Because I missed the Quimby’s trip I decided to pull one of my favorite small press (Fantagraphics) books off the shelf: “Holy Moly” by Leah Hayes.
The outside cover is perfect bound, card stock and a bit of an irregular size. Both the front and back cover are printed with a hand drawn version of an old-school composition book. The inside form follows with each page lined in blue. The drawings all look to be done in ball-point ink pen and wonderfully imperfect. You feel upon the first page like you’ve been drawn in to someone’s sketchbook world, that you’ve stumbled upon something fragile and fantastic that was never ever meant for your eyes.
As you flip each page of this sketchbook you almost feel a story unfold. You watch young and smiling, rummy-eyed dancers and lovers spill and move across the page. You see their words but you’ve missed the entire meaning. You’re left with phrases like: “...a tripple-hanky tear-jerker!” “This has become a trouble” “There is something to youth, afterall” “Here is a taste of your own medicine” and “oh fer god’s sake what are you talking about?” These one-liners fill almost every page, and every dreamy, jerky dancer on Leah Hayes’ stage is guilty of uttering them, even down to the snails and the sea lions, but it feels more like a bad dub. We know it’s not a narwhal or a butterfly or Siamese twins talking but someone else trying to twist original thought in to platitudes, recreating the words over and over to make them more palatable but the bitterness lingers and the heartache pervades. All the while hope creeps in.
A list of my favorite quotes from this book:
and now we are on... cloud 9
there is sum hope (just kidding!)
“asslicious”
whadda buncha bologna
Also, here is Leah Hayes’ website for those interested:
http://www.leahhayes.com/main.htm
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment