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FAMILY CIRCUS: A Shattering Read. PDF Print E-mail
Written by Greg Mills   

Because Bil Keane is dead now, I decided to re-run this bit.

Below you'll find some Amazon reviews for various Family Circus books written by your truly. I’ve received many, many helpful ratings.

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Grandma Was Here by BIL KEANE

Edition: Paperback Price: $3.99
Availability: This item is currently unavailable. 33 used from $0.78
The thriller that will chill yer to the bones. , March23, 2007

Picture: a girl of 6, let's call her Dolly. She's in a dusty attic, trying to stash a forbidden Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers from her tyrannical father, Pastor Bil. She finds a loose board and finds...the photos. Her grandmother Thelma, string of pearls sparkling, standing next to Pol Pot...on a pyramid of human skulls.

So starts this summer's must read thriller.

Dolly criss crosses the globe, searches for clues as to just who this woman "Grandma" really is. The arc of her journey takes us to torch lit SS orgies, a pit of deadly poisonous Black Mambas in Jim Nabor's secluded island retreat, underground brises, scrapbook parties, and a final confrontation with Thelma... and her army of deadly gibbons. Read it at the beach, read it at the dentist, read it under a bush. JUST READ IT!!!!!

A shattering read.

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I Just Dropped Grandma! (Family Circus) by BIL KEANE
Edition: Paperback Price: $3.50
Availability: This item is currently unavailable.
7 used from $2.00
A gentle exploration of the politics of mercy killing, March 23, 2007

I revisited 'I dropped Grandma!!' recently, just after devouring Keane's 'It stings, Mom, it stings!' and I was instantly reminded of the humanity of the early Keane, before he took up with Erza Pound.

'I dropped Grandma!!!' is an epic, Dickensian story, a didactic old-fashioned tale of love and loss that speaks to both the most basic human dilemmas and contentious contemporary subjects.

Keane writes with an absurdist aplomb that brings laughter up from the diaphragm like so many bad oysters. PJ's appearance here is a delight-- winsome and true. Without revealing too much, one scene in particular warmed cockles I never knew I had-- let me just say the combination of a dazed grandma, a pillow case full of lead shot and an uncooperative blanket sleeper is a madcap cocktail that will leave you incontinent from laughter.

'I dropped Grandma!!!!!!' is an exquisite novel, one that made me reconsider my notions of death, loyalty and the sanctity of a sealed urn.

A shattering read.

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What Does This Say? by BIL KEANE
Edition: Paperback Price: $15.00
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
The face of G_D has horn rimmed glasses. March 23,2007

It's not for nothing that everything we do, see, feel,smell, eat, shave, grope, dilate these days is described as Keanian. Bil Keane is the grandfather of really just about everything, and this book, this "What Does This Say?" (to even try to name such an entity as this with the crude of human language is the height of folly. But that's marketing for you.) breaks it all down for you.

It reads like Godel's Incompleteness Theorem crossed with the libretto of"Cabaret". It's also a great distillation of everything everywhere, and gosh darn it if it doesn't make you chuckle.

"What's Do This Say?" deals with the epic rise and fall of Dolly and PJ, as they kill a hobo for kicks, get VD, fight a bear in a cave, and spend a fortnight camping with Uncle Roy in Bimini. Great stuff! If you like reality as it is practiced in this particular domain of spacetime, then give it up for Keane!

Truly, this is a shattering read.
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The Family Circus by Bil Keane
Edition: Paperback Price: $9.71
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
6 used from $10.10
Keane: Apologist for NIHILISM!!!!!!, March 23, 2007

Keane finally went for it with this one: a full frontal assault against propriety and "taste".

Because of his extreme sensitivity to the absurd and grotesque in human affairs, Billy Keane, protagonist of this masterpiece of decadence has estranged himself from society and savors the most bizarre aspects of human existence in his quest for novelty.

Tired of life in these vulgar times, Billy reject everything that is "natural" and concentrates on pure sensation and artifice. His attempts at contemplative solitude are comically foiled by the antic of his polyamorous siblings and the amyl nitrate induced rages of paterfamilias Bil. Mirth turns to smoldering lust upon the arrival of Uncle Roy, dark moustachioed Lord of Misrule that invites Billy to finally commit totally to the realm of the senses (and eat a lot of ice cream!).

A shattering read.

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Daddy's Cap Is on Backwards by BIL KEANE
Edition: Paperback
Price: $3.99
Availability: This item is currently unavailable.
3 used from $19.87
I want to Keane to stop. Yet I want Keane to take us deeper, March 23, 2007

In Keane's "Daddy's Cap Is On Backwards", we are sucked into a firestorm of sick inducing satire of the blackest sort. Will his brood of tiny sociopath Blackbeards successfully shatter the paper thin eggshell of Bil's sanity by insisting his forward directed hat is in fact backwards, while their backward directed hats are forward?

Like his spiritual father Nabokov, Keane is not above cruelly toying with his characters like a house cat with a wounded vole. In this volume, Keane broadens his cruelty so it encompasses his reader as well.Keane takes us through a topsy-turvy hall of mirrors in a pomo tour de force that would make an MLA conference attendee bleed from her eyes.

Is Bil the Author also Bil the Protagonist/Victim? Does the book's phantasmagoric horror mirror unholy themes that trouble the real life Keane family? Keane flays himself open, yet in the end we are all victims. And we are perhaps all equally culpable? Ambiguity abounds in this tome.

A shattering read.

 

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