This intellectual, prose-cartoon, that might have grown out of some confusion between MAD magazine, speculative science fiction and Bellotto’s weird mental contemplations about a near future North America, has spilled in a sort of semi-organised chaos into a very entertaining book. Medicated Yellow Glad Days are just around a future corner. This is a book for the college folks who never quite grow up, or never intend to grow up, to be really really serious people, well, except on work days of course. This is a romp through a futuristic politicised landscape, in the City of Bigapolis, which definitely isn’t in Alabama. The would be hero, in a world that is content to be left alone, doesn’t really know where he is going except that he wants to get there. What Astin does know is that he is against being tranquillised; probably!
Isn’t persuading everyone to get a fix, wrong or something? It could be, and anyway isn’t a journalist meant to be a bit of a rebel. This book mainlines on satire, wades through cynical, is mockingly indeterministic and weaves through several levels of funny ironic. The reader might agree with Astin Wench, if only Astin knew where he was going. This is a fun book for glad days, by Gad, which takes a swipe at, well, everything really. Not to be taken with too many very serious pills. The book is dedicated to Xanax and Paxil, pharmaceutical twins that fight against general anxiety disorders. They seem to work. But that doesn’t mean we all want the same blissful relief, even from a decaying society. One has taken the trouble to read this, so then, if one has time then why not read the book? Anyway, we need to make society better, and not just have everyone taking stuff to make society seem better. Or do we?
http://www.amazon.com/Yellow-Glad-Days-Sam-Bellotto/dp/1468114077
richardbunning 