DEATH MASK

This portrait of George W. Bush is composed of photos of American soldiers who have died in Iraq. It is our version of "The Roster of the Dead," a two-and-a-half page spread of 900 photos published yesterday in The New York Times. We don't know who created the GWB death mask. It came to us in g-mail -- uncredited -- from a friend. But here's a fitting caption from Bob Herbert's column this morning: "How many thousands more will have to die before we acknowledge that President Bush's obsession with Iraq and Saddam Hussein has been a catastrophe for the United States?" And, he might have added, for the Middle East.

Postscript: Have a look at Mort Subiet's "Boot Count," another staggering death roster. This one gains visual impact by scrolling through it. The faster you scroll, the more dazzling it is. Subiet gives overdue meaning to the phrase "boots on the ground."

PPS: Dec. 28, 2007 -- The Death Mask mosaic is the creation of Joe Wezorek, who blogs at American Leftist. He confirmed it the other day in an email. "I created the image in the spring of 2004," Wezorek said. "It became something of a phenomenon at that time." Here's what a Google search just turned up: The BBC reported on the image in April 2004 in a news story about official Pentagon photos of the coffins of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. The American Prospect interviewed Wezorek about the mosaic and published its story, "The Faces of Honor, the Face of Shame," in June. Wezorek also wrote about the image when it appeared on the cover of Common Ground in July (actually, a repeat of his April 7 blogpost). A large version of the mosaic, which he called "War President," was exhibited in a group show, Face Off, at the Feldman Gallery in New York later that year (Oct. 23-Nov. 27). Wezorek has also done a couple of visual editorials for The Nation: Perp Walk and 20,000 Chávez Fans Can't Be Wrong.
September 10, 2004 9:00 AM |

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Me Elsewhere

'WILD SIDE' STILL ROCKS 

Nelson Algren was one of the great American authors of the 20th century, it is no exaggeration to say, and among the most neglected. Consider his underrated classic, "A Walk on the Wild Side." The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Avenue (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

BUSTER KEATON REVISITED 
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. "This book is merely a fan's notes," Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you're David Thomson, who set the standard with Rosebud, his penetrating rumination on the life and career of Orson Welles, which was nothing if not a distillation of every obsessive thought he ever had about the myth and the man and all his movies.
LAUREN BACALL, STILL SALTY AT 80 
When Lauren Bacall writes that her singing voice ranges "somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space," she's being candid and funny. It's not every stage star with two Tony Awards for best actress in a musical whose vocal talent offers so little promise. (OK, Harvey Fierstein excepted.) Still less would one admit it.
THE STARS ACCORDING TO BOGDANOVICH 
Peter Bogdanovich's superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews -- a sequel to Who the Devil Made It, his interviews of top film directors -- begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us just how intimate the author's connection to Hollywood's greatest has been. But contrary to what we've come to expect from dime-a-dozen celebrities and celebrity interviews not worth two cents, the tale avoids bromidic egotism and journalistic platitudes.
SAMMY'S WHITE DREAMS 
Four decades ago Lenny Bruce sentenced Sammy Davis Jr. to "30 years in Biloxi," stripping him of "his Jewish star" and "his religious statue of Elizabeth Taylor." Now we have two new biographies of Davis that spring him from ridicule, if not from doubts about his legacy, and restore a measure of dignity to a black entertainer whose huge fame and success never overcame his devout wish -- indeed his lifelong effort -- to be white.
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This page contains a single entry by CriticalMASS published on September 10, 2004 9:00 AM.

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