Teddy Kristiansen

Heisenberg book 2

2011-10-03T07:55:00.000-07:00

Tadaaaa....Book 2 came from printer today and is in stores in 3 weeks:-)
Book 2 is called: Af Olafur Kjartanssons Optegnelser om den skjulte skrift( From Olafur Kjartanssons notes about the hidden/invisible writings typography/signs) and is written by Oscar K like the first Heisenberg book:-)

T

2011-09-07T00:38:00.001-07:00

New book coming out in October from publisher Fahrenheit.
Part Two of "Heisenberg" Trilogy with Oscar K.

2011-07-07T13:14:00.001-07:00

Unused Batman page from project that never got of the ground.

One more from Finnish Tango

2011-03-11T05:08:00.000-08:00

:-)

T

FINNISH TANGO

2011-03-10T02:18:00.001-08:00

A few pages from book FINNISH TANGO written by Oscar K.

Unused pages from Heisenberg

2011-02-08T01:44:00.001-08:00

Here are a few of the pages that we edited out of the final version of or HEISENBERG graphic novel, in the process of asking ourselves, WHY is it there? Does it bring something to the text, or is it not bringing anything? If not other than look pretty, out it goes.
Those were the rules we set ourselves:-)

Piggy book

2011-01-21T05:52:00.000-08:00

Piggy book written by my dear wife, Hope and writer Mark Shulman:-)

OldOld 24 hour comicbook:-)

2011-01-04T06:58:00.001-08:00

Made in 1992 in one full day(actually I think it was 22 hours).
Great crack it was...dont think I could do it now? Maybe one should try(after I finish all my other projects?

T

Here it is:

ThatsMyDad_24HourComic1992

2010-12-10T01:51:00.000-08:00

So time for a 2011 dance:-)

http://fuldans.se/?v=tcuxoauzkf

Merry Christmas

2010-12-10T01:49:00.000-08:00

All the best for Christmas and 2011:-)

BogForum (Book Fair)

2010-11-10T02:22:00.000-08:00

Will be attending Forum Book fair saturday friday 13 nov.
I will be at publisher Fahrenheit stand 040, signing with Oskar K at 15-16.
Hope to see you there:-)

Make Heisenberg book your Christmas present to ALL your uncles and aunts:-)

Yet another wonderful review

2010-11-04T05:10:00.000-07:00

Anmeldelse: Eller Gensyn med Heisenberg
Af Redaktionen | Udgivet: 3. november 2010

Eller Gensyn med Heisenberg
Oscar K. & Teddy Kristiansen
Graphic Novel

Af Vibe Kiil

At kalde Eller Gensyn med Heisenberg for et ambitiøst projekt er noget nær en underdrivelse. Det er en svimlende tour de force i et univers, hvor tider, steder og hændelser falder ind over hinanden i tilsyneladende tilfældig rækkefølge. De dukker op og forsvinder; erindres nu, men sker først engang i fremtiden. Det samme gør sig gældende for karaktererne, der ikke blot i kraft af tidsopløsningen dukker op hid og did, men også i deres relationer er filtret ind i hinanden i mere eller mindre usunde og komplicerede forhold. De elsker hinanden og har affærer på kryds og tværs – i et mærkværdigt forsøg på at agere i en eksistens, der er i opløsning.

Handlingen udspiller sig på øen Presenca, der har 11 tidszoner, og hvis økonomi på Borges-agtig vis afhænger af lotterier, der udgør hovedparten af virkeligheden. Men folk vil hellere gå i fængsel, end at betale bøden ved at trække et ulykkesnummer. Vinderne kan ikke få udbetalt deres præmier – virkeligheden vakler.Og Presenca rammes af Rystelsen, hvorefter alt sættes i skred.

Eller Gensyn med Heisenberg er en graphic novel i termens egentligste forstand. Teddy Kristiansens smukke illustrationer bevæger sig ikke udelukkende med teksten. De understøtter og kontrasterer den. De lægger sig smukt bag teksten men lader sig ikke overtage. Langsomt men sikkert bliver også illustrationerne ofre for den eskalerende ophugning og opløsning. Fra fuldfærdige billeder over skitser til smadrede spejlinger – virkeligheden skæres op og stykkes forskudt sammen. Den bliver en forvredet genkendelighed.

Det er eksistensens grundvilkår og mulighed, der sættes på spil. Primært italesat af forfatteren og landmåleren, der diskuterer tilfældighed versus determinisme, mens de gen-genspiller gamle skakpartier. Deres dialog er fastlagt men brydes af forfatteren for at tale om kvinderne. Bruddet med det forventede får dog ikke verden til at eks- eller implodere men giver anledning til et pludseligt nærvær.

Bruddet er lavmælt men mærkbart. Faktisk sigende for hele værket. Det er store spørgsmål og tungtvejende referencer, der udgør fortællingen, men det er ikke med store armbevægelser og højtråbende udmeldinger. Erkendelser, handlinger og overvejelser efterlader dybe spor og får store konsekvenser – og gør herved et ubønhørligt indtryk på læseren – i samme stil som illustrationerne. De er dragende i deres frostbidte, observerende, mennesketomme og menneskefjerne fremstilling af værkets blik. Brydningerne og rystelserne er mærkbare. De rammer grundvolden. De stilles til skue forrest på scenekanten uden at blive udstillet og udbasuneret. Det er stor kunst – både narrativt og ikke mindst visuelt – og en landvinding inden the graphic novel.

Link

Heisenberg to printer for 2nd print

2010-10-18T05:00:00.000-07:00

First print of Heisenberg book sold out:-)

Twin books

2010-10-08T01:46:00.000-07:00

Physics:-)

Quantum book (A moment in the life of Quantum Sorensen)

2010-10-08T01:32:00.000-07:00

A moment in the life of Quantum Sorensen( Et øjeblik i Kvante Sørensens liv) book is back from printer.
Another book made with Oscar K:-)
Yet another book with physics.

T

Workshop at Viborg Animation School

2010-09-17T00:48:00.000-07:00

http://animwork.dk/en/events.asp?AjrDcmntId=1535

Heisenberg back from printer:-)

2010-09-17T00:13:00.000-07:00

My book with writer Oscar K."Gensyn with Heisenberg"(Heisenberg revisited) is back from the printer going in stores tuesday 21 september.

2010-07-12T01:16:00.000-07:00

Heisenberg gone to printer:-)

T

This is TOO great

2009-11-17T05:22:00.001-08:00

http://muhrgalleri.area81.se/#11.0

The BoneMan

2009-11-17T05:09:00.000-08:00

Yet another picture book in the works hopefully coming.

T

Testing posterous

2009-10-30T03:26:00.000-07:00

Testing posterous to photoblog more often.

here it is...http://teddykristiansen.posterous.com/

Finish Tango

2009-10-22T03:33:00.000-07:00

Page from Finish Tango, a childrens book with Ole Dalgaard.

T

Newer stuff

2009-08-12T00:57:00.000-07:00

Some more from upcoming kiddie book.

LOTS of comic work is also coming soon.Working away and will show soon.

T

Just for fun

2009-08-10T04:48:00.000-07:00

Found this older Batman drawing fram Batman B/W I had colored.

T

And site up again

2009-06-16T02:37:00.000-07:00

Site up again but not much uploaded...coming soon...

T

Site will be down for a few days

2009-06-08T07:50:00.000-07:00

teddykristiansen.dk will be down for a few days...will try something new :-)

Hugo

2009-06-02T23:37:00.000-07:00

Doing work on a lovely picture book called HUGO AND HOLGER, with writer Oscar K.
A little teaser :-)

T

Homepage FINALLY up again....

2009-01-11T15:46:00.001-08:00

Homepage here.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

2008-12-22T11:03:00.000-08:00

To all of you.

T

frankenweenie part I

2008-12-17T01:33:00.001-08:00

Its Christmas soon....

T

frankenweenie part II

2008-12-17T01:32:00.001-08:00

2008-12-04T02:07:00.000-08:00

In Paris working in a small studio in a backyard.

This is the place.

Always funny to be in another country and working.

Notice Cat in window.....is sitting there every day. :-)

T

Posy Simmonds Interview

2008-10-25T11:45:00.000-07:00

Guardian brings a great little interview with Posy Simmonds here.

Love the studio chaos.

Bloom

2008-10-12T12:39:00.000-07:00

Brian Eno has created the most fantastic unique iphone app with Peter Chilvers, an app called "Bloom", it is "part instrument, part composition and part beautiful artwork."
I bought it for my iphone and I can only say its a must have...

T

The Road...again...

2008-09-14T13:59:00.000-07:00

Just saw these images from the film THE ROAD....

Hope the film will do justice to the book.
Look forward to see this as well.

T

Varmints

2008-09-08T15:10:00.000-07:00

Just saw that a NEW film by Marc Craste is coming out....cant wait to see it....VARMINTS.

It is based on the picture book he made with Helen Ward.

"This little piece of wilderness was taken to a safer place and then all their hopes and wishes took to the air, like new seeds upon the wind. The sound of bees returned, and once more, the sound of the wind in the wiry grass … in the high blue sky."

T
:-)

Penelope Fitzgerald

2008-08-28T06:41:00.000-07:00

Here is a small interview made around the recent publication of her letters.

Interview from BBC.

T
Also....DO read Julian Barnes article on the Letters Collection.

Cormac McCcarthy interview

2008-08-27T00:24:00.000-07:00

Loved THE ROAD and here is an interview.

T

Junot Diaz

2008-08-04T05:57:00.000-07:00

Interview with Junot Diaz.Reding his novel at the moment and love it.

Here.

T

Love this kind of discoveries.

2008-07-09T16:06:00.000-07:00

From THE GUARDIAN:

Scholars of the 20th-century writer Franz Kafka were in a state of suspense last night at the news that the remains of his estate, which have been hoarded in a Tel Aviv flat for decades, may soon be revealed.
Previously unseen documents, postcards, sketches and personal belongings of the Czech-Jewish writer, who wrote in German, have been gathering dust in the home of Esther Hoffe, the former secretary of Kafka's friend and executor Max Brod since his death in 1968. Hoffe's refusal to relinquish the documents led to a literary game of cat and mouse between her and the state of Israel, under pressure from the country's cultural elite, which on one occasion even led to her arrest on suspicion of smuggling Kafka's writings out of the country.

Now, following her death at the age of 101, Kafka lovers hope the row may have come to an end. Researchers are ready to pounce on the contents of Hoffe's flat, fully expecting the items will throw new light on the mysterious writer who died at the age of 41, as well as his friendship with Brod, his greatest champion.
But authorities in Tel Aviv have warned that the papers, with their high sulphuric acid content, may have stood up poorly to conditions in Hoffe's damp flat in the centre of Tel Aviv and to the hordes of cats and dogs which she kept until two years ago when health inspectors intervened after neighbours complained about the stench.

The items have a complex provenance reaching back to 1924, when Kafka died of tuberculosis in Vienna. Brod took over Kafka's estate, including several unpublished manuscripts, and famously defied his friend's instructions to burn them. In 1939, the night before the Nazis entered Prague, Brod fled the city with two suitcases containing what he could of the estate. He escaped via Romania to Palestine, later moving the archive to the safety of Switzerland during the Suez crisis in 1956.

In 1961 he gave most of the manuscripts to the Bodleian library at Oxford University at the request of Kafka's heirs, but kept hold of The Trial because he said it had been a gift to him from Kafka. Nearly 30 years later, Hoffe sold the manuscript of Kafka's novel for a record £1m at Sotheby's.

Few doubt that there are other treasures waiting to be found, due to tantalising utterances Hoffe made over the years about Brod's estate.

On one occasion, at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion airport, Hoffe was arrested on suspicion of illegally smuggling valuable archive material out of the country. Police found letters by Kafka as well as his travel journal in her luggage. Following that incident she allowed employees from Israel's state archive to catalogue the items she had, but was accused of holding back key documents.

Repeated attempts by academics to persuade her to give the items in her possession to the national library in Jerusalem failed.

The German publisher Artemis and Winkler paid Hoffe a five-figure advance for Brod's diaries in the 1980s, but has still to receive them. Hoffe let it be known in 1993 that she had transferred them to a bank vault in Tel Aviv to which she is still believed to have had access when she died. The legal battle between the publisher and her heirs is still in progress.

"Esther was always afraid that someone would steal these materials from her," Avital Ben Horin, a close friend of Brod's, told Ha'aretz, the Tel Aviv daily. Describing Hoffe's flat as an "unsuitable" location for the estate because of Tel Aviv's humidity, she added: "But it was impossible to convince her".

