppable passage of time that eventually dooms each and every one of us. Here he lays it all out, in a slender book: Jordan Lint is born and then (spoiler alert!) he dies. He makes a lot of bad decisions in between, and it all goes by much too quickly.
  
  The story of Jordan Lint feels like its own book. It's hard for me to imagine how both this story AND the story in Issue 19 can both fit into the eventual Rusty Brown graphic novel that is set up by the prologue in Issues 16 and 17, since they both spiral so far away from the world of Rusty's grade school. But then again, I get the feeling that we have a long way to go before we reach the end, so these seemingly self-contained stories might eventually feel like small tangents in the larger narrative. But for the time being, they work perfectly well on their own.
  
  Issue 20 doesn't have the same emotional warmth that Issues 18 and 19 had. Christ, if you don't own those two books, seek them out now while you still can. And seek this one out, too, though you should brace yourself for a story that is dark even by Ware's own standard.* But you should totally buy it before it goes out of print like all of Ware's books eventually do, or you'll be kicking yourself later.
  
  (Note: it's still not the most depressing story of Ware's. That honor belongs to the teeny-tiny Quimby The Mouse hardcover book that came with the
  Quimby The Mouse Wooden Toy issued by Dark Horse a few years back. THAT BOOK IS SO VERY SAD, and it comes with a toy. You can still find this awesome book/toy combo for sale online, but good luck finding it five years from now.)
• 
  Paul Bryant

  Out of the vasty deeps of Barnes & Noble, Union Square, came this strange thing which I could not resist, and which I now understand to be the latest in a work in progress by this guy Chris Ware who was a new name to me, and who, like a great many graphic novelists, likes to make gorgeous inventive graphic works about the most miserable, unglamorous, quotidian characters, such as the hideous jerk in this tale, Jordan Lint. The entire life of Lint is told in glimpses, refractions, splintered shards, half-heard conversations, half-scenes, telling juxtapositions, creepy vignettes, off-centred jumpcuts and disjointedness. I thought this method was very beautiful, it told a tired and only half-interesting story, if you could call it that, in a completely original and exciting way. If I was rich I'd immediately get the rest of Chris Ware's stuff tomorrow, but graphic novels are so expensive so it'll be a long time coming.
  After moaning and grizzling about experimental novels recently I was thrilled to stumble over this Acme Novelty Library thing. Let the bells ring out, let there be general rejoicing, there are new things under the sun.
• 
  MJ Nicholls

  Yes, this one was spectacular. I don’t know anything about the Acme Library except I missed the preceding nineteen novels, but the life and death of Jordan Lint was beautifully designed. A truly pioneering way to tell a simple story, leagues ahead in the originality and wittiness stakes. Like a dream that becomes a nightmare, beaming life back at us in all its horrible inevitability. I read portions of this in The Book of Other People, so completing the piece a year later was a prolonged pleasure for me. Chris Ware is not readily available in the UK, so I lament the fact I might never read another entry in his library. Sad face. Mommy!
• 
  Malbadeen

  I bought this book because it's goooooooorgeous. Really, really, gorgeous but I'll be selling it back soon because it's also devistating. Really, really devistating. And I don't mean to suggest that that's a bad thing, being devistated by a book, but it's just not something I'll want to re-visit.
  
  My brain gets a little cross-eyed when I try and find a compartment for Ware to fit into. His illustrations floor me everytime, his stories punch me in the stomach everytime. And the fact that he can do that in so few pages, with so few words is AMAZING!!!
  
  love
  love
  love his stuff.
• 
  Charles Hatfield

  Jesus, what a sad, relentless book. Ware's Acme Novelty Library No. 20, or Lint, is a grinding, crushing exercise: the life story of one Jordan Lint (1958-2023), an unlikable if not wholly unsympathetic study in, unsurprisingly for Ware, broken masculinity. Lint inverts the premise of Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: instead of a shy, painfully recessive, Charlie Brown-like shlemiel à la the semi-autobiographical Jimmy, Jordan Lint is extrapolated from the archetypal locker room bully, a bluff, crass, blindly acquisitive, homophobic, sexually selfish exemplar of failed if not pitiable machismo. Of course both Jimmy and Lint are saddled with problematic or emotionally absent father figures; both are unable to rise, quite, to the masculine ideals they strive for. But Lint gets closer; he lives a macho life.
  
