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| Dave Sim's Last Girfriend: The Collected Letters & Faxes Of Dave Sim & Susan Alston (Simon & Schuster, April 2016) |
(from a letter to Susan Alston dated 19 March 2004, reprinted in 'Dave Sim's Collected Letters 2004')
You certainly don't need any permission to print your own views on what you remember of myself or Cerebus, nor am I any kind of stickler for keeping my correspondence or personal memorabilia private. I would caution you against such a course of action only because Cerebus isn't really that kind of thing. I'm reminded of the memoir of Adele Morales of her marriage to Norman Mailer (which cost me an exorbitant sum when I found it in Chapters). I knew going in that it was probably not going to contain anything interesting, merely the salacious and the mundane and in that I wasn't disappointed. A good example was dinner with Edmund Wilson. Having just excerpted his F. Scott Fitzgerald parody from Discordant Encounters in the annotations to Going Home, I was on the edge of my seat to see what he and Mailer would discuss. All Adele remembered was that Wilson had a piece of food lodged in one of his teeth throughout the dinner and that that had repelled her. And that was all she had to say about Edmund Wilson. "Serves me right," I thought, remembering the sixty dollars or so the hardcover volume had cost me. "Serves me bloody well right."
...if you have something to add to any discussion of the creative side of the book or if you remember any of the conversations that I had with [Steve] Bissette or with [Rick] Veitch about various aspects of the comic-book medium or with Larry [Marder] about the business, that would be useful in its own way... But, as I recall, the start of those discussions was usually when you decided it was time to go to bed.
As well as being Dave Sim's last girlfriend, Susan Alston served as executive director of the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund.
12 comments:
Of all thing even remotely Cerebus or Dave Sim related this book has got to be the most useless and disgusting. I wouldn't pay a dime for it.
David Birdsong
Considering Sim's work is about gender relations, a book from the POV of someone who was involved with him on that level has more than a little justification for existence.
Dave Kopperman
Well, in the same way Dave Sim probably felt that reading the letters of Ernest Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald was necessary for him to better understand those personalities and their work, someone might feel that reading the letters of Dave Sim might do the same.
I'm not sure I will pony up the cash for this. I would definitely read correspondences between Dave and some fellow artists as they discussed their craft. I'm not sure I want more info about Dave's love life.
However, we have seen Dave say (and write) interesting things about many different topics. It would not be too surprising if in his letters and faxes (!) in this book, he shows plenty of wit and insight. Why not?
I just really like the burn at the end there.
Why not, indeed? Dave did publish two volumes of his letters himself, after all. How these compare in terms of their level of interest remains to be seen, of course, but the ones Dave published are of variable interest, so. . . . Anyway, sounds like Dave would prefer this book did not exist, but approved its publication nevertheless, so fans should leave it to their own consciences as to whether or not they want to buy it. (Were this being published against his express wishes, that would be another question, in my opinion.) I'll probably buy it, but I admit some ambivalence.
I'm looking forward to reading it.
I'm counting up how many people plan NOT to buy this book, and will be buying that many EXTRA copies in addition to my own. Awwww yeah. Touche!
I actually preordered this on Amazon as I was interested in learning more about "today's" Dave (whether it would help or not). Now it's delayed for another year...anyone know why??
I'm pretty sure MGTOWs will be interested in this since barbarossaaaa introduced us to Cerebus/Dave Sim and in his video on The rapacious female void.
The release date of this 'book' keeps being pushed back ever year. Now it says 2016? There clearly is no book, and probably never will be. It looks like his girlfriend made a threat of a 'book' in response to some of his positions on women, but he called her bluff. Anyway, I wish Amazon would yank the listing already. Ridiculous.
Sorry to necro this old thread, but according to Amazon, the publication date is April 26th, 2016, so it's all-of-a-sudden very relevant again.
Several years ago when I first heard of this, I found it to be an absurd idea. I still do, but now with a touch of curiosity, both as to the tenor of the letters and the constant delays in publishing the thing. Why would a mere collection of already existing content be delayed this long? Not happy with the font? Publishing snafus? Anon above also questioned why the release date keeps getting pushed back. Susan Alston, care to chime in?
This stuff was all written within the context of a mutually understood privacy. Even with Dave saying he's not a stickler for privacy, it nevertheless strikes me as exploiting intimacy for personal gain. But the curiosity kicks in when I think "what if it turns out to be wonderfully romantic and bittersweet, and we get to see a side of our favorite (well, MY favorite) author we've never seen before: the man in love?" Eh, I still think it's absurd, I'm sorry. But, uh... that doesn't mean I won't buy a copy. That damned curiosity...
Just received the mail from Amazon (where I had it in my pre-order queue for YEARS) that the release of this book has finally been cancelled.
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