Krazy Kat: A Novel in Five Panels

This is not a book for everyone. I am, admittedly, a fan of Cantor's style, so perhaps this isn't an unbiased review. Cantor's books have a way of sneaking up on you - they're kind of slow, but every sentence is a joy to read, if you enjoy good writing for the sake of good writing. In Krazy Kat in particular, I think Cantor does an excellent job of weaving theme and symbolism into something that literally is 2-dimmensional. He manages to glorofy both the innocence of that soimple, flat world that Kat and Ignatz live in, and the less-than-perfect but complete world that we inhabit. This is a book about being human - the good and bad, but also why the journey is worth taking.

It's more a collection of long stories than 1 unified novel, but I thought this book was great. Cantor's prose is clear yet clever, and I was completely engaged throughout.

Krazy Kat is an odd duck of a book. Cantor recasts the comic strip characters with imagination, and the book is entertaining from start to finish, with some bizarre directions. I liked the setup, in which the gang has not worked for years because Krazy became disenchanted after witnessing an atomic test (and became an admirer of Oppenheimer and his anguish). Krazy is an innocent with a sort of Boopish hidden sexuality, and Ignatz is a clever schemer. The fifth panel, in which they imagine themselves as humans in an S/M relationship, is pretty wild. The novel has that sterility that comes with clever postmodern work - a couple days after reading it I had forgotten completely about it. But it certainly was fun while it lasted.