It's just indigestion...or is it?

http://www.vice.com/read/ny-tyrant-atticus-atticus

Picked up Atticus Lish’s collection of sketches, Life Is with People, and wow, wow. I’m into art but I don’t think I’ve ever purchased an “art book.” I hesitate to label People as an art book because to pigeon-hole something this insane and unique would be doing the fine peeps at Tyrant Books a sad disservice. The limited (500 copies) print run features pleasantly thick covers and heavy-stock lined composition paper, usually one drawing per page, occasionally more.

http://nytyrantbooks.com/atticus/

As the title suggests, there are lots of people. People stabbing, shitting, cross-dressing, fucking, praying, grinning, often with a few explanatory phrases thrown in for good measure. The style of illustration is what Shel Silverstein would have penned if he’d been imprisoned in the S&M dungeon of some creeper with a serious fecal fetish then let loose amidst the dregs of an outer-borough wasteland populated by psych-ward all stars and sluttily anthropomorphic lesser mammals. Which is to say, mind-blowing. Each of the images presents a self-contained situation – a man who has ripped his eyeballs out to avoid attending a Bat Mitzvah, unkempt anorexic banshees screaming for Tony Danza, a woman hanging from a sex swing and crapping on a dude’s face in what is described as “a fairy tale right out of the Village Voice," unapologetic Susan Sontag references – that can be disturbing, outrageous, ultraviolent or misogynistic, but always funny as shit. Seriously, I was reading People in a bar and kept laughing obnoxiously, at one point dribbling Pilsner from my nostrils. The J. Crew catalog couple seated next to me must have thought I had a few chromosomes loose and when I allowed them to peruse the book their suspicions were confirmed. 

The weird/amazing part is, I don’t really feel like I’m looking at visual art. Each image is more akin to a flash fiction – rough, subtle, twisting – that deserves to be absorbed for more than a casual moment. Which is why I recommend flipping through People slowly, taking a dozen or so drawings and then calling it a night. Or maybe not. I tore through the book in two extended sittings, the last one culminating in a 3am near nervous breakdown. I wanted to look at porn or hug someone, and probably both, in that order. Yet my sleep was surprisingly untroubled, devoid of the fucked up and too-vivid dreams that had been plaguing my head for weeks. And they haven’t returned. In purging his nightmares, Lish may have inadvertently helped me shirk off some of my own.

I can’t guarantee that Life Is with People will have the same affect on you. But I can guarantee you’ll love the book. And if you don’t, you’re a moron. 

http://www.vice.com/read/ny-tyrant-blake-butler

The book's mini-site is here.