  Lint surprises again and again with his capacity for self-serving and self-destructive action. It's hard for me to tell whether Ware's attitude toward Lint is one of contempt or grudging sympathy; I suspect the former, but, still, Ware does the hard work of delving into Lint's psyche and finding toeholds of human interest. Jordan Lint is very much un-Ware like, and it's Ware's ability to probe such a character that makes Acme No. 20 a notable step forward--that and, as usual, new formal advances.
  
  Like Citizen Kane (I know the comparison is hyperbolic, but in this case it's deserved), Lint is a formalist tour de force that puts a huge array of techniques to experimental effect in order to portray a difficult, in some ways repellant character. But whereas Kane focuses on the egomania of a man who has everything, Lint deals with a rather ordinary guy, whose childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and senescence are captured in pitiful detail. Jordan Lint harbors a few terrible secrets, although it's not always clear whether the flashbacks and revelations are entirely "real": there are fresh disclosures about the past even near the end of the book, but they're presented in such mediated, ambiguous terms that I'm left wondering. In any case, Ware pushes his diagrammatic formalism to an extreme in order to evoke the workings of the mind: faintest impressions, fleeting mental connections, desires, sensory details, psychological confusion. There's also an extraordinary sequence late in the book that invokes the very different style of Gary Panter (as Lint's son bares his soul to the world in what is, basically, a tell-all autobiographical comic). That too is a new move for Ware.
  
  Putting it all together, the artistic yield is tremendous. As portraits of assholes go, Lint is a much stronger, more layered work than, say, Dan Clowes' Wilson, much more humanly complex, much more challenging and more rewarding. Yet one thing gives me pause: every Ware comic, whatever else it's about, seems to be about solipsism, because Ware's formal techniques don't admit of real dialogue among people, in a fully fleshed-out, interactive way; instead they remain keyed to a single consciousness, with an almost suffocating intensity that doesn't admit any fresh air. In other words, Ware's mastery of focalization is so intense that it shuts out the possibility of truly dialogical, intersubjective engagement. The results leave me gasping for air, even as I say to myself, Damn, that's one hell of a comic.
  
  
• 
  Andrew Horton

  BLUGH. It's almost painful to read Ware right now - he's the greatest living cartoonist doing his best work, and it's just BRAIN and SOUL-melting. Taking time out from his ongoing "Rusty Brown" epic (which, when finally finished and compiled, will split the entire universe in half and render all human narrative obsolete - it's THAT ridiculously good in toto, the greatest work of art that will have ever been rendered by mankind's craven hand) to tell the entire life story from birth to death of a minor character (Jordan Lint, who bullies Rusty Brown in one panel). Jordan is just a classical every-shitheel, from bullying child to stoner teen to college frat burnout to corporate raider/philandering family man adult - and yet, in spite of his complete lack of redeeming qualities or justifications, Ware treats and renders Lint with as much humanity, compassion, and pathos as Rusty or Jimmy Corrigan before him. Ware's layouts have gotten even more bonkers - he's almost in his FRACTAL phase, spraying boxes large and small all over the page with nary a "so...," arrow, or "and then..." to guide the reader as in previous installments.
• 
  Steve Banes

  What do you say about yet another mindblowingly designed, yet gloriously depressing installment from Chris Ware? Umm, I'm usually at a loss for words, and this time is no real exception. There are some moments along this sad journey that I found myself identifying with in the usual stomach ache inducing way, that's neither good nor bad, it's just the "Ware way," and of course it's not for everyone, but fuck those people who don't get it. I always have to prepare myself when I sit down and read one of Ware's books, because I have to read it from cover to cover in one sitting. Always. And then I need time afterwards to dwell on everything, and then hopefully not kill myself. Amazing.
• 
  Gord

