Life of the Reader

I’m midway through the second collection of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s Preacher, and I’m having a pretty tough time with it. The violence is absolutely pornographic, and yet I find myself sad when each passing issue ends; not surprisingly, I also long to read the series. Perhaps these are halmarks of pornography.

The second volume in particular deals pretty heavily with rape, incest, and child abuse. I confess that I’m only partway through the volume, and while I don’t want to give anything away, I will say that, at one point, the main character is imprisoned in a coffin by his grandmother, who abuses him continuously for decades.

One month ago, this sort of violence would have only appeared in my darkest nightmares – it’s that over-the-top. However, what with the absolutely horrific story from Austria, we now know that the violence in this story has antecedents in reality, even if Ennis was not cognizant of such abuse when penning his comic book series.

Unless you haven’t opened a newspaper in the last month, you know who Josef Fritzl is and what he did. I can sincerely say that I’ve never read of a crime more horrific and upsetting. Ennis’ Preacher seems to be an indictment of organized religion – again, I admit that I’ve only just begun reading his saga – but there seems to me no greater indictment of notion of a merciful and kind God than the existence of such a man. Worse still, in my opinion, is that no amount of sincere prayer is going to save Fritzl’s children from the lifetime of horror he inflicted on them. The most any of us can do is hope for the best.

But as a reader, horror has become much more real. Reading something as absurd and pornographic (and indeed wonderful) as Preacher has taken on a whole new light; for its horror is now something I can point to in my world. I don’t know if Fritzl used religion to justify his abuse, as the characters in Preacher do, but this is precisely what makes the comic book and real life so horrific. His intent is just as evil, regardless of his justification, and the true existence of such an evil makes an aesthetic discussion and examination of it all the more frightening and necessary.