BRAVO, BIL KEANE, BRAVO!
Someone out there really, really does not like the Family Circus. And if you're thinking "Hey,
I don't like the Family Circus," well, I promise: There is someone out there who likes that particular comic strip even less than you. This someone has a lot of time on their hands.
Over the past few years, someone has been registering reviwer accounts with Amazon and putting up bogus reviews of the Family Circus books, then registering more to offer votes of confidence in said reviews. And they're not all negative reviews, either. Here's one that's
positively glowing:
A triumph of the human spirit..., June 2, 2003
Reviewer: Dimitri Von Champagne (Jake's House, TN)
Bil Keane has scored again with this remarkable story of a family coming together to [face] controversy. When "Dad" loses his job as a successful cartoonist, the family decides that the last one to arrive is the first one to leave. Lovable PJ is locked in a basement closet and left to starve. Surviving as long as he can on mice and insects, PJ finally succumbs to the sweet arms of lady death and joins his grandfather in heaven. PJ then plots his revenge from the great beyond and bathes in the blood of the family that betrayed him.
Sometimes the reviews are more conflicted, seeing room for interpretation in Keane's
twisted vision:
The real American Gothic, December 3, 2004
Reviewer: Dale Porter "DP" (Washington, DC)
Like the Peanuts gang, the family in this book lives in a world where, except on Sunday, the sky is always a depressing void of non-color. The climate has driven them to nihilism: they make insipid comments about pasghetti and ask "when's later, daddy?" Death is never far, as relatives who have passed on look down on them and occasionally haunt their dreams. The dark secret of their lives, what drove them to this madness, is never revealed. Why is PJ not talking? Do Billy and Dolly have an unholy union? How can Thel tolerate the drudgery of housewifery when she is endowed with such a great body? [Note: It's true.] I believe in leaving the detective work to the reader, Keane was asking us to examine how closely we ourselves walk along the abyss. Judging from the reader reviews of this and other books, his books can drive one to insanity.
And others are highly critical, but still sound like a
back-handed recommendation:
I was expecting cartoons., January 24, 2004
Reviewer: Beau Zeaux (Uruguay)
A rather odd collection of philosophical dialogues, each of which starts in support of the concept of free will, but ends with the characters commenting on the tendency of a third, unseen, individual to sport erections at inopportune moments.
Other reviews focus on drug use, gender issues and Jacques Derrida. A blogger named
Dalton Rooney has them all. Hat tip and general recommendation:
IRTCSYDHT.
posted by WWB at 1:21 PM |