Puzzle

Commentators have remarked that the story could have stemmed from Kafka's own pen. Kafka, the man still considered a literary puzzle 84 years after his death, "is causing the world to hold its breath," Germany's Die Welt newspaper wrote. Ha'aretz, which broke the story, called it "Kafkaesque", turning to the very phrase inspired by Kafka's own writings to describe something which is elusive and menacingly complex.

Much to the frustration of academics, archivists and the Israeli government, Hoffe, who became Brod's lover following the death of his wife, was said to have jealously clung to the papers which Brod left to her in his will because of her wish to protect intimate details of Brod's life. It will now be up to her septuagenarian daughters, Ruth and Hava, to decide on the estate's fate. But according to reports, Israeli authorities have indicated their willingness to intervene to save what is considered an invaluable piece of Jewish cultural heritage.

"This is really very exciting, particularly if there are documents left that have not yet been published," said Professor Freddie Rokem, a lecturer in theatre arts at Tel Aviv University, who organised a conference to honour Brod on his 100th anniversary in 1984. "Hoffe more or less inherited the suitcase of Kafka papers from Brod. The question is whether she knew how much it was worth from the beginning, or did she really only learn its true value later on?"

Josef Cermak, author of several books on Kafka, said he hoped the release of the items might help clear up quarrels in the literary world in this, the 125th anniversary of his birth, which is being marked with events around the globe.

"There are so many mistruths which have been written about Kafka. For academic purposes it is crucial that we get to see what the unpredictable Miss Hoffe has kept from us for so long."

Profile

Franz Kafka was born in Prague in 1883 into a middle-class Jewish family. His most famous novel, The Trial, published in 1925, became a symbol of 20th-century totalitarianism and gave birth to the word "Kafkaesque", used to describe everything from entrapment in bureaucracy to the absurdity of life. His other works included The Metamorphosis (1915) and The Castle (1926). The themes of alienation, persecution, and hopelessness run through his writing, which attracted little attention until after his death in 1924 from tuberculosis in a sanitorium near Vienna, aged 41.

Blindness (2008) Trailer 2

2008-07-07T14:21:00.001-07:00

Finally more....Maybe a re-re-read of the novel this summer....

T

2008-07-02T12:38:00.001-07:00

Once, when he was asked a question about the idea, meaning of one of his novels, J.M.Coetzee answered:

"I would not wish to deny you your reading."

How wonderful and clever I find this.
Why do we always want to know all aspects of the intention or the way the story is told.
There would be nothing left for the reader to discover and experience in and from his/hers own reading.

How lovely and clear Mr. Coetzee. Thank you.

T

Sigur Ros - Gobbledigook

2008-06-26T03:36:00.001-07:00

Sigur Ros - Gobbledigook
Video sendt af mikropikol

New cool album from Sigur Ros.
Summer is here.........................
You can buy the album at their site in 320 kpbs.

T

While....

2008-06-25T04:12:00.000-07:00

While on my last stint on GENIUS (to be published 2009) I have to post something, so here are something I did for SOLEIL last year, all published this year.

T

Add-ons to the summer reading list:
Lars Saabye Christensen: Half Brother + shortstories.
Knut Hamsun:Hunger
Karen Blixen:Babettes Feast.

More Penelope Fitzgerald

2008-06-16T13:50:00.000-07:00

I never expected any more stories from one of my favorite authors, beyond the books my bookshelf contains, since she passed away in april 2000.
I have been looking foreward to the collection of her letters due out this autumn, and had settled my mind with yet another glimpse of her lovely words, when out of the blue,we are blessed with 3 unpublished short stories.
What a delight.
These are old stories from the days before she published her first book, but all told with her touch of light humour.

You will find these here.

Here.

And here.

I, for one will tug myself into my bed and be reading until my eyes will call me to sleep.

T

Jose Saramago watches Blindness (english subtitles)

2008-06-12T14:30:00.001-07:00

Ahhhh....dying to see this film....can only be a master piece.

T

Summer Reading list?????

2008-06-06T02:19:00.001-07:00

As summer is here , its the usual dilemma of the reading list for the summer for me.

Here are the list so far:

Daniel Kehlmann:Me and Kaminski
Miguel de Cervantes: Don Quixote
Alessandro Baricco: This History
Roberto Bolano: 2666 (IF I can get a hold of a copy???)
Maybe some re-reading of Saramago...

