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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/472331.Watchmen?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Watchmen" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1175041710m/472331.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/472331.Watchmen?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Watchmen</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3961.Alan_Moore">Alan Moore</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/28177000?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 5 of 5 stars Each chapter was both a surprise and delight. Simply, I am astonished. Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!
 
 Inscription: (May 2008)
 I've been studying for most of the afternoon which means that Erik has needed to be out. We live in a bachelor apartment, so the options for the other person when one needs to read/study can be rather limiting. 
 
 While I was reading over Alan Moore's Watchmen, I was considering his message: human ideologies, religious abstractions, and science have all failed us. What was it that a Jewish writer, who went through the Holocaust, said? "I have decided to become a bike mechanic, because words have failed us." 
 
 Moore deconstructs the idea of the superhero and writes a story, rather, about "masked adventurers." The importance is in the difference as masked adventurers are not heroes at all, but just people like us. One of the characters (Roscharch) says, "It is not god who kills children, it is not fate that butchers them, or destiny that feeds them to the gods. It is us." Moore may be trying to de-mask all our human mechanisms for human enlightenment or metaphysical hope, and place responsibility back in the hands it belongs = just average people. 
 
 I downloaded a song by Bob Dylan that also appears in the graphic novel called "Desolation Row". Many viewed/view Dylan as a visionary, and while I listened I understood something that both Moore and Dylan were expressing:
 
 "Now Ophelia's in the window
 For her I feel so afraid
 To her, death is quite romantic
 She wears an iron vest
 Her profession's her religion
 Her sin is her lifelessness
 And though her eyes are fixed upon
 Noah's great rainbow
 She spends her time peeking
 Into Desolation Row."
 
 This expression fights against both vacuous exiting, and mechanical/religious profession building. She may be viewing the hope of the Rainbow, but stripped of all meaning and staring only in an empty way - actually peeking into "desolation row" - or the absences of meaning, self, and hope.
 
 Interestingly, as I was thinking, connecting, and listening to Dylan - Erik was having a parallel experience in Kensington Market. Shannon, a very old friend of Erik's is a bike mechanic (not because words have failed humanity). Through the experience of socializing with this old friend Erik had a sensation that may be equated with disconnection/loss. He feels that with these old friends he expects something more (first the expectation is part of the problem), and would like for his old friends to grow with him in the way he is growing. Rather, they are falling into patterns of contented complacency. (Smoke a joint, join a band, have a laugh). Walking home via Nassau Street Erik again noticed that a street that was previously under developed has just this year sprouted its trendy wings. The street is becoming a hub for sub-culture, and this new development created within Erik a simultaneously positive and negative feeling. Viewing his potential peers coalescing in the patios, on the benches and laughing with one another he desired to be a part of it all, but also felt a level of emptiness both from not being a part but also from the people. 
 
 Are they really enjoying or only caught in the appearance of what they think looks both trendy and enjoyable? I sense the lifelessness in these situations often, but Erik is only beginning to examine old ways of thinking and seeing while considering a life of meaning. 
 
 That personal examination continued for both of us today.
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1360749?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Lesliemae's review
rating:
bookshelves: course-list-favourites, graphic-novels
recommended for: if you love the anti-hero vigillante.

Each chapter was both a surprise and delight. Simply, I am astonished. Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!

Inscription: (May 2008)
I've been studying for most of the afternoon which means that Erik has needed to be out. We live in a bachelor apartment, so the options for the other person when one needs to read/study can be rather limiting.

While I was reading over Alan Moore's Watchmen, I was considering his message: human ideologies, religious abstractions, and science have all failed us. What was it that a Jewish writer, who went through the Holocaust, said? "I have decided to become a bike mechanic, because words have failed us."

Moore deconstructs the idea of the superhero and writes a story, rather, about "masked adventurers." The importance is in the difference as masked adventurers are not heroes at all, but just people like us. One of the characters (Roscharch) says, "It is not god who kills children, it is not fate that butchers them, or destiny th...more

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