  This is one of the best graphic novels I have ever read. I am amazed. He creates a character who is emotionally damaged at birth, and who carries this scar through his life, preventing him from ever knowing himself or what we would consider a complete life. I recognized myself in him, my friends, and felt terrible heartbreak.
  The artwork is astounding. Ware creates a subjective journey, with burblings of memory, and a visual dynamism that is simple and precise. I don't know what else to say, except that this book made me appreciate comic art more. I had no idea it could do what Chris Ware makes it do.
• 
  Ryan

  My low rating of this book has little to do with how much of a good job that Chris Ware did. He wrote a very believable, nuanced story about a terrible person. My low rating has to do with how much I enjoyed it. Not very much. Composition of the story is very good except for the complex layouts and microscopic text. Had the book been twice as big, it would have been easier to read, but would remain confusing. Should my eyes be going vertically or horizontally? I really don't know. But I do know that I do not want to read about Jordan Lint ever again.
• 
  Felipe Assis

  Maravilhoso, complexo e compreencivel.
• 
  S̶e̶a̶n̶

  Brutal.
• 
  Raina

  I really gotta stop doing this.
  
  I gotta get used to the fact that Chris Ware just isn't my thing.
  
  But his stuff is SO PRETTY!
  
  I love the high concept SO MUCH!
  
  
  His brain is so interesting. The geometry of how he creates his pages and panels, the color concepts, the overall sweep of a life in a comic book. There is so much I like about what he does.
  
  
  
  Yep, there's a big ole But.
  
  Everytime I read Ware's stuff, I leave feeling disconnected and nonplussed. While I admire the scope and design of everything he does, I just don't come out liking the characters or stories he tells.
  
  This is no exception. It's basically the lifestory of an asshole, as far as I could tell. A life I could never admire.
  
  And I get that there's virtue in giving background to someone who might be judged harshly by the world at large. Heck, I was an actor, I have practice at trying to see from the Other's perspective.
  
  But this just made me sad.
  
  I gotta quit you, Chris. I'm sorry.
  
  
  **Extra star for the artistry. Can't blame the artist for my taste.**
• 
  Schuyler

  Another addition to the world of Rusty Brown! This time we learn about Jordan Lint. Lint was introduced in the first Rusty Brown volume as a school bully.
  
  This new story line follows Lint from birth to death, with each page representing a specific time in his life. The narrative and art work also represent each developmental, with the first few pages visually representing the world as a baby would see it and then as a toddler, a small child, a pre-teen, a teenager, etc. As the story progresses, the artwork and narrative become more and more complex, a la Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by Joyce.
  
  Ware pushed himself to experiment a little with this work and it worked out beautifully.
• 
  Meghan

  The comics equivalent of depressing literary fiction about middle-aged white men who treat everyone poorly but feel misunderstood and alone (Like Updike, for example, or
  Something Happened by Joseph Heller.) The artistry of this stand-alone comic is beyond comparison in its details and sophistication and layout, but it describes a dismal, joyless, futile life. It makes me wonder what it is about Ware that makes him compelled to imagine a story like this. Starting from birth, each page of this book represents a year in sequence of Jordan Lint's life, from birth and childhood through marriages and grandchildren and eventual death.
• 
  Erin

  I may be the only person on Goodreads who disliked this graphic novel. I get that this was *supposed* to be a miserable story of a terrible person, but what I am meant to get out of reading it is lost on me. The almost brutally geometric artwork was visually appealing, but didn't serve as a beautiful contrast to the bathos of Lint - instead only made it feel more grotesque and unfeeling. Maybe I am just not entertained by naked misogyny, even when presented ironically.
• 
  Nikitha

  the artwork and layout of this book is really nice. I liked how images show how his past trauma affects his life. The storytelling is also very unique, each page is a random day from each year of the main character’s life. The reader is left to fill in the blanks and guess what happens in the time between, i’ve never seen a story being told like that and it was very interesting to read.
  
