Michael Moon

A brilliant book about an artist who many have found fascinating and disturbing. Henry Darger worked in obscurity, producing a fantasy that is thousands of pages long and astonishingly vivid paintings tied to the story. Because they depict extraordinary cruelty visited on children who are often naked (and seem to be girls with male genitalia) early critics speculated that he had inclinations toward sadistic pedophilia and perhaps engaged in violence against children. Moon finds sources for show more his work, both visual and cultural, and finds roots in the lives of saints and a kind of sentimental and violent Catholic literature with which Darger would be familiar, serial children's fiction, comics, and pulp fiction. What I found particularly pleasing about this book, apart from its insightful "reading" of Darger's art, is his ability to explain himself in scholarly prose that is clear and graceful, not sacrificing complexity but avoiding the usual jargon- and theory-laden clutter that makes so much scholarship inaccessible and tiresome. show less

I so want to like this and I try and I try. But I don't. Two stars because I feel like it's my fault.