T

Coming up...

2008-05-29T08:05:00.000-07:00

Cant wait for this to be in my hands...love his books..more about the great Myths series here.

T

Roald Dahls shed.

2008-05-28T08:08:00.000-07:00

Nice little article about Roald Dahl´s shed where he worked, by Quentin Blake in The Guardian today.

T

komiks.dk

2008-05-26T00:17:00.000-07:00

I will be at Danish comic festival this weekend (May 31, june 1)komiks.dk attending only sunday.

Lots of cool international guest will attend, so if If you are in the area, please pass by.

See list here.

Hope to see you there.

T

Reading these days:Enrique Vila-Matas: Den Vertikale reisen ( The Vertical Journey )
Daniel Kehlmann: Me and Kaminski

Sketch fun

2008-05-22T02:59:00.000-07:00

Another sketch ...just playing around....going over old files(cleaning harddisk up) and found this....

T

Bulgakov....again...

2008-05-14T14:29:00.000-07:00

After reading MASTER AND MARGARITA, which I found fantastic, its on to HEART OF A DOG.

Found this intro written by James Meek , for a new Penguin edition:

On March 7 1925, a group of about 50 writers and critics, at least one of them a secret police informer, gathered in a Moscow apartment to hear an ambitious 33-year-old, Mikhail Bulgakov, read the first part of his new, unpublished novel. Bulgakov's previous work, The Fatal Eggs, had been popular with the public, but it infuriated the Bolshevik rulers of the recently created Soviet Union, who took it - rightly - for a satirical attack, disguised as science fiction, on communism in practice.

The bulk of the audience seem to have hoped that Bulgakov's new novel, A Dog's Heart, would similarly mock the rickety state of affairs that Vladimir Lenin's heirs had inherited. It did. Bulgakov's tale of a professor who implants the sexual organs and pituitary gland of an evil man into a good mongrel, creating a loutish man-hound who fits with ease into communist society, went down well. The anonymous informer's outraged report to his masters describes how one passage, where the professor complains that the Russian revolution coincided with the theft of galoshes from the communal hallway, provoked "deafening laughter".
It is possible that Bulgakov not only knew there was a police informer in the audience, but may have been able to see who it was. The spy's report, filed a few days later to the Soviet secret police department of the era, OGPU, contains such an accurate transcription of parts of A Dog's Heart that he must have been scribbling notes at high speed, and the pompousness of his denunciation suggests that he would have been conspicuous by his straight face.

In the embryonic USSR, the line between literary criticism and repression was blurring. Ultimately, it was GlavLit, the Soviet censor, that would decide the fate of A Dog's Heart. But the police spy had an influence, and his review was hostile. "Bulgakov hates and despises the Soviet regime," he wrote. "Soviet power has a true, stern and clear-seeing guardian in GlavLit, and as long as its opinion coincides with mine, this book will never see the light of day."

The spy was not disappointed. Two months after the readings, the prospective publishers, Nedra, wrote to Bulgakov, returning the work and telling him that even a rewrite wouldn't save it. The following year, OGPU raided Bulgakov's flat and seized the manuscript. It was returned in 1929, but it was not until 1987, more than 60 years after Bulgakov finished it and almost half a century after the writer died, that the book was published in Russia.

For Russians, A Dog's Heart stands high among Bulgakov's prose works, alongside his later novel The Master and Margarita and his earlier, autobiographical account of civil-war Kiev, The White Guard. Partly this is because of Vladimir Bortko's superb 1988 film of the book, a masterpiece of late Soviet cinema. The other reason A Dog's Heart was embraced when censorship was relaxed was that Soviet culture had barely changed. The society Bulgakov mocked was bitter-sweetly familiar to Russians.

A Dog's Heart seemed fresh six decades after Bulgakov described the travails of disparate households crammed into apartment buildings seized from the wealthy, because people were still crammed into the same apartment buildings, barely renovated in all that time. Sixty years on, Pravda was still indigestible. Senior medical consultants were still, like Professor Preobrazhensky, using the leverage of their rare skills to gain or keep material advantages - big flats, for instance - from a corrupt communist leadership. Essential goods were still in short supply.

