REVIEW: The little book of Terror

Hardcover: 84 pages
Publisher: Foxhead Books (1 Feb 2012)
Language English
ISBN-10: 098474861X
ISBN-13: 978-0984748617
Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 14 x 1 cm

This book has absolutely nothing to do with the main focus of this blog, but is included because I sometimes pepper my writing about Gonzostuff with reviews and comments on things that I have found interesting. And this book certainly is interesting. Here, as always, I would like to say that any opinions expressed are my own and have nothing to do with any of those nice people at Gonzo Multimedia.

I always get the two Rockwells mixed up. One was a neo-Nazi, and the other a famous illustrator. Norman, the illustrator, had a grand-daughter – Daisy, and it is she who is responsible for this remarkable little book. Trying to describe it is one of the most difficult tasks with which I have been confronted all year. It is charming, frightening, and fantastic, in the most appalling taste, and one of the most heart-warmingly documents of the human condition that I have ever seen.

It is a mixture of writing and charmingly naive (but unexpectedly sophisticated) drawings/paintings on the subject of terrorism, or – to be more honest – on the subject of terrorists.

This is a subject in which I have always been interested ever since I (almost totally by accident) met one of the Aldershot pub bombers at a concert in 1999. He was one of the sweetest, gentlest, and nicest men that I have ever met. But he was responsible for brutal killings and maimings. The spoken word introduction to a song about Irish nationalist martyr James Connelly asks the question, what is it that makes these rebels die? And this little book asks exactly the same question. The struggle is a different one but these portraits of human frailty, of ordinary, and loving people going out in order to do disgusting, horrific things packs a powerful punch. Terrorists are people too? But is this all the message?

Laid out like a charming post-Beatrix Potter children’s book these images of (mostly) Muslim extremists immediately makes one question the nature of their, and our, extremism. This book doesn’t give any answers but it sure as heck poses a lot of questions. I strongly urge you to buy it.