logged: crush by richard siken
1: and uncanny by junji ito
Book 24 of 2024:
Powerful collection of queer longing, grief, the pain in love, and an almost violent obsession. It feels like a fragmented stream of consciousness more than a structured collection, but each piece creates a story with the feelings in it.
Quotes:
“A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river but then he’s still left with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away but then he’s still left with his hands.”
“If you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand.”
“Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud. Especially that, but I should have known. You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say or love me back.”
“The way you slam your body into mine reminds me I’m alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling.”
“Oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued.”
“Anything past the horizon is invisible, it can only be imagined. You want to see the future but you only see the sky.”
Book 25 of 2024:
Uncanny: The Origins of Fear by Junji Ito
Knowing his work in horror, I have been inspired by his storytelling for my current writing project, where dark academia meets supernatural horror. This was a fairly short read– his autobiography with a look into his childhood and how he became a Manga artist.
He talks about other artists that influenced him, including examples of manga pages he drew as a child and teen. Next to illustrations, he discusses his thought process behind crafting a story, how he generates ideas and addresses his published works and how many of those came to be.