  as for the actual story itself i find myself loathing the main character, i think that was the intention of the author as well. The main character realizes the consequences of his actions but continues to not grow from them. And his views on women(objectification) and his homophobia make him extremely easy to despise
  
• 
  Nate D

  Chris Ware just gets better and better. Each of his yearly collections over the past few years has been dense, perceptive, highly nuanced stand-alone character study and this continues the tradition: a bitterly convincing condensation of an entire lifetime of self-driven fickleness, compromise, and disappointment. It's notable that, as opposed to the usual sympathetic failures who populate Ware stories, Jordan Lint would be considered a "success" by typical American standards. That his story is still so dismal seems an indictment of our entire standard of happiness and fulfillment. And even in its harshest moments, there's a tired understatedness to this that makes it very easy to believe that yes, this is how it goes for so many people. This is what it is to live out a life, all too often.
  
  Also worth noting that depsite the "realist" style, Ware is totally, explosively avant-garde in terms of his meticulous design, panel-layouts, juxtapoition and cross-cutting of action, and ability to break up a moment or moments through variation in panel size and content, now more than ever. Incredible.
  
  And I hope that you, unlike me, managed to get copies of the post-Jimmy Corrigan
  hardcover back issues when it was still possible to do so...
• 
  Corey Pung

  To read my full review, please go to:
  http://paneldiscussions.wordpress.com...
  
  If you haven’t been exposed to the work of Chris Ware before, you should take some time out to do so, especially if you’re looking for something to read besides superhero books or thrillers. It’s drawn entirely in a minimalist style that resembles what you might see inside of airplane pamphlets explaining how to attach the oxygen mask in case of a loss of cabin pressure. The theme of the book too is similar to the airplane pamphlet: how to survive a crisis.
  
  Acme Novelty Company #20 takes the reader into the sad world of Jordan Lint. He’s not the usual character you would expect to see in an indie comic. He’s not a witty hipster like you might find in the work of Daniel Clowes, nor is he an outspoken liberal in search of freedom and equality, as you find in so many other indie books. What makes Jordan unique is that he’s average. He grows up doing many of the things most Americans are expected to like: watching football, listening to Led Zeppelin, and aspires for a high paying corporate career.
• 
  Liam O'Leary

  *Update June 2016*
  Until further notice this is my favourite graphic novel.
  
  *Original Review*
  Up until now I have read Jimmy Corrigan, Vol 16 & 17 (first two of Rusty Brown) as this is all I have managed to find in my university library.
  
  Up until now I have not really agreed fully with people's description, or sometimes criticisms, of Ware's work as 'relentlessly depressing' or 'bleak'. I normally laugh at some of them, and think they are fairly honest if not pessimistic views of daily life.
  
  This was unbelievably sad in an ordinary way. I read it in one sitting whispering and wincing 'oh-my-gods' open-mouthed at almost all times because it was just so... fluid and real.
  
  If these Acme Novelty Library editions of Rusty Brown do not for what ever reason end up being compiled into the single, more accessible work that may be "Rusty Brown", or if they do not end up receiving the appreciation I believe they are well due, I will feel pretty crap myself.
  
  That is all.
• 
  Samrat

  Well, that was... interesting. I have literally no point of reference from any book I've ever read to evaluate this graphic novel. It tells the life history of Jordan Lint in 80 pages, from birth to death - an ambitious undertaking accomplished through single-day impressions of the man, tiny snapshots of his miserable life through pictures and icons and a bit of dialogue and a more than a few pfs and ohs and kofs and taks. It isn't a happy book, really.
  
  If this review seems disjointed that would be because the book has left me so. I picked it off the new fiction shelf at the library because it had a beautiful cover and quirky art. It is apparently part of an enormous narrative featuring a character that only appears on one or two pages of this tome.
  
  So, yeah, try another review if you want something cohesive, but I'd advise just jumping into the thing without context. I read it in under a few hours and it whet my appetite for the rest of the series.
• 
  Andrew

  Each page represents a single year in the life of Jordan "Jason" Wellington Lint. We previously saw Lint in Acme Novelty Library #16 and #17 as a high school bully and stoner.
  
