![]() Yet these impeccably drafted landscapes are often defiled by M.C. What’s being caged is never made clear, nor what function the cage might serve in this book’s procession of people-less landscapes, which include a Mayan temple, a featureless desert, somebody’s disheveled bedroom, a pumping station and a lavish palace interior, all rendered in richly detailed, almost photo-realistic black and white. The subject-it seems-is an ugly wire-rimmed cage whose true status appears to be largely symbolic. Vaughn-James does reveal is that he was inspired by the experimental fiction of Alain Robbe-Grillet and the French new wave film classic LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, and if you’re familiar with either you’ll have some idea of the sublime oddness contained herein. I’d like to say the introduction sheds some light on THE CAGE’S inconclusiveness, but that’s not the case. It followed ELEPHANT and THE PROJECTOR, two previous “visual novels” written and illustrated by the late Martin Vaughn-James (1943-2009), who provides a newly written (in 2006) introduction. THE CAGE was also one of the first-ever graphic novels, having debuted before there was even a name for such things. I’ve previously crowned Luigi Serafini’s CODEX SERAPHINIANUS the strangest book ever printed, but this newly reprinted relic from 1975 gives that tome a serious run for its money in sheer nonlinear weirdness. ![]() ![]() By MARTIN VAUGHN-JAMES (Coach House Books 1975/2013) ![]()
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