Customer Reviews

Eye Scream (Henry Rollins)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Despair. Acceptance. Social complacency. and the Mekanik. If you are pissed off at the superficialality of humanity, you are inspired by Mr. Rollins or you will be. The most complete man of our century, besides Che Guevara, is at his best, describing unredeemable qualities of mankind(if you want to call them that) and chastizing us all for being the fake pieces of ...that we are. This book made me look at life in a real perspective, and in turn, made me want to live life by the simplest terms. To live in reality while everyone else floats by on the heated surface of their parent's lies. I now will not live these lies. I will now live in a whole new set of lies, but at least I made them all up myself. Thank you Mr. Rollins, I am a better person because of you.

This is one of the most thought-for-thought honest volumes I've read. If you've seen what Rollins has seen, chances are, you've thought what he thought...maybe. The truth is in there, if you can handle the intensity long enough to drill into it. If you're looking for a thought-provoking account of society from a thought-provoking author, don't miss this one.

In EYE SCREAM Henry lets off enough steam to propel a balloonm around the world in eighty days. The various essays and rants he embarks on tell the truth from the deeply hurt and abandoned perspective, one to which I relate deeply. Anyone who has a heart will respond when Henry goes off the deep end and gets one of his visions, like where he compares humans to automatic vending machines like ATMS, programmed by society to interface with others on a superficial level, perhaps dispensing money (or "love") but at what a price. MEKANIK men and women populate our lives, sometimes we look around and that's all we can see, these fake robotic creatures with hypocritical smiles the color of liver. For most of us, eventually society inserts its slimy tentacles into our brains and cortexes and yanks them tight. So that we become mechanical as they are. If you've seen the movie THEY LIVE then you've seen a good deal of the philosophy Henry lives by.

Henry has a great writing style, filled with puns and anagrams and other signs of good humor, but all this capability is marshalled to one effect, punishing his enemies and clearing his own mind from the terror and humiliation issued him by others. He gives you the inspiration to do this for yourself.

Once again Henry Rollins redefines the term honest human. All I can say is that Rollins writing is so human that it leaves the reader in disgust of himself. Reading Eye Scream is like taking a sniff of your own shoe. The only reason I gave this book only four stars is because somebody other than myself wrote it.

I agree with other reviewers, this stuff is pretty heavy, but I'm not buying that Rollins has actually killed people. If he wanted to make all this horror seem real he should have left out the unbelievable stuff.

I did enjoy reading the book (I liked the long stuff better than the shorter pieces) though it was repetitious at times. I like his take on dating (Mekanik) and his hatred for drugs, guns, and crime is commendable. I will definitely be reading more Rollins in the future.

Well I was really interested in reading some of Rollins's work so I bought Eye Scream. At first I couldn't put the book down and towards the middle I would skip around and now I just pick it up to read a few pages every once in a while. In my opinion I think that Rollins is too repititious in what he is writing and I was finding that he was pretty much saying the same things in different ways. It is an interesting book if you can get past all that. I'm sure one day I will finish it, and I do respect him for his stances on the many issues that does write about in such a raw manner. If you haven't read anything by Rollins before I suggest you do...it will definately bring things to your attention that have never been previously.

I can't remember how I first started becoming a fan of Henry Rollins. The first time I heard him was on Tool's album Undertow.It really didn't actually have much of an impact. Many years later, I began watching his spoken word performances on Youtube. I became a huge fan over night. I really admired him for his well thought out ways of rationalizing items in pop culture. To this day, something he said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict rings true to me this day. His work with the USO is comendable.

Well, I felt it was time to read something he had written. I guess something about this book's word play made me gravitate towards it. As I started reading it, I was pretty disappointed. To me, it's a very inferior product, and as a first Rollins read, falls far short of who he is. Many of the passages read like dead baby jokes, and are about a fourth as interesting. Right now, it's on my toilet, and everytime I take a dump, I'll read a page or two. That's about as much as I can stand at a time, and I'm committed to finishing it through spite.

I'll probably end up reading another Rollins book in the future, but it won't be for a while.

I'm really mixed about this book because as other reviews had stated, it is very repetetive, almost like Henry Rollins picked up a thesaurus and picked different words that mean the same thing just to get the same story told over and over again.

I could never abandon my love for his mind, he's great (not much of a fan of his music) when it comes to telling a story or picking out his feelings and thoughs, but most of his books just seem to repeat the same story.

I do recommend it highly to anyone who likes to read, but this one reads more like a coffee table book than a "lay in bed all day and read" book.

To make a long story short. This book along with 3 others by the same author were the only friends for me in the later part of 2000. I became aware that the girl I was in love with.. the one I wanted to marry, had been cheating on me. These books helped me through a really hard and emotional time in my life. I gave all of the Rollins books I had to friends who (I thought) needed them. ALL of these friends after reading the books knew what I meant when I told them these were books of inspiration for someone who has loss or pain.
ENJOY.

Hank Rollins never ceases to amaze.He's got a band,a publishing company,and a set of amazing works.EYE SCREAM will hurt you,I promise.Curious George this ain't.This book will damage you.Short passages about dealing with humanoids,breaking up with loved ones,and just dealing with the planet are included.If you think you are a rock,you might need to read this one.