Reviewers analyze rock critic, comic kid
BOOKS from Page 6
Bangs actually did produce a
wonderful piece of vinyl in his life
time as Lester Bangs and the Delin
quents. The album is occasionally
available as a cutout and contains the
sum of his influences. It’s primitive,
enervated and often childish, like the
music Bangs loved best
In 1982, at 33, Lester Bangs
flushed out his system, purging him
self of drugs and alcohol, and getting
the occasional decent night’s rest. He
dropped some weight and began to
write more self-consciously. Friends
said he looked better than he had in
years. His system w eakened by a cold
and his metabolism relaxing after a
life of abuse, Bangs died in his sleep
on April 30, 1982, because of an
infinitesimal ingestion of drugs. Six
months before this, an amount that
small wouldn’t have gotten him
through the first two minutes of the
Stooges’ “Funhouse.”
The boy who used to stay home
from school faking the flu and stand
on his bed screaming Allen
Ginsberg’s “Howl” while cranking a
John Coltrane album, died a little
more like a “girl” than he would have
liked, but the endless reams of print he
left behind avenge his frail death
perfectly.
If he could just have hung on long
enough to hear Sonic Youth and Big
Black,maybe Rolling Stone wouldn’t
look so much like Vanity Fair today.
Courtesy of Universal Press Syndicate
By Joseph Bowman
Staff Reviewer
Bill Watterson, “Calvin and Hob
bes: Something Under the Bed is
Drooling” (Universal Press Syndi
cate)
As 1 was strolling along one day, I
passed by a shiny new book sitting all
by itself on a small gray table. I
opened it up and read and read. I
laughed, then I read and read some
more. With each page my smile got
wider and wider until I was afraid that
my face would split, and the delight I
felt kept going on and on.
The new “Calvin and Hobbes”
compilation, “Something Under the
Bed is Drooling,” is available at
bookstores for $6.95. This enchanting
bundle of joy is the second book in the
“Calvin and Hobbes” collection.
For all of you poor slobs who have
no idea what you’re missing, “Calvin
and Hobbes” is the present-day
equivalent to Winnie the Pooh (minus
Piglet, Eeyore, Kanga, and Roo) with
a little Doonesburian wisdom thrown
in. Bill Watterson, the author, has
somehow captured the heart of child
hood magic.
Calvin, a Dennis-the-Menace type
who never repents his truly rotten
nature, pals around with his stuffed
tiger, Hobbes. In Calvin s world,
Hobbes talks, walks and reads, and his
school desk transforms into a space
ship that daringly avoids deadly frap
ray bolts from the nasty gorklons and
blazes through the skyways on freem
drive at warp million. His teachers
turn into evil toad monsters from
Jupiter demanding to know, “What is
3 + 4?” But Spaceman Spiff, even as
he eyes their diabol ical instruments of
torture, bravely refuses to betray the
free galaxy.
With its originality, humor and
offbeat charm, “Calvin and Hobbes”
has transcended the mere comic-strip
genre, and critics are taking notice,
lining up to hail acclaim on the tiny,
scheming little tot and his stufled,
rag-eared pal.
“A wedding of idea and art rarely
seen these days, a feeling that words
can enhance art, and art can do the
same for the written — that a care
fully wrought blend of these ingredi
ents can create a degree of enchant
ment which bespeaks genius,” Ol
iphant says in his foreword.
The author keeps in his vest pocket
a boy who never grew up. No one else
has seen this boy, but Watterson
swears it’s true. He talks to him every
time he writes a cartoon so he’ll get
the perspective just right.
Somehow this boy and close friend
of Watterson’s managed to find his
way to never-never land, and that’s
where he lives when he’s not talking
to Watterson. So, while the rest of us
drearily plodded through freshman
English, he battled pirates, aliens and
dinosaurs. He tells Watterson tales of
a world all mystical and imagined, a
world much more interesting than our
own. Since Watterson keeps this boy
close to him, he’s always inspired,
and he never forgets to wonder. The
boy in his vest pocket keeps never
never land alive and well for us, just in
case we ever discover that we want to
go back.
Of course, we were all there once,
but we just forgot what it was like as
we grew older. Watterson didn’t for
get, and that’s where his genius lies.
So, if you’re looking fora little trip to
childhood, it’s a short walk to won
der: only as far as the nearest book
store.
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