2y ago

Henry Darger - Reclusive janitor revealed posthumously to be the author of a 15,145-page fantasy manuscript depicting young children being tortured and massacred

Henry Darger - Wikipedia

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Title is a bit simplistic, this guy’s work contained multitudes
Also he was never a violent man and the subjects of his writing were not exactly supposed to represent real children
This title is so misrepresentative that it borders on being a lie.
- It's clickbait of the worst kind.
  Some of his work is unbelievably impressive, like a 30 foot wide, double sided painting. He has had no training as an artist or in writing (as far as I can see). This guy is one of the most celebrated outsider artists, and there is also a lawsuit in progress from some of his wayyyy distant relatives trying to rob all his trademarks and copyrights he left to his friends.
I mean, this seems more sad than creepy. A lot of it sounds like him processing his childhood trauma, not any desire to torture kids himself.
- And processing through his Catholic faith and culture. Martyrs and gruesome displays of the torturing of saints.
Oh okay some schizo in a cave writes a manuscript about child torture and massacres and 4 billion people worship him but you do it in the 20th century and suddenly now there’s a problem
One idiosyncratic feature of Darger's artwork is that his girl subjects are shown to have penises
They buried the lede on that one.
Really interesting story well summarized in video form by Fredrik Knudsen
The album "Divorce Lawyers I Shaved My Head" was inspired by this book.

9 comments