The Book of Leviathan [Unknown Binding]

I've been aware of the depth and breadth of the mind of Peter Blegvad for many years now, through his musical endeavors (with Slapp Happy, as well as his solo work) - his creations have always been stimulating, bringing with them smiles and incentives for further thought and intellectual and contemplative explorations. I had heard about his comic strip `Leviathan' (which appeared regularly in THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY in the U.K.), but until I purchased a copy of this collection, I had never actually experienced it firsthand. I'm sorry I waited so long - this is a treasure.

Matt Groening (creator of `The Simpsons' and `Life in Hell') is widely recognized as a purveyor of twisted and useful reflections of real life, is quoted on the back of this volume: `Peter Blegvad's comic strip is one of the greatest, weirdest things I've ever stared at.' I heartily concur. Blegvad combines his senses of humor and irony with his intellectual strengths and his amazing artistic abilities into `Leviathan', giving his readers an opportunity to take one of the wildest rides they're liable to experience. The episodes in this book range from purely humorous takes on a baby's view of the world he inhabits to visual illustrations of puns to hallucinogenic explorations of the conscious and subconscious to sublime meditations on everything from the most seemingly insignificant daily occurrences to the meaning of life and death. Quite a range, right? Blegvad pulls it off beautifully. Perhaps I'm a little prejudiced by already being a huge fan of his music, but none of his outings collected here come across as shallow or pretentious in any way. The subtleties are many, the layers of wit are as innumerable as those in a chunk of mica - each reading reveals something missed the time before.

Leviathan himself - `Levi', as he is called - is a visual as well as a philosophical enigma. He's drawn without facial features, which allows the reader to project his/her own personality/outlook more readily onto the narrator. His parents and his older sister appear in some episodes, but for the most part he's accompanied and guided through the mazes of life (in all its dimensions) by the family cat, who gently imparts wisdom while at times openly expressing amazement that humans manage to survive without caretakers. The artist's hand appears from time to time, allowing him to more directly interact with the characters and events depicted in the strip - and on a couple of occasions, the characters themselves make attempts to escape the bounds of the graphic territory.

I read this book in a couple of sittings - but I've revisited it often and at great length and leisure, with new rewards each time. In his introduction, Rafi Zabor admits that he has encountered a few `intelligent, literate, artistically sophisticated people' who just don't get it - and I suppose that's inevitable in any artistic undertaking. It resonated within me at the deepest level - I can't recommend it highly enough.

This is cartoon comedy on a high-wire. Every frame reveals some new flash of lateral wit, until by the end of the page, or the sequence of pages, you realise you've moved into a different dimension altogether. At times, Peter Blegvad seems to lure us into realm of his prodigious imagination by stealth; at other times he will knock you down with what I can only describe as a 'coup de theatre', blasting rational thought far into the distance.

Blegvad is a master of the form; a virtuoso; the book is a joy to be savoured one line at a time, one page at a time, one sequence at a time ... depending on just how much you can cope with at one sitting! I come to it as a parent (and it should be compulsory reading for all parents, by the way), and find to my delight that the world really does make more sense when Peter Blegvad helps me see it through Levi's eyes ... that is, from the inside out.

You have a really dear friend and you want to get them something for Christmas that they'll enjoy all through next year? Get them The Book of Leviathan.

I've been waiting for this book for years. I've been absorbed by Peter Blegvad's verbal contortions since my first exposure to the Slapp Happy album 'Desperate Straits'. When I saw that Peter Blegvad was drawing these delightful fantasies and musings, and knowing that I would not be buying The Independent on Sunday just for that, I began immediately to long for Leviathan to be gathered into a book so that I might escape for extended periods into the skewed worlds of this intellectual baby.

I pre-ordered my copy and received it less than two weeks after the birth of my first child; In between my chaotic sessions with milk, nappies and puking, I settle down with Levi, Bunny and Cat, and have found them to be a better guide to the inner workings of my daughter's tiny mind than any child care manual.

'The Book of Leviathan' is a child's garden of semiotics, full of wonder and fascination with meaning and symbol, yet not without the nameless dread and melancholy that we all remember as part of our own infancy. The Book of Leviathan suggests that we have taken much as given, demonstrating a multitude of equally valid alternative realities as tangibly as if they were pressed flowers. When we learned, as babies, to grasp reality, did we really build our understanding on solid foundations, or did our fists close around it as a mere reflex action?

Calvin and Hobbes can go play in the traffic; Blegvad is absolutely successful in capturing the awe of the baby, without a trace of cuteness or prejudice; more, he brings the reader fully inside that awe, where we freshly experience the literal dimension of signs, klang associations, everyday existential dilemmas and the very structure of understanding.

Perhaps most meaningful of all, Leviathan reminds us that where we will never fully understand the universe we are driven to invent our own descriptions even if there are none to be found, and that in our ignorance (or rather, innocence) we are all merely grown-up infants.

I am led to understand, from the splendid introduction by Rafi Zabor, that this is not (as I had hoped) 'the Compleat Leviathan'. I can only hope that this collection will sell well enough for the rest of the strips to be collected in a second volume.

I was overjoyed to discover that the paper and binding are sumptuosly prepared; surely unheard of in a first run collection of newspaper strips; The page edges are stained in red, with mock moiré marbling on the cover. This is no ordinary 'comic annual'. The collection oozes quality. Buy it now ...