I like Hunter S Thompson—no, that’s a misunderstanding of what I do—at times I get obsessed with his prose because it’s too fucking good. In a way he’s like Mervyn Peake except that his prose doesn’t seem laboured in the same way, Peake’s words build up a slow pace and an atmosphere that affects the reader by sort of squeezing the heart. Thompson spitfires adjectives and long winded sentences like they were bullets aimed for the head.

So how could I resist reading Transmetropolitan? At times, you can almost see both Peake and Thompson in the work, looking over the work from behind a corner or over someone’s shoulder. Because the City breathes in a way Gormengast does, it lives with it’s own arcane laws and traditions as the odd characters populate the streets.

And just as Thompson’s friend Raul Duke, Spider Jerusalem knows no real limits. He uses drugs and goes about like journalism was his own personal plaything. But as the story progresses it twists. Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas is about the death of the american dream, Transmetropolitan is to me about the death of truth. The decline of journalism, the political rape of society for the few who calls the shots and who wants to stay out of the real spotlight. We’ve all be there, we’re all there where comfort-news rules supreme and the most important thing in the world is whether or not a moron on reality-show pees on a sofa. Unlike FaLiLV thought, it shows a way out of the decline albeit in a bitter and cynical way. It’s all about not watching the waving hand as the other pulls the trigger.

(But what to read now?)

Comments

1. You could read Boo’s book.
   
   It’s 142 words long.
   — Tommy    (@ 4. November 2004, 15:37)
2. Yeah, but then again, it’s probably one of those fantasy-trilogies that takes five years between each part. After those 142 words you just want more, right now.
   — Nicklas    (@ 4. November 2004, 15:43)
3. Actually, that’s the whole trilogy. Each part is about 45 words long. I just have to trim it a bit.
   — Boo    (@ 4. November 2004, 15:54)
4. Groovy.
   — Nicklas    (@ 4. November 2004, 17:33)
5. It’s propobly like sex; 45 seconds foreplay, 45 seconds action and 45 seconds to get the stupid bitch out of your apartment.
   
   (I’m just talking out of my ass here.)
   — Tommy    (@ 4. November 2004, 21:12)
6. it´s not realy a book
   it´s expensive toilet papper
   — H.Andersson    (@ 5. November 2004, 03:43)
7. thank god that you just have seen a “bitch” on postcard and not in real life for if you had meet someone you would have been a gost because you all would get wet into your pants before you get to the foreplay
   — Lind    (@ 5. November 2004, 19:59)
8. Lind: Go wash your mouth! What an awful language.
   — Mr T.    (@ 9. November 2004, 16:24)

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