  Lint is an inversion of typical Ware protagonists like Rusty Brown and Jimmy Corrigan. Whereas Rusty and Jimmy are shy, anxious, and isolated, Lint is confident and outgoing, and he rarely pauses to reflect on his life or his many (mis)deeds. He cycles through relationships without much care for the wreckage he leaves behind.
  
  Lint is a new kind of protagonist for Ware, but all of Ware's typical obsessions are here: time, mortality, genealogy, absent mothers and distant fathers. Ware's formal perfection is in full effect too. His art changes over the course of the book to accurately capture the different phases of life and the idiosyncratic workings of his protagonists' mind. As brilliant and as bleak as anything else Ware has made.
• 
  Djll

  Chris Ware's latest Acme Novelty Library arrived today. As always, I devoured it in the course of an evening. And, as usual, I felt terribly depressed afterward. I knew he hated his characters - like Jimmy Corrigan and Rusty Brown - but this new one, about "Jason Lint," puts them in the shade. Jason Lint seems to personify every douchebaggy social movement of the last fifty years.
  
  But it's amazing. The overall structure is a straightforward chronology from birth to death, and the artwork evolves to match it. Some of the layouts are really breathtaking. Ware's also allowed himself to create much more naturalistic portraits, which in his world make the subjects ever more sympathetic. And there are a number of graphic storytelling solutions that are breathtaking in their inventiveness and psychological insight.
  
  Ware's best work since "Jimmy Corrigan."
• 
  Lee Klein

  A self-contained 80 or so page chapter from a "ridiculously long" work yet to be finished or collected but serialized lately in these gorgeous full-color hardcovers. This one presents representative days in the difficult life from birth to death of this not-so-sympathetic Nebraskan fella, organically/inventively structured and elaborated in Ware's particular visual language that allows for so much association, imagistic representation of thought, and ultimately a degree of empathy for the aforementioned not-so-sympathetic fella. Amazing, as expected. Read in a two-hour sitting. Four stars only because I'll probably give the complete longer work five or six. Highly recommended and probably infinitely re-readable as is.
• 
  Eric

  Chris Ware continues his exploration into the essential hollowness and brevity of human life, this time focusing on a successful but unscrupulous businessman's journey from infancy to deathbed. Ware's draftsmanship is, as always, amazing. Thematically and story-wise, however, I find "Jimmy Corrigan" to be much richer.
  
  However, a note in the beginning indicates that this book, called "Lint", is only a chapter of a much longer work.
• 
  MariNaomi

  This book was beautifully constructed, from the inside out, in every way imaginable. It was so close-to-perfect that I couldn't help but look for flaws, of which I found few. The only thing I could come up with was that, the way the panels were laid out, I was occasionally unsure which order I was supposed to read them in. With that aside, it was a stellar graphic novel, one I looked forward to re-reading as soon as I got to the last page.
• 
  Will

  "Downer" and "Chris Ware" go well together. No surprise that this one is depressing as well. But I really like how he graphically potrayed a newborn's view of the world as well as an old man dying. Perhaps the all-time saddest comic panel I have ever seen - after the young boy's mother dies, he doesn't understand where she is, what's going on. He runs to her closet and holds one of her dresses as he cries out for her. Crushing sorrow.
• 
  Richard

  I believe fans of comics are obligated to read everything Chris Ware does. However, I never really enjoy reading his comics. Although he continues to experiment formally and his work continues to be gorgeous and innovative, the tone remains painfully one note. What seemed to be just depressing or existential, now feels misanthropic. I felt as though Ware wants the reader to feel nothing but contempt for Ware's characters and for human nature in general.
• 
  D A Calf

  Mind-blowingly and meltingly brilliant. Reading this, you subject yourself to a real beating and after the last page you are left with an empty and cold combination of astonishment and sorrow. Ware's real strengths (above so many others) are his abilities to capture visceral and ethereal experiences (such as orgasm) and to render background ambience, silence and the subconscious.
  
  Out of principle I don't like to give five stars but any less would suggest that this work is less than perfect.