Peter Blegvad is een Amerikaanse muzikant en cartoonist wiens werk wordt gekenmerkt door een vreemd surreële en intellectuele humor. Als muzikant is hij een van de oprichters van de avant-popband Slapp Happy en heeft hij talrijke solo- en samenwerkingsalbums uitgebracht. Zijn stripverhaal Leviathan, dat liep van 1992 tot 1999, kreeg veel kritische waardering voor zijn unieke mix van het surrealistische met een coming-of-age-achtig verhaal. Blegvads werk, zowel muzikaal als visueel, verkent de grenzen van humor en vertelling met een onmiskenbare originaliteit.
"Forty-five years ago, when I began doing comparative drawings of things imagined, observed and remembered, I was an illustrator looking for a story to illustrate. Something with a beginning, middle and end. Imagine, Observe, Remember is what I came up with. It began as a way to think about illustration. It became a way of using illustration to think about imagining, observing and remembering. It's a kind of phenomenology project, a way to look at different ways of looking and seeing, using the means at my disposal, using myself as a subject"--Back cover
Welcome to a new strange world. In a dazzling work of graphic fiction, a surreal journey through a wonderland eerily like real life, The Book of Leviathan chronicles an infant's investigations into life's great mysteries. Endowed with a preternatural interest in metaphysics and philosophy, yet as confused as any innocent by the vagaries of adult behavior, little Levi bears the added burden of living in a world that can literally change at the stroke of a pen.Aided by a wise pet ("Cat") and a favorite toy ("Bunny"), Levi encounters a frothing ectoplasmic Hegel and a woefully off-the-mark Freud. In less heady adventures, Levi contemplates why his parents disappear at night (and whether he is wholeheartedly pleased when they return each morning); the regrettable liberties taken with the English language; and the relationship between Bennetton and Pablo Neruda.Peter Blegvad's Book of Leviathan assembles the cream from Levi and Cat's adventures, published in The Independent on Sunday newspaper in the twilight years of the old Millennium. Blegvad's darkly humorous work has been described by Matt Groening as "one of the weirdest things I've ever stared at". Quirky and referential, dark and droll by turn, it follows the faceless baby Levi's journeys into and out of the world. They are escapes, but as some sage once observed, only a jailer would consider the term "escapist" pejorative.