At the same time, some of the moments Bulgakov describes reflect an even greater, deeper continuity. He has a fascination with the rituals of the Russian table - with the proper and improper imbibing of vodka and the consumption of zakuski, the snacks to be served with spirits. That, together with the remarkable fact that, after a brief introductory passage where the homeless mongrel roams a bleak, snowbound Moscow, all the action of the book takes place inside a single flat, taps into an intense sense, both Bulgakovian and Russian, of the dining table as refuge. Outside there would be tyrants, wolves and 20 degrees of frost; inside there would be a bubble of warmth and yellow light, a last redoubt of cheer and wise, witty, fatalistic talk.

Bulgakov was not merely a brilliant observer of what was going on around him but had an uncanny ability to pick out the particular manifestations of folly and discord which would set the tone of the era to follow. His portrayal of the scientists in the book - Professor Filipp Filippovich Preobrazhensky and his assistant, Dr Bormenthal - is double-edged. Preobrazhensky, based on Bulgakov's uncle, a Moscow gynaecologist, stands up for the values of an old-fashioned gentleman-intellectual against the encroaching communists. Bulgakov portrays him sympathetically, though at the same time as vain, self-centred, pandering to the frivolous medical demands of the new elite and oblivious to any notion that his privileged life might have been partly inherited and not earned. He and Bormenthal and even their servants are shown as incipient victims of a communism which claims to be about building a new world but is, in fact, about plunder and class revenge.

When the time comes to operate on the dog, however, Preobrazhensky and Bormenthal switch to representing a different kind of bourgeois intellectual - those like Trotsky and Lenin who believed that in Karl Marx they had found a scientific system which could be imposed on human beings, and proceeded to carry out a great experiment in the form of a revolution, with the Russian people as the subject, and Russia as the laboratory.

In six extraordinary pages, the entire atmosphere of the book alters, as Bulgakov puts all his experience as a young war surgeon at the disposal of his novelistic skills. The urbanity of the original Preobrazhensky disappears; the professor is transformed into a ruthless butcher, motivated as much by curiosity and ego as by concern for the future of humankind. He and his assistant thus represent the bourgeois intellectual as victim of the revolution - like Bulgakov himself, their property, their material and cultural inheritance, their freedom of expression and inquiry, their status, their contribution to society, and their lives all under threat - as well as the very bourgeois intellectuals who brought about that revolution in the first place.

On the face of it, A Dog's Heart looks like an act of extreme courage, if not recklessness. Bulgakov was exposed. He was a member of the officially reviled bourgeois class. His foppish dress by Bolshevik standards - the bow ties, the monocle - didn't help. The voice of his published writings was of a patriot who believed Russia had taken a wrong turning in 1917, and believed it was his duty to do something about it. He was aware that the Soviet authorities had heard him, knew that they were being mocked and did not like it. If The White Guard offered the comfort to the Kremlin of representing an elegy for the death of middle-class tsarist Russia, The Fatal Eggs and A Dog's Heart seemed to propose terminal flaws in their own, communist project.

I believe Bulgakov was brave, but not quite so reckless as it might seem from the perspective of the 21st century. In early 1925, he had good reason to imagine that his position was more secure, and that of the Soviet authorities weaker, than we now know was the case. Communist Russia was not yet eight years old. Its rulers, its supporters and its opponents had no way of knowing whether it would survive in anything like the form its founders had hoped for. On the contrary, it seemed to be slipping back towards capitalism, even as it retained a degree of political freedom. Lenin, the captain of the revolution, had died the previous year, and no one had emerged from the top rank of Bolsheviks to take his place. Josef Stalin, who would come to toy personally with Bulgakov's life and career, was merely one of a group of contenders for a share of power, and not the best known. There was censorship, arrests and deportations, but not wholesale repression. A degree of dissent was tolerated. Travel abroad was still possible.

Lenin himself had accepted, in 1921, that Russia was not ready for full-on Marxism, and the communists relaxed the rules to allow some entrepreneurial activity. It was this society, half-capitalist, half-socialist, more authoritarian than totalitarian, ruined and rebuilding, full of chancers on the make, charged with energy and creativity after seven years of war and famine, which forms the background to A Dog's Heart

Bulgakov's letters from the period are full of this sense of hope and despair mixed together. There is unhappiness there, but also optimism, for the finite nature of the Soviet system seemed to hang within reach in a way that it no longer would once Stalin's reign of terror took hold. It would be wrong to assume, in other words, that Bulgakov thought of himself as a candidate for literary martyrdom in 1925. It is entirely likely that he harboured real hopes of being able to say one day that he had done his bit to push communist Russia to an early grave.

Bulgakov builds a complex structure under the surface to make his short narrative work. His willingness to shift perspective and modes of narration is characteristic of his best work, foreshadowed in The White Guard and fully realised in The Master and Margarita. A Dog's Heart contains buds of three of the four intertwined strands of his later masterpiece, the only one missing being the strand of sacrificial love between the title characters; it has the same exquisite scenes of Gogolian-Chekhovian buffoonery between weak, greedy, foolish characters, written with compassionate mockery; the same delight in the detail of the fantastical; and, though less obviously, the same theme of blasphemy.

Blasphemy, in the Bulgakovian sense, means not only denial of the authority of God, although it certainly does mean that. It also means insufficient humility in the face of the mysteries of nature. Bulgakov is not so reactionary as to believe in a divine or natural order of things which cannot be altered. He was a doctor, after all; he loved the rush of modernity and its machines. The message of A Dog's Heart is that man must recognise the existence of limits to his powers; that there are realms, divine and natural, where he cannot tread without the danger of creating something blasphemous and unnatural - without carrying out a Satanic act. This idea was anathema to the communists, whose entire programme was based on the notion that God did not exist, and that nature was infinitely plastic - that they could create a new, better man.

Only a handful of people knew of the existence of A Dog's Heart and The Master and Margarita until long after Bulgakov died in 1940. It can be said that he anticipated Orwell and his generation, but not that he influenced them, or met them. The extraordinary power of Bulgakov's works, enabling them to be thawed out, as it were, and still have the freshness to influence the writers of the late 20th century, is a tribute to his brilliance.

Many have remarked on the foresight Bulgakov shows in A Dog's Heart. By the end the professor is warning that his creation is more dangerous than ridiculous; that he has created something diabolical in its savagery. Bulgakov seems to anticipate the bloody, fratricidal war which was about to begin within the Soviet communist party, which would end with Stalin triumphant.

Foresight has its limits. The great secret of Stalin's success was that he always managed to be more wicked than anyone in Russia imagined a leader could be. He operated in his own free space of evil beyond the most ridiculous conspiracy theory, let alone the imagination of the most imaginative of writers.

For a novelist who takes as his theme the future woes of his country, the act of prophecy has two parts: the imaginative construction of a likely future, and a kind of charm against that future actually coming about. The two exclude each other. If the prophecy fails to come true, the writer may comfort himself with the thought that his writing formed part of the reason his society was able to evade its fulfilment. In Bulgakov's case, the novelist's success as a prophet signified his doom as a novelist within his lifetime.

· This is from the introduction to a new edition of A Dog's Heart, to be published next month by Penguin.

Unused SOLO book cover

2008-05-04T23:16:00.000-07:00

Mark Chiarello and meself thought it best to have a DC character on the cover so Deadman was the final cover.
This one was added as a black/white image on the inner sleeve though, but here is the colour version.
This one belongs to the story ICE.

Need to make another story in the cold cold desolate ice.

T

Signing in FARAOS CIGARER

2008-04-29T13:49:00.000-07:00

I will be signing in the comic shop Faraos Cigarer in Copenhagen, friday 2 may for 15.30-17.00.

Den Røde Dagbog(Carnet Rouge) is out in Danish so hope to see you there.

(Image from Swallow 4 which also should be out now)

Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press (Pt. 1of6)

2008-04-22T03:50:00.001-07:00

Here is a great BBC series about Gutenberg split in to 6 parts....
enjoy.

T

Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press (Pt. 2of6)

2008-04-22T03:49:00.001-07:00

Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press (Pt. 3of6)

2008-04-22T03:48:00.001-07:00

Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press (Pt. 4of6)

2008-04-22T03:46:00.001-07:00

Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press (Pt. 5of6)

2008-04-22T03:45:00.003-07:00

Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press (Pt. 6of6)

2008-04-22T03:45:00.001-07:00

Blindness 2008 Teaser Trailer {True-HD}

2008-04-07T05:34:00.001-07:00

Blindness 2008 Teaser

2008-04-07T05:10:00.001-07:00

Here is a film I have waiting to see.I have read the book a couple of times and LOVE it.
Saramago is one of my FAVORITE authors who writes with humour and in this book, with horror.
Fernando Meirelles is a fantastic director and this teaser looks superb.
His adation of The Constant Gardener was brilliant.
This is is one of the films I have been waiting for with anticipation.
I have been following his blog about his making of the film with joy.A true insight to filmmaking.
Links to english translations to some of Meirelles blog entries.

