Book Review: Moonshine and Magnolias

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The purpose of Moonshine and Magnolias by Biswajit Basu is not to educate. The cartoons are minimalist. The author’s sole attention was on storytelling. The images are like screenshots taken right out of life. Sometimes they are about day-to-day events, sometimes they are just general reflections on life and people. The drawings are in black and white and done with minimum number of scratches. There are no political cartoon in this book. However, there are some insinuations about the present political mood prevailing in the country.  

The book is mostly autobiographical. Some cartoons in Moonshine and Magnolias are introspective and often self-deprecating. “The author is evidently inspired by minimalist cartoonists like Sarah Anderson and Alvin Juano,” remarked one reader, “There are a few words that are originally in local language and no attempt was made to either translate or explain them, probably to retain the local flavour.” The book doesn’t fit the charming class of graphic novels. It is rather a collection of short stories presented in graphical form. This is why the book may seem to have ended as abruptly as it started. Here are the opinions of some of the first few readers of this book,

“Some of the stories are infantile. The author misses his childhood. Probably we all do.”

-          Prasun Bannerji

“The only complain I have about it is that it’s too short. I wish it had 50 more pages.”

-          Baisakhi Maitra

But the most interesting review that we received was probably this,

“The book is full of shit. But it’s good shit.”

-          Rahul Srivastava

The reason for getting such varied opinion is that the book doesn’t deal with a particular topic. Like the author said in the description of this book, “MOONSHINE AND MAGNOLIAS is an attempt to make life look bit more nonsensical than it appears to be.” Perhaps there is a subtle philosophy underlying the funny appearance. The things that we keep ourselves occupied with, are actually pointless. It is as if life is a mechanical system full of glitches we call ironies. The best thing we can do is to grease its gears with our sense of humor.

  

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Book Review: War Slut by Carlton Mellick III

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War Slut by Carlton Mellick III came as a part of a collection called ‘The Bizarre Fiction’. There was a small note along with this collection that said the readers could expect sexually explicit contents bordering on pornography. I didn’t find any such thing in this book. The ‘bizarre’ vibes that I got was probably due to the futuristic world where the story takes place. It’s a grim, dystopia where war has become the only legitimate profession. The book begins with a number of soldiers awaiting the order of their officers. The order doesn’t come, because those officers are in a strange, comatose state with mysterious bullet holes in their bodies. They are somewhere in the arctic zone. They have to rub a cream called ‘the climate camo’ on their body to survive in the harsh weather – some material from distant future. Their weapons are also futuristic. They have slug riffles. There are various types of bullets that they can fire from those riffles. One such bullet is called the library bullet. No matter where it hits you, it kills you. It gnaws through your body. But all these things probably aren’t as important as the war slut.

Each camp has a war slut, a genetically engineered soldier created to relieve sexual tension in combat situations. A war slut is not a sex toy, or a robot. It’s genetically engineered soldier – mind it. It can change its gender as per requirement. When a war slut is not having sex, she usually participates in battle along with other soldiers. The one we have in this story is called ‘Sweet’. When the narrator goes to Sweet, he usually asks her to take the form of Chauney. Chauney is a female soldier who the narrator fancies. From the title of the book one may assume that the story is about this person called Sweet. I think title is bit misleading that way, because the war slut disappears right in the middle of the story. The rest of the book goes on without her. Then at the end she reappears in the most unexpected place. I think the story is about something else and the war slut is just a small part of it.

It is an Orwellian world where people are made to believe that they are threatened by forces that are not properly explained, and the only way out is waging battles. Who are the adversaries? That doesn’t matter. Will the war ever end? That doesn’t matter either. If the enemies are wiped out, they’ll still have the draft dodgers. The draft dodgers are the dissenters who stand against the culture of war. We call these people ‘anti-nationals’ nowadays. I could see efforts in War Slut by Carlton Mellick III to create that atmosphere of oppression. I am not of the opinion that it was immensely successful in that. The description of how the game of saw ball is played, shows a palpable hatred against draft dodgers. Dummies of teachers, poets and philosophers are made. The game involves mutilating these dummies in various ways. The sole purpose of mentioning the game was to help readers visualize the general aversion against intellectuals.

The story of War Slut takes an interesting turn when the troops accidentally arrive at a frozen town. No life sign was detected in their gadgets. The buildings were full of strange mannequins. The horror begins when this lifeless town suddenly turns violent. There are snipers on the roof. But the bullets that are showered on them were not actually bullets. Now they know what turned those officers into living corpses.

Could Carlton Mellick III choose a better title for War Slut? Yes, I think. Something like The Draft Dodgers could be more appropriate. The present title limits the spread as well as the purpose of the plot. The genetically modified soldier is a marvel, but it has very little contribution to the story, other than explaining some of the mysteries at the end of the story. The story attempts to send a strong political message, I understand. But hey, haven’t we had enough dystopian novels already? I mean, when I look around I see myself living in goddamn 1984 for Chrissake. It’s not fiction anymore. It is happening right now.

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