Neon Lit: Perdita Durango

But what does it stand for? It's about people who think they can handle everything -but soon all turn up dead, including Romeo. And it's about Perdita who does not attempt to control her life, not to mention others', just uses life what for it is meant for: living it. She is a survivor, does not look back much (less than the ending of the movie would seem to suggest). Curiously, both the hero and the plot remind me, on a more implicit level, of Anthony Burgess' One hand clapping.

Aside from the incredible artwork, the one thing the astonished me was the eerie premonition of two tall towers on page 103. The towers stand well above a city skyline. One of the towers is engulfed in flames. The caption above reads: "We haven't seen the last of these guys." The "guys" Gifford is referring to are "religious fundamentalists trained by the CIA in explosives, financed by a mountain of smack." The picture of the towers bears a striking resemblance to the World Trade Center catastrophe on 9/11/01. The book was published in 1995.

I did not like this book the first time I read it. It was the first Barry Gifford book that I read and it did not make much sense to me. The next time I read it, I had just finished Wild At heart, and it made so much more sense and was a much better read. Perdita first appears in Wild at Heart, and reappears better drawn in this account of her misadventures in love.

Scot Gillis' artwork is tremendous in what should become a pulp lit classic. Barry Gifford's story of the venomous, sinewy Perdita Durango is a dusty ride through cheap fiction. The story is spartan but the artwork is rich and unrivaled.