1. From used panties vending machines to Satanic tentacle rape porn, Japan is home to some truly fucked up shit. It's also home to some truly fucked up people. People like "Boy A", the notorious child-killing child-killer who called himself "Satei Sakakibara" (which means devil's sake-drinking rose apostle, or something) and who remains nameless, due to Japan's lax child crime laws (he was 14 when he killed two children and attacked a few more). His crimes took place in the 1990's, and he was released a few years later. Now, American press sources reveal that he's set up a "vanity website" for himself, complete with semi-nude selfies and a strange fixation with slug-related artwork. And although they try to describe it, reporters apparently couldn't find the website's url. Well, I did a little digging, and I found it. Guess what? It's as fucked up as you'd expect from a former child-killing child killer who fucked a victim's severed head before sticking it on a schoolyard fence with a message stuffed in its mouth. Enjoy!
2. Have you ever wanted to read a book by Thomas Pynchon, but figured you didn't have the massive amount of time you figured it would take to both read, and then figure out, what it is, exactly, that the notoriously difficult reclusive author was trying to get across? Well, on a purely plot-based level, The Guardian has distilled The Crying of Lot 49 into a few snappy paragraphs that I suspect even seasons Pynchophiles will find valuable... especially as a way to get people interested in reading the entire book (which is, after all, Pychon's shortest and punchiest).
3. As long as we're on the topic of my favorite English language author, did you hear the one about the book that may or may not have been pseudonymously written by said reclusive author, for undetermined reasons? A recent Harper's article by Art Winslow begins:
Is it possible that the literary sensibility—person—that produced a clutch of novels under the name Thomas Pynchon has had a fat new novel out since April, under a different name, only to encounter a virtual vacuum of notice? That relative anonymity may have been expected, or might even have been among its aspirations, to prove a point?
Yes and yes. The book in question is called Cow Country, a 540-pager that came out of the chute from Cow Eye Press, a publishing house (if that is what it is) established in 2014 apparently for the express purpose of issuing Cow Country and perhaps related follow-ons, one of which is a centennial reprint of a 1916 eugenicist tract by Madison Grant, tying Americanism—patriotism—to racial purity. (Surely that is a stunt up someone’s sleeve.) Cow Eye Press sports a street address in Cheyenne, Wyoming, that is occupied by a registrar agent for company incorporation in the state, a firm that offers virtual offices in a locale “known for business-friendliness and respect for privacy.”
The progenitor of this novel, its faux leather back cover attests in urine-yellow type (a hue and liquid one finds in the narrative as well), “is an independent author of idiosyncratic fiction. His work has been published under multiple pseudonyms. Including this one.” Adrian Jones Pearson. He is on Facebook, of course.
The mystery only deepens over at Harper's Online, but some wags have already begun to suggest a more likely culprit in this imbroglio... Art Winslow!
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete