Blues for Cannibals
Blues for Cannibals
The Notes from Underground
Cultivated from the fierce ideas seeded in Blood Orchid, Blues for Cannibals is an elegiac reflection on death, pain, and a wavering confidence in humanity’s own abilities for self-preservation. After years of reporting on border violence, sex crimes, and the devastation of the land, Bowden struggles to make sense of the many ways in which we destroy ourselves and whether there is any way to survive. Here he confronts a murderer facing execution, sex offenders of the most heinous crimes, a suicidal artist, a prisoner obsessed with painting portraits of presidents, and other people and places that constitute our worst impulses and our worst truths. Painful, heartbreaking, and forewarning, Bowden at once tears us apart and yearns for us to find ourselves back together again.
A thrillingly good writer whose grandness of vision is only heightened by the bleak originality of his voice.
A major literary work of profound social consciousness . . . [Bowden] writes with the intensity of Joan Didion, the voracious hunger of Henry Miller, the feral intelligence and irony of Hunter Thompson, and the wit and outrage of Edward Abbey . . . This is gutsy, soulful, pyrotechnic, significant. And transformative writing.
A vivid, lyrical journey through the American Southwest . . . [but] this book is no travelogue. Rather, it is a visceral exploration of a much darker landscape, that of the human psyche.
Author of many acclaimed books about the American Southwest and US-Mexico border issues, Charles Bowden (1945–2014) was a contributing editor for GQ, Harper’s, Esquire, and Mother Jones and also wrote for the New York Times Book Review, High Country News, and Aperture. His honors included a PEN First Amendment Award, Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction, and the Sidney Hillman Award for outstanding journalism that fosters social and economic justice. He wrote The Red Caddy in 1994.
