About Henry Darger

[nostalgebraist]

Hey guys. I'm here today to tell you about a book I read recently, namely Henry Darger: In The Realms Of The Unreal, by John MacGregor. It's a study of Henry Darger, a man I instantly became obsessed with upon encountering his Wikipedia entry sometime last fall

Comments

[alex_gh]

Interesting post! Have you ever read Sherwood Anderson? His book Winesburg, Ohio starts with a discussion of how people can become grotesques, twisted by lonely desires into larger-than-life ciphers. You make a good point that past a certain point the things important to Darger become part of a world where it's impossible for him to communicate with others.

I was just at a play discussion where an English professor explained a character in a tidy summary of the author's narrative style. It was too tidy, like the one-sentence historical motivations of a high school World History class. Freudians name demons to exorcise them but cannot apply this magic to the devil named Freud.

[luinied]

MacGregor hasn't read all of the Realms -- in all likelihood, no one ever will

That sounds like a challenge! ...not one that I'll be taking up, though.

[pendelook]

This is the most fascinating thing I've heard all day.

The idea of the loss of a photograph starting a war strikes me actually as very traditionally mythic. Like the Trojan War being over Helen's kidnapping instead of over, oh, I don't know, whatever mundane things Greek nations usually fought about. It's a single, romantic incident, much smaller in scope than the war itself. Iconic, easier to get hold of and repeat as a cause, emotionally charged, and (no pun intended) picturesque.

[anonymous]

MacGregor is annoying. I like your view on Darger's reasons for the Realms. I have a similar view but also quite different. My view is the same that I am annoyed and disagree with MacGregor. My view is different because I do not think Darger was weird. He is commendable. I believe he did what he did because of what he was doing. He did not need to be/do what "normal" people do because he already had a way to be/do. Anyway, your post is very interesting.

[ksol1460]

You've knocked it over the fence and out of the ball park.

Mac often seems to have the same obsessive "serial killer" fantasies that he accuses Henry of having. He goes out of his way to compare the structures that the Glandelinians have in one of the massacre scenes to something built by -- I forget if it was Gacy or Dahmer -- to commemorate their victims. For no damned good reason other than to show you the imaginary connection in his own mind.

I see Henry as a highly intelligent, passionate and deeply conflicted man who strove all his life to reconcile and transform a very bad temper with his religious faith.

You might want to read Darger's Resources for a bit more background.

Also you might want to check out the Elsie Paroubek article on Wikipedia if you haven't already... I wrote most of this. It is a very Darger-like tale. I tried to do it justice.

Bluejay