Antonio Gallonio

Find another edition, this one is beneath you.

From the review: "and 24 illustrations by a variety of well-known artists, performers, and infamous criminals including Daniel Clowes, Joe Coleman, Raymond Pettibon, and Kaz."

The "infamous criminals" being rapists and murderers whom the publisher considers innately "cool" - moreso since they doodled.

The publisher, "Feral House" ("Den of the Unwashed" is more precise), seems to think it decadent or "sub-culture" to abase an historical text by interposing poor, yet bloody (the qualification for inclusion, to be sure) illustrations done by convicted rapists and murderers. Stupid, inbred - and untalented - predatory waste like Gacy, Manson and Ramirez. What a lapse of taste, a punk's sensibility. What an insult to the material, not to mention the familes of the victims of these brutes, here presented as artists.

I suspect the blunted sensibilities at Feral House assumed a readership that would also conflate the awful mystery of the bond - if such there was - between the Christian martyrs and the representatives of the State who systematically, often ornately, tormented them, with the unfortunate coincidence of any given person and the fantasies of a common killer.

The boys kidnapped, tortured, raped and killed by John Gacy are not martyrs and the predatory coward who cut their lives short to please himself was not empowered by the State, the Church, or anything else. No one went willingly to their fate. There was no political, psychological or religious bond - or any bond of any kind: only bad luck, opportunity and appetite void of compassion. Shame on Feral House.

My scorn is not based on piety - I certainly didn't buy the book to strengthen my faith - I'd have adored it if it had been bound elegantly - as Des Esseintes might have had it, and illustrated by some contemporary strain of Egan, Majeska, or Mahlon Blaine. Instead we have trash. Happily, I ordered off Amazon second-hand: no profit to Feral House.… (plus d'informations)