I read Sprung Up In the Years Since

By Di Blasi. It's pretty graphic. There were certain times that I had to put to the book down and think about something else because I had really nasty thought- especially about maggots and dead bodies and stuff. I get what it's doing- its trying to compare American pop culture to the reality of war torn countries and how sad is it that people who able to preoccupy themselves with minutia inevitably do. She writes things like "Gnawing/Sheryl Crow is dating a new man" or writes a story about a child soldier who rapes and kills while lining the sidebars with tabloidesque blurbs about Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan.

She writes about how people are starving how children are dying from malnourishment, and to villify the celebrity class (whom I assume she expects to be helping) she creates a juvenille "connect the pictures" with multi-thousand dollar bags and the lap dogs that match them.


This is really experimental writing and I kind of like it, I understand why it is how it is, I mean no one wants to read UN reports about all this bad stuff that is happening, but by making it in a form that is fastly digestible I think it diminished her claims. She takes the absolute worst examples from both cultures and I think that, when you ignore the reality, you lose credulity. I understand that there are horrible things happening in the world, but her portrayal of celebrities and the attitude of Americans is exactly true. It is satirical, and whenever you attempt to compare satire to fact the juxtaposition is weakened.


I didn't really understand the drawing in the book, I feel like they were just doodles from the author and she wanted to add them in. I figure it might have to do with the corpearalness of humanity of something, but they aren't really good drawings so I didn't pay much attention to them. I thought her perspectives where off, which is kinda how I felt about the entire story. I really like the concrete imagery (even though it was a bit nauseating) but I wasn't all over the message. I know bad stuff is happening, but social commentary like this only effective when it legitamately understands the entire socio-culture spectrum, not just the extremes.