Klaus of the Golden Pen (also Proust)

       Holy Cow. As some may know, I, your faithful narrator, last summer graduated from NYC's School of Visual Arts. Did you miss it? There was a parade. Anyways, while I consider my time spent there super worthwhile, indeed a righteous investment (excepting that whole first year of "generalized study"), the most indispensable amenity offered was my teacher and, I'd go so far as to say my impromptu Mentor, the Right Honorable Klaus Janson. Any human even peripherally interested in comics should and does know Klaus Janson (Daredevil, Batman Black&White, Batman Gothic, The DC Guides etc.) His gritty line-work and impasto chiaroscuro is a style unto itself; truly inimitable. Pick up his work yo. That leads me to the following picture (I hope posting this isn't illegal btw.)

This is from Daredevil: End of Days #1, a DC book recently out and illustrated by none other than Mr. K. Janson 'imself. Just look at this page. Stare into it, study it. It is to my eye one of the finest works of the medium I've ever seen, no hyperbole. The character! The humor! The pathos! It's a goddamned mimetic masterpiece! I cant stop fawning over it, so I'd thought I'd share it with you people.

One other quick recommendation. I did a previous post about Hillary Mantel's amazing book, Wolf Hall, and I have just started up the sequel, Bring Up the Bodies. CROMWELL! In preparation for said event I listened to her interview this Monday with Terry Gross. Ear-experience this thing, it's maybe my favorite of all of Gross's interviews ever. The first half is spent discussing the novel but, in the second portion, Mantel tells of her lifelong, tragic battle with endometriosis. How she's dealt with this junk from tender teen-hood, struggling with issues that could level the best of us, then goes on to write two Man Booker prize winning novels in rapid succession; it's a story both heartbreaking and wholly inspiring. She is my new literary hero. Listening to it, I was reminded of a section in Proust's "The Guermantes Way" (all free online) which I put an excerpt from below. It's about the essential you-ness of your body becoming increasingly alienated in the face of mounting moribundity. Enjoy!

It is illness that makes us recognize that we do not live in isolation but are chained to a being from a different realm, worlds apart from us, with no knowledge of us, and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body. Were we to meet a brigand on the road, we might manage to make him conscious of his own personal interest, if not of our plight. But to ask pity of our body is like talking to an octopus, for which our words can have no more meaning than the sound of the sea, and with which we should be terrified to find ourselves condemned to live.
                                     
Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way