From the Reading Pile - Little Nothings: The Prisoner Syndrome

Little Nothings, Vol. 2: The Prisoner Syndrome
By Lewis Trondheim

Trondheim describes the prisoner’s syndrome as

It’s when someone’s locked up and isn’t doing anything. By Not doing anything, he gets more and more tired and has less and less desire to do anything.

Fearing this phenomena, he decides to do more festivals around the world.

The Prisoner Syndrome is like A Moveable Feast. It is very stream of consciousness oriented and almost diary like. When Trondheim notices something about a place that interests him or has a clever idea, he jots a cartoon of it down.

As a result, there is no narrative here. It is like a hip version of Family Circus. There is an overall theme going on about his life, but there isn’t necessarily any causal connection between pages. The elapsed time and location vary wildly.

It is an amusing book. Probably best read like a joke book, a little at a time. It is funny in places and heart wrenching in others.

Famous Players

Rick Geary's second volume of A Treasury of XXth Century Murder.
Famous Players - The Mysterious Death of William Desmond Taylor

"Geary takes the reader from the founding of Hollywood to its first major death, a scandal that would change the perception of the film Mecca of the world. On the morning of February 2, 1922, a servant finds one William Desmond Taylor dead on the floor of his home. The investigation into the murder would become a media circus that opened the public’s eyes to the secrets of the film industry."


RIYL: Capote or Ellroy. Comics wise, there is Fishtown, Sin City, Kick Back, Criminal, and this week's The Hunter from Darwyn Cooke.