{"id":41876,"date":"2024-03-05T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-05T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=41876"},"modified":"2024-03-14T15:30:29","modified_gmt":"2024-03-14T22:30:29","slug":"spill-zone-norman-mailer-jfk-superman-comes-to-the-supermarket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/spill-zone-norman-mailer-jfk-superman-comes-to-the-supermarket\/","title":{"rendered":"Spill Zone \/ Norman Mailer: JFK, Superman Comes to the Supermarket"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Books That Belong On Paper<\/strong> first appeared on the web as Wink Books and was edited by Carla Sinclair.<\/em> Sign up here<\/a> to get the issues a week early in your inbox.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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SPILL ZONE WILL HAVE YA READERS WISHING THAT THE GRAPHIC NOVEL WAS RELEASED AS A SERIES<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Spill Zone<\/em>
<\/strong>by Scott Westerfeld, Alex Puvilland (Illustrator)
First Second
2017, 224 pages, 6.4 x 0.8 x 8.8 inches, Hardcover<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buy on Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before there was binge watching, there was binge reading. Spill Zone<\/em> will have YA readers wishing that the graphic novel was released as a series, to be devoured eagerly, coming up for air in the seconds between back cover slapping shut and a new front cover flipping open, before diving back in again. Unfortunately, moderation has been forced upon us and we\u2019ll have to wait until next spring for a second helping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spill Zone<\/em> has all the hallmarks of a good story in pacing, narrative, and character for the YA set and keeps readers wanting more with its cliffhanger ending. There\u2019s the artsy, gutsy young woman protagonist, Addison, surviving a post-apocalyptic life in the woods of upstate New York as the sole caretaker for her little sister, Lexa. There\u2019s the creepy, possibly possessed doll, Vespertine, whose intentions are unclear but who is somehow (hopefully revealed in book two) connected to and animated by forces within the spill zone. There\u2019s the rich, sinister art collector whose interest in Addison\u2019s photographs of the spill zone surely (but how?!) go beyond an appreciation for voyeuristic art. And, of course, there\u2019s the spill zone itself, which claimed Addison and Lexa\u2019s parents among its victims, the cause and and full effects of which are still unknown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scott Westerfeld does a whole lot of set-up on this book, yet it never feels bogged down or overly expository. Exactly the opposite. Alex Puvivalland\u2019s moody artwork\u2014fast and slow in all the right places\u2014and use of color, perspective, and varied panelling make Spill Zone<\/em> nearly impossible to put down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Mk Smith Despres<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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NORMAN MAILER\u2019S GAME-CHANGING COVERAGE OF JOHN F. KENNEDY\u2019S PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Norman Mailer: JFK, Superman Comes to the Supermarket<\/em>
<\/strong>by Norman Mailer
Taschen
2014, 370 pages, 12.5 x 2.8 x 18 inches, Hardcover<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buy on Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s impossible not to imagine what sort of damage Norman Mailer\u2019s pen would have tried to do to candidate Donald J. Trump, especially after reading the \u201cCentennial Edition\u201d of Norman Mailer: JFK, Superman Comes to the Supermarket<\/em>, (JFK was born on May 29, 1917). When Mailer\u2019s essay was originally published in the November 1960 issue of \u201cEsquire\u201d magazine, three weeks before that year\u2019s presidential election, the writer was, by his own admission, attempting to drum up enthusiasm among skeptical New York City liberal elites for the junior senator from Massachusetts. Had Mailer been around last fall to write a similarly timed piece on Trump, one assumes his angle would have been just a little bit different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, anyone can read Mailer\u2019s essay for free at esquire.com, which is why the Taschen version of Superman Comes to the Supermarket<\/em> is much more than a reprint. Characteristically, Taschen has packed its weighty volume with scores of photographs from the period, the majority of which capture John Kennedy and his wife, Jackie, on the campaign trail\u2014giving speeches from the hoods of tractors and station wagons, huddling with aides in smoky back rooms, and shaking endless numbers of hands. Naturally, there are lots of views of supermarkets, too\u2014from metaphorical ones (I love the grainy black-and-white by John Bryson of a man from the Maine delegation holding a bunch of balloons at the Democratic National Convention) to literal ones (check out the look on the female checker in a West Virginia grocery store as Kennedy walks past her, licking his lips, a delectable moment preserved for posterity by Hank Walker).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, Superman Comes to the Supermarket<\/em> is Mailer\u2019s book, and it\u2019s surprising\u2014or perhaps not\u2014how many of his words from more than half a century ago still resonate today. Of candidates, he writes, \u201cA man running for President is altogether different from a man elected President: the hazards of the campaign make it impossible for a candidate to be as interesting as he might like to be (assuming he has such a desire).\u201d Of those who make careers of politics, he observes that, \u201cmost of the people who nourish themselves in the political life are in the game not to make history but to be diverted from the history which is being made.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s Mailer\u2019s sketch of voters that rings most true today, and feels like such a punch in the guts. \u201cIt was a hero America needed, a hero central to his time, a man whose personality might suggest contradiction and mysteries which could reach into the alienated circuits of the underground, because only a hero can capture the secret imagination of a people\u2026 Roosevelt was such a hero, and Churchill, Lenin and DeGaulle; even Hitler, to take the most odious example of this thesis, was a hero, the hero-as-monster, embodying what had become the monstrous fantasy of a people, but the horror upon which the radical mind and liberal temperament foundered was that he gave outlet to the energies of the Germans and so presented the twentieth century with an index of how horrible had become the secret heart of its desire.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Ben Marks<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Books That Belong On Paper Issue No. 4<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[31],"tags":[2398],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41876"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41876"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41956,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41876\/revisions\/41956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}