Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Viva La Ruocco!, September 22, 2003
Somewhere in the realm of creative and conceptual freedom initiated by both post-structuralist semiotics and Calvin Klein underwear ads comes this second book by performance artist/writer L.A. Ruocco. Her previous work, DOCUMENT ZIPPO (Soft Skull) combined whacked-out illustrations, brilliant paintings and no-holds-barred autobiographical (emphasis on the "graphic") essays for a neo-Burroughs effect, making it ideal tattoo-parlor reading. For this latest opus, XERO, Ms. Ruocco leaves any semblance of such narrative structures far, far behind. And baby, in this book, the behind is a good thing. Better than narrative, here she has focus, and the focus is squarely on her ass, a topic that was, sadly, only touched on in her previous effort. With XERO, Laruocco "cracks it wide open," so to speak. It's like FINNEGANS WAKE if James Joyce dared tread closer the line twixt brilliance and insanity (and if he was also a totally hot chick). With XERO, Laruocco plunges head-first into the crack of language, zipping merrily and cleverly between font shapes and sizes as she puts the pose back in post-modern. Meanwhile, crazy color photographs (by Dean Heady) of the artist in various states of undress and exaltation comment on, translate, and transcend the psychotic semiotic escapades. Highlights include some crazy riffing on Jewish Mysticism, Alcoholics Anonymous, artificial sweeteners, the hole in the donut, and of course, Sex, God, and the Dictionary. If you don't think the author of this inspired tome can find the thousand and one post-structuralist links running through all these words and their meanings and whip them together, use them to tie Derrida to a tree and then shake her derrier in his face before dancing on down the street in spring-coiled platform shoes and a tutu, then you obviously need some learning. A glossy, ultra-slick text packed with great pics and illustrations, XERO is the sort of book you don't need to start at the beginning, or finish at the end. Just pick it up for a few minutes, get your head reeling, and then run for your brand new life.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Creme de Laruocco, October 14, 2003
The writings of Laruocco are endemic of an information age, her analogs I find to represent a hyper-linked culture, one where concepts unfold towards chapters gone and to come, where each individual letter she uses seems to have independant signifigance of the words, and comes with the feeling that the floor has dropped from beneath you with no end in sight. Her self-referentiality will leave you spiraling and lost, yet with a sublime understanding of just what she's trying to get at, she's a mystery religion unto herself. This book defies generalities, contained within are philosophies, spiritualities, dualities, astrologies, analogies; politics, drugs, coffee, insanity, family, the occult, the forbidden, and the mystic, all with brilliant color photographs and collections of drawings.This book is easy to gloss through, it's filled with outright wit and humor, and reads on a semi-linear basis, but fellow literary geniuses and artists, as well as the general sport-readers will find this book worthy of much time and devotion to decrypt the immense depth to the work so as not to miss one shining moment of it all.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
aint no text hydrates better, ain no text reveils/reveals more than LA, December 28, 2005
here is my homemade attempt at reviewing what is above reVIEWs/like a shirt for madonna concert in puff paint/ if you are looking at this before the new year begins, then reading this book would be a way to save yourself from another year in the dark. if it is after the new year, then don't wait any longer to read it. PreSUMing you are reading this, you like books, so you've got a chance. But all your life, you have probably been using words with some thought, but xero awareness of their vitality, ASSuming them to be iron little SOLDiers/soldEARS without souls or feathers or intentions of their own. LA Ruocco has somehow birthed what can only be described as a tremendously disorganized frenzy of thought/ picture a sky ravaged by comets/ basically, an exquisite wreckage of language, and on each page there are multiple moments when: when hunter s. thompson (may his gonzo genious requies in pacem /or Vegas) shot out the phrase "Buy the ticket, Take the Ride" he was talking about this.
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