I’ve been an ostrich for the past… however long. There was a moment there where the cracks in the corporate internet looked like everything was about to come tumbling down, and with it the Death of Capitalism! and we’d all just be sassy anarchist trash animals dancing in the flames… But we’re in a slow crumble, not a cathartic collapse. I felt keyed up and ready to fuck shit up, but I didn’t know what to throw rocks at, and so I didn’t, and in the meantime I still got bills and people I care about so I guess I’ll just keep going to work until something changes. Things do change… But never in the “right” way. So now I’m in a rut that feels like it has all of us, where I’m constantly tired, barely making ends meet, and unable to do anything with my life aside from work and maintain myself so I can still work.
I wasn’t supposed to come back online for the first time in months to run off on my usual, literally tired rant. I was supposed to come on to tell you to read “The Mysteries” if you haven’t already.
I only just picked up my copy two days ago. I had seen the video about how Bill Watterson and John Kascht had spent years figuring out not just how to make this book, but how to even rectify their apparently incompatible styles and methods. The story of two folks who one assumes must be friends (and if not friends, clearly had a lot of respect and admiration for each other) who spent years banging their heads against a wall together and somehow managed to not bang heads too hard against each other is remarkable. The story of this book could almost overshadow the book itself…
Except the book is very, very good. Given what I had heard going in, “An adult fable, a picture book, with an aggressively stylized aesthetic,” I was worried I would enjoy it, find it charming and something nice to look at, but somehow inescapably trite. Instead I found my anxieties mirrored and acknowledged, and told to remember we are all dust. Not an original meditation, but a gorgeous attempt at rendering it.
I’m not going too in-depth on the “narrative” here, or what I think one should take from it. It’s just an incredibly brief parable of human social evolution (I’d say “social progress” but whether or not that is debatable is, at least from the narrative’s timeline, irrelevant). This is mostly a visual piece.
The book feels like a collection of… almost colloidion photography, with it’s concrete starkness that sublimates into a dark etherealness. Everything has the feel of long shutter speeds and slow emulsions, a moment caught in molasses instead of film. The stark shift from John’s eye for detail and Bill’s efficient abstraction likely punches this effect up considerably. I’m not someone who knows much about art, but I’ve always fallen for it more when it heavily intersects with craft. And these images were absolutely crafted. If I’m ever in a situation where I could have wall art, I would deeply like prints of a few of the pages from this book… but given Bill’s history with merchandising, I don’t see that happening in any official capacity. I’m also loathe to the idea of any one of these pages out of it’s context.
(Continued in the comments)
The death of capitalism isn’t going to happen lol
It was also garbage and a waste of 18$
OP, just want to thank you for your post. You so eloquently captured a lot of how I felt reading this book. I also didn’t know about the story of its creation and am excited to delve into it. I appreciate you.
It always strikes me as odd the number of keyboard warriors on Reddit and elsewhere who readily look forward to societal collapse, as if it will be some tremendous moment of celebration and not a cataclysmic event resulting in millions of unnecessary death.
Yeah, I know collapse is coming but I’m not looking forward to it. Once society collapses, we’re pretty much all screwed. Even if I survive, quality of life is gonna be insanely low.
Do you know a collapse is coming? Do you honestly believe that we’re on more of a precipice than we were during WW2, the Great Depression or the Civil War?
Can someone define “societal collapse” for me?
Yes.
I’ll tell you one thing for certain, not a goddamn one of them is a Type 1 Diabetic. Yeah, capitalism and modern society aren’t perfect, but I definitely prefer it to the alternative of checks notes dying an imminent and painful death.
Lucifer’s Hammer by Pournelle and Niven has a character who is exactly that. When he realizes an apocalypse is imminent, he secures both his insulin and a series of books. Wonderful story, at least in the first two-thirds. And for the time, of course.
Or having any kind of chronic illness.
Being an internet person that wants all of the system to collapse is definitely a form of privelege. To just assume you’d be fine and not think about the rest of humanity…
I mean, from another perspective wanting the system to just keep on keeping on while hundreds of millions are oppressed, murdered, deprived of necessities globally, and as the system hurtles us towards inevitable environmental catastrophe that will wreck everyone’s life as a result of the system, that’s also a fairly privileged position to hold.
You really just have no idea how much worse it can get, but ok
Sure, I’m just pointing out that you were also just making assumptions that you’ll be fine under the status quo without thinking about the rest of humanity. Which is a privileged position. I mean, being able to sit on the internet and pontificate about any side of this debate is really a privileged position if we’re comparing ourselves with the state of the rest of humanity.
People who want the system to collapse aren’t even doing the real work to make the status quo better, they are just lazily wishing everything would magically be better
Bold of you to assume that all of us hoping for the collapse of the system are also hoping to survive it
Are you okay
Grow up.
Pretty sure suicidal nihilism about the state of the world is a uniquely adult trait
But have you considered that you dying an imminent and painful death is a necessary sacrifice for my cool dystopian aesthetic and Mad Max heroics?
