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About Tales Of The Weirrd
Product Description Genuine weirdness is a rare quality. To be truly weird demands character and wanton disregard for the social mores of the day. Unleashed in Tales of the Weirrd is Ralph Steadman's fantastic interpretations and biographies of nineteenth century grotesques, oddities, imposters and eccentrics. The book is a hilarious catalog of nature's freakish humor and, in the best Victorian tradition, it instructs as well as entertains. This crazy collection of dwarfs, and gluttons, wits and water-spouters includes: Charles Charlesworth, who grew a beard at age four and died of old age at the age of seven Old Boots, who could hold a piece of money between his nose and chin Barbara Urselin, the hairy-faced woman Henry Lemoine, an eccentric bookseller Guillaume de Nittis, who tried to eat himself Fakir Agastiya, who kept his arm in the air for ten years Neville Vadio, the blind caricaturist, who was claimed by many to be a better draughtsman than Rembrandt. Tales of the Weirrd is an extraordinary celebration of the bizarre brought to life by the astonishing energy, imagination and power of Ralph Steadman's pen. About the Author Ralph Steadman's illustrations have appearing in newspapers, magazines and dozens of books including Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Animal Farm, Alice in Wonderland and Sigmund Freud. He recently traveled the world's vineyards and distilleries for Oddbins, which culminated in his two prize-winning books, The Grapes of Ralph and Still Life With Bottle. He has an Honorary D. Litt from the University of Kent. He has won numerous awards including the W.H. Smith Illustration Award and was named Illustrator of the Year by the American Institute of Graphic Arts in 1979. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Introduction Genuine Weirdness is a rare quality. To be truly weird demands character and a wanton disregard for the social mores of the day. Strangely, it is not in the past century that the truly weird have emerged, even though we have witnessed mind-warping changes and can expect many more in the new millennium. The changes we have witnessed have not come about to make us all different, to help us find ourselves and realize our own identities. On the contrary, it seems that the essence of movement and change in the past century has had more to do with the control of difference, the standardization of mankind to satisfy a universal desire for sameness. Twentieth-century political ideologies have sought only to free us from one tyranny, and impose another more ruthless and more regulated tyranny upon us whose methods raze differences to the ground. The abnormal is treated with a general social disgust, as though human dignity had more to do with "neat front lawns" than the spirit and courage within our troubled minds. Today, ideologies are structures into which people are systematically packed. Traditionally, ideologies were considered to be ideals fired with reason, rationalizing the best in us, the finest, our greatest hopes and aspirations. The Renaissance kindled the rebirth of Humanism through the arts and philosophic reflection, and stands as an example, a yardstick which still commands respect. Ideologies of the twentieth century are nineteenth-century social dreams gone wrong, re-structured into practical systems to deny the individual. They have been exposed as euphemisms hiding terrifying crimes -- the purging of millions of lives in the name of common goals -- lowest common denominators masquerading as brave new worlds, the last refuge of a Utopian sleaze. Though eccentricity was rife, the Victorians were not without blame in their denial of self and the individual. The respectable, the noble and the regal hid the shame of abnormality behind locked doors in remote rooms, treating such blighted wretches far worse that animals, as though a congenital defect was a curse to be vilified, along with its carrier, and not a human being with feelings to be nurtu
