A review by khepiari
Poem Strip Including an Explanation of the Afterlife by Dino Buzzati
1.0
Took me goddamn three months to finish, not because I was busy or the story to complicated. When you throw words like comics and poetry together I get intrigued and end up buying books like this. And one never expects a bad read from New York Review Books.
But here we are, this is an extremely well produced disappointing piece of poetry strip book. A retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice myth. A myth I am so well versed in because of its timeless appeal of man versus mortality. Yet there should be a ban on how much people can exploit this myth in name of art and creative writing.
Orfi the protagonist a singer lives opposite a mysterious shape shifting house on a street that can’t be spotted on a map. People avoid the road in night as many people have vanished on this street. And one day his fiancé Eura enters the building.
From there on it’s a tussle between Orfi and the various shades of distractions and temptations in the underworld. I must inform the beginning was beautiful and scary, but it loses its charm after 15 pages into the dry poetry of scattered build up.
Have I ever said how much disgusted I am with human males’ obsession with breasts? Well this book escalated my anger. Big and bigger, round and spherical the comics is full of naked well endowed women trying to lure Orfi.
And that’s it, just naked women, more naked boobies and either helpless looking skinny men ogling at them or fat rich men evaluating them and some random musings of life and death, creativity and destruction, and love and loss bla and bla. After a while the various art styles got blurred in my head and this entire book seemed like a product of mind that had snorted Cocaine and slept in a bed made of breasts.
Was it a critique of extravagance of society and commodification of female sex?
I have no idea. One can critique the bad in the world without catering to the male gaze too. You don’t need to show it. So no, I doubt it achieved anything by parading naked butts that don’t wrinkle and breasts that don’t shag.
But here we are, this is an extremely well produced disappointing piece of poetry strip book. A retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice myth. A myth I am so well versed in because of its timeless appeal of man versus mortality. Yet there should be a ban on how much people can exploit this myth in name of art and creative writing.
Orfi the protagonist a singer lives opposite a mysterious shape shifting house on a street that can’t be spotted on a map. People avoid the road in night as many people have vanished on this street. And one day his fiancé Eura enters the building.
From there on it’s a tussle between Orfi and the various shades of distractions and temptations in the underworld. I must inform the beginning was beautiful and scary, but it loses its charm after 15 pages into the dry poetry of scattered build up.
Have I ever said how much disgusted I am with human males’ obsession with breasts? Well this book escalated my anger. Big and bigger, round and spherical the comics is full of naked well endowed women trying to lure Orfi.
And that’s it, just naked women, more naked boobies and either helpless looking skinny men ogling at them or fat rich men evaluating them and some random musings of life and death, creativity and destruction, and love and loss bla and bla. After a while the various art styles got blurred in my head and this entire book seemed like a product of mind that had snorted Cocaine and slept in a bed made of breasts.
Was it a critique of extravagance of society and commodification of female sex?
I have no idea. One can critique the bad in the world without catering to the male gaze too. You don’t need to show it. So no, I doubt it achieved anything by parading naked butts that don’t wrinkle and breasts that don’t shag.