Sounds pretty selfish of you, ngl
not a goddamn one of them is a Type 1 Diabetic
You might be surprised. Lots of people tend to not think things like that through.
Man, the guys who invented medical insulin knew what was up. Still crazy that shit isn’t free.
“Yay, evil society collapsed! Hey, why isn’t there water coming out of the sink?”
And of course, their ideology will be the one that springs from the ashes. Even the “winners” of societal collapse lose
That’s the strangest assumption. Just why do people think that it would be a progressive utopia after “capitalism is destroyed” or whatever they believe?
So much blind faith in thinking that
I think deep down they’re upset and in a lot of pain, and want everyone to be there with them so they feel less alone.
My theory is that a lot of their stress is existential — they live in a first-world nation where they have boring jobs, not enough money, they have hobbies they want to do but no time or energy, etc. so they dream of a world where all of those existential crises are eradicated and they just get to focus on the here and now. It’s simpler, in their minds, to live like pre-historic humans did. Little do they know, a week of that life and they’ll be crying for the luxury of being bored again
Ya, everyone thinks they’ll be the action hero main character. Nobody thinks that – overwhelmingly more likely – they’ll get dysentery or cholera because the municipal water treatment plant went down.
I can tell you that as a Texan, when our electric grid went down in the middle of winter, and then our water became unsafe to drink, our ideas about the collapse of society changed in a matter of days. It gets very real very quickly. Especially when you can’t just leave town.
The dependable stability of the systems we depend on is a very thin veneer. One thing goes down for slightly too long and everything that depends on it starts to fall apart rather quickly.
In my area anyway, there were a lot of people helping other people, sharing food and water, heat and shelter.
In my parents more affluent area, people immediately used up all of their community reserve of propane…. To heat their pools so their equipment wouldn’t freeze.
Yeah, this was my thought, too. People who fetishize “collapse” make no sense to me.
There’s nothing fun or cathartic about panic, chaos, and the gallery of horrors that would come along with all that.
Like, you think you’re going to have time for things like books if our society collapses? You’re going to be lucky if you eat every day.
I wrote this in another comment above but I think people really romanticize the concept of “simple living”. Like all of their worries of the future and the past will go away and they can live off the land and become expert horticulturalists and farmers and hunters immediately, and all will be well and harmonious. Except it’ll be more like what you described — less harmony, more chaos
Yes, it’s really a bizarre take. It’s so easy and lazy to just say the system sucks. We all hate the system that’s no special.
But to think that it would be replaced with a better system… just why assume that? History constantly shows governments getting overthrown and replaced with worse governments (not to mention millions dying as you say)
Why do these online people think that it would be good for them if there was an apocalypse, just what on earth makes them think that?
Delusion? I once read Walden by Thoreau and went through a phase where all I wanted was for the world to revert to its “natural state”. Then I aged out of teenagehood and realized that would not be the beautiful utopia that I fantasized about, it would just be absolute chaos
It’s general disillusionment with and disenfranchisement from the current system, leading to a feeling to anything else will be better and a lack of understanding of how that would come about. The French Revolution led to good things afterward, but things were shockingly bad for a long time before they turned into anything good.
That’s where I checked out of OP’s “review”. If you actively think society collapsing is something to hope for, you are an absolute delusional moron. “Collapse aware” my ass.
“I felt keyed up and ready to fuck shit up, but I didn’t know what to throw rocks at, and so I didn’t, and in the meantime I still got bills and people I care about so I guess I’ll just keep going to work until something changes.”
Per Rule 2.1: Please conduct yourself in a civil manner.
Civil behavior is a requirement for participation in this sub. This is a warning but repeat behavior will be met with a ban.
It comes from anger and disappointment towards everyone else; “how did we let this happen and do I now have to suffer an entire life of shit just so they can continue living ‘the dream’”?
So it’s a mindset of “the world is definitely gonna collapse anyway, do I at least get to watch it burn before I die, or am I just here to facilitate the suffering of the next generation?”. Nobody is looking forward to the collapse, but some people honestly don’t mind if it happens sooner so they can say ‘I told you so’.
It’s actually possible to realize that, and to count oneself among the ones that would likely suffer and/or die in many such scenarios (I sure would), and still think that ultimately, it will be a net positive for our current society to collapse, or even for the whole human race to run its course and give the planet back to the rest of the life forms that aren’t actively trying to destroy it. After all, the current way we’re doing things is also causing untold suffering and death, and it will only get worse as climate change progresses. Would I prefer that we change fundamental things about the way we function - as a society and as a species - rather than running headlong into a spectacular and brutal collapse? Sure. But people will be people, and it’s pretty clear to me that that’s not going to happen. At least after a collapse, some other species might have a fighting chance.
I ain’t reading all that.
I’m happy for u tho.
Or sorry that happened.
I read it. An insufferable pessimist wrote an insufferably long screed about their own insufferable point of view, but apparently liked a book written by the Calvin and Hobbes guy though I still do not know why or for that matter what the book was even about.
ETA: apparently there was more in the comments. Don’t have the mental fortitude to subject myself to more. Sorry.
