Sigh. How do you rate a book like this? At best, it reminds me of Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions," in which I constantly said to myself (or maybe it was aloud), "Wtf, is this really a book, or is it actually the total corruption of a human soul drawn on the pages of a book?" The drawings by Vollman make the comparison more than a little obvious, I guess. Anybody out there have one of the color versions? Of additional, and amazing worth-mentioning-ness, is the 1993 version of AIDS, in which the idea of taking AZT filled me with dread (only twenty years ago, that was!), but was compensated for by the satisfaction the butterfly boy/journalist/husband took in his destruction. The analogy between the Khmer Rouge regime and HIV is interesting, though things have not turned out exactly the way the book imagines, at least in San Francisco. Yeah, the language. The images. How utterly and magnificently horrible. Nobody should read this book. You should read this book.
