The Book of Leviathan (Hardcover)

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 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 ...