Dang mf in r/books dunking on reading what a fucking time to be alive
I’m loving it. This thread is prime popcorn material.
Right? This isn’t even that long a post, and is completely coherent throughout. Wild that people are acting like this post - made, as you said, in a place for discussing books - is somehow inappropriate.
To me, reading posts on reddit is a lot of things: education, adventure, compassion, healing, and therapy all at once. I laugh, I learn, I live and love. And in the midst of this pullulating wonderstorm of comments, there’s r/books. I don’t remember how long I’ve been coming here, what the first post I read was, or all the amazing moments we’ve had with our insightful discussions (I show them to my friends and family sometimes). I like to imagine we’re all in a big giant library with all the books in the world: some of are distinguished gentlemen of reading in our overstuffed armchairs, still others are wistful housewives snatching a few lines of Tennyson at the kitchen sink. But together, all and one, we are readers, first and foremost.
When I first read OP’s title, I thought to myself: “Bill Watterson? Of Calvin and Hobbes fame? That Bill Watterson???” I was something of an awkward kid in elementary school, never quite fitting in with all the others. Reading about Calvin’s vivid imagination made me feel less alone on the playground, like there was someone else out there who “got it.” As for John Kascht? Well, that was a new name, but I thought “If he’s cool with Bill Watterson then he’s cool with me.”
So imagine my shock when I got halfway through OP’s post and saw that Watterson wasn’t exactly “cool” with Kaschts. But they were professional with each other, and this contrast and sense of professionalism was resulted in the of making a book together. It reminded me of Jaime and Adam on Mythbusters. A bit of trivia: despite working together for over a decade, they aren’t close personal friends. I think that quality and attitude is what allows teamship to flourish. Why, just imagine we’d all had that mentality during covid? The covid pandemic is when I first began to question capitalism. I mean, I’d always hated it, but the pandemic, with the resulting shut-downs, that was the first time I questioned it.
(Part 1/2)
Um I only read insta-poetry so even finishing this post was a huge win for me.
You ain’t reading all that? Do you know you’re in a topic about books?
I mean, you’ve got to get it because it’s Bill Watterson. But, it’s also a 10 minute read.
Thats the reason why I bought the book!
Great post, thanks for sharing!
Wait damn it’s that Bill Watterson? Gotta check this out
Thank you for the recommendation! I’m going to read this after my current book, thanks.
to be clear, the book will take you less than 5 minutes to read. it’s incredibly short.
It’'s to be savored like a fine chocolate truffle
I have the opposite view, I think Waterson got too full of himself and produced a book that’s just not very good or interesting.
It’s about 100 words long, and in the end it’s just another example of the “watch out, learning too much is bad for you!” genre of anti-intellectual, anti-progress, anti-science stuff.
In his book Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny had Yama say this:
“It is the difference between the unknown and the unknowable, between science and fantasy—it is a matter of essence. The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown. Some do bow in that final direction. Others advance upon it. To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three. I may submit to the unknown, but never to the unknowable.”
And I vastly prefer that sentiment. Ignorance is not to be cherished or elevated.
I burned $20 on it based on thinking that Waterson might create a cool modern fable for adults. I wish very much I had looked at it in the bookstore first, I could have spent that $20 on something better.
I have been thinking about this book at least once a day for months since I read it. Still am not sure if it’s a warning, grim joke, or a sly ‘yeah kid, it’s all crap’.
OP with the utmost of respect just cut this down to the discussion of the book I’m not here to read a livejournal.
This is too much for you? How do you get through an episode of a TV show or a movie? Damn. Take your ADD meds and calm down.
With the utmost respect.
This post longer than the book
Then skip the post. No need to be a dick to someone who is obviously passionate.
are you actually complaining about reading a 6 paragraph review of a book on a subreddit about reading? they’re not even long paragraphs
When the first (and largest) paragraph is some inane, basic ass doomer fantasy?
Yes, it is too long.
The whole first half has nothing to do with the book
Its more just OP shoehorning their own creative writing doodles in lieu of something that resembles a discussion.
books make people feel feelings and OP tried their best to convey the feelings they felt while reading the book without spoiling the whole plot. where should they talk about their emotional response to a book if not a subreddit about books?
it’s kind of sad that so many “readers” can’t get through a few paragraphs of OP explaining how the book made them feel instead of just blandly recounting the plot
Actually the post is what caught my eye…love your writing style OP!
It’s a shame that so many subs of r/books apparently resent reading; but I loved this book too, and I really appreciate your post.
Where was it sent the first time?
I pre-ordered it for my husband as he’s a huge Calvin and Hobbes fan.
It was $20.
It was like 5 pages.
It was a massive ripoff and a mediocre story trying to be deep.
The art isn’t even very good.
I really enjoyed the video that was released by the publisher about Watterson’s and Kascht’s collaboration on the illustrations. I found the actual book to be underwhelming but I’m very glad that they made it just so that I could have that brief glimpse into Watterson’s artistic process. Here is a link to the video for anyone interested