f-stop Fitzgerald

Great coffee table book of pictures of gargoyles and other building ornamentation. It has a 30+ page introduction by Stephen King where tries to set the tone for the book with his rambling sense of style. The most interesting thing from his introduction is noted that nearly all the gargoyles look downwards. They see us but we don't see them, meaning that we don't look up. That being said full of wonderful photos. Most of the gargoyles seem to be in keystone arches but there are a number of true drain spout gargoyles and other just whimsical follies included as well. Nice to just flip through and look at the pictures. At the end there are actually names/locations listed for the buildings that said pictures came from.… (meer)

"We don't see them," he said, "but they see us."

Creepy, but true! I picked this up because of Stephen King, but his essay isn't much of a read. Although, I did learn that some gargoyles are used as part of the drainage system for buildings, so that's kind of neat! The pictures are cool, creepy at times, and it was fun to flip through the pages. In fact, I was doing so at a coffee shop, and a homeless guy sat down next to me to look at them too! He told me he felt like gargoyles were made to protect the home or building by scaring off would be evil doers. I felt like I made a friend, even if it was for only a 100 pages or so.
If you like gargoyles, or starting conversations with the homeless, this is your book!… (meer)

So I saw this at my local library and decided to pick up a company. Serendipity abounds, because it's even neater than I thought.

I fully expected a panoply of awesome and varied gargoyles. A quick flip through confirms that goal is achieved. So I flip to the introduction, and find Stephen King pontificating on gargoyles. And Gargoyles.

I love Stephen King, and I particularly love his nonfiction, like Danse Macabre and On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. His prose always reads like he's sitting with the reader on a porch, leaning forward, eyes alight, beer in hand. He muses on gargoyles, why they unnerve us, and he and his son's love of the 1972 made for TV movie.

He's got good taste. It's one of the few VHS tapes I've kept, but it's on Dailymotion.

If that isn't enough, there's a location appendix! You can locate every gargoyle pictured inside. That's a walking tour I want to take, next time I'm in Manhattan.

I love gargoyles; hell, I nearly put a gargoyle cop on the cover of my novel. Nightmares in the Sky definitely scratched my itch. All in all, a really awesome coffee table book.

And seriously, watch Gargoyles. As John Kenneth Muir relates here, it's a nice little allegory for racial tension with Emmy-winning make-up: Planet of the Apes with Wings.… (meer)