1

2

13

Summaries of post 1-10

Enjoy
T

Brilliant little film

2008-04-03T03:07:00.000-07:00

A brilliant older short film.I hadnt seen this before.Nice told.

Watch it here.

First review

2008-04-03T01:19:00.000-07:00

The first review of the Danish edition of Carnet Rouge (Red Diary).

Out of the Book Films: Ian McEwan (Trailer)

2008-03-24T14:45:00.001-07:00

So much enjoyed this book, and always look foreward to what is up next from his side.
GO read....

T

Penelope Fitzgerald and Danish album FINALLY..

2008-03-17T15:37:00.000-07:00

End of May will see the publication of a LETTERS collection from one of my favorite authors, Penelope Fitzgerald.
The Collection is called SO I HAVE THOUGHT OF YOU, and I cant wait to read this.
Her writing is so condensed and precise, filled with a wonderful understated humor.Simply a pure delight to read.
HIGHLY recommended.

Finally my French album(Carnet Rouge) will be out in Danish in April, titled Den Røde Dagbog (The Red Diary).

Baricco

2008-03-05T03:32:00.000-08:00

I love Alessandro Baricco´s novels, but think that the few film adaptions that have been made, havent managed to capture the atmosphere, mood and tone and the understated humour of his novels, but this trailer of his upcoming film SEEMS to have it.

Look forward to this later this year.

T

David Bowie - heroes - original video 1977

2008-03-04T05:36:00.001-08:00

And of course Bowie....nostalgia...a wonderful dream country.

Peter Murphy Cuts You Up (Best Quality!)

2008-03-04T05:06:00.001-08:00

Got a little nostalgic and you can of course find everything at youtube..the perfect playlist for a party.
So listened to the great album DEEP by Peter Murphy ex Bauhaus singer...great great album.Cool voice.

Pretty cool if this is the future...

2008-02-26T04:26:00.000-08:00

Great stuff.......

2008-02-22T04:37:00.000-08:00

Madame Tutli-Putli looks really great and inspiring.

Go explore their page here.

T

Living in Denmark....

2008-02-21T03:26:00.000-08:00

...brings you early Paul Auster books....
We will be blessed with "Man in The Dark" here in 2 weeks(march), which only see US and UK publication in August....

" Man in the Dark" is about war and family, he says. "It's a short novel, it all takes place in one night, a man lying in bed, making up stories, remembering his life.

"It's a very emotional work, and I don't really know what to think of it right now. . . . I poured a lot of my guts into this one."

News that I look forward to....
T

Blogging

2008-02-18T04:35:00.000-08:00

Bloggin at FirstSecondBooks today...go check...

Poster for Danish Comic Festval in june

2008-02-15T08:37:00.000-08:00

Here is a poster I have done for upcoming Danish Comic Festival.
Model is an ongoing character that is the symbol of the festival.

T

THREE SHADOWS

2008-02-14T08:52:00.000-08:00

NYMag have an excerpt of Cyril Pedrosa´s Three Shadows, that FirstSecondBooks are publishing...A book I think looks very interesting and makes me want to read.....

T

You´ll find it here.

Never released Borges interview.

2008-02-12T07:02:00.000-08:00

You´ll find it here.

T

Coraline - Sneak Preview TRUE-HD

2008-02-11T06:44:00.001-08:00

Well I look forward to this one.....big time...
T

Terrible blogger

2008-01-30T04:18:00.000-08:00

Been to busy working hard on finishing GENIUS book(written by Mr.good old Seagle), and my heads been spinning on my book after this.
There is part 2 of the War trilogy to do and also an idea with the Romantic poets(Byron,Shelley and so on).
And must get some more thoughts down, on my science/explorer idea....time time time.....
We´ll see what will come first.

Will upload and blog more very soon, but have to focus on GENIUS first.

T

Recommended book:Andrea Barrett:The Air We Breathe

2008-01-08T05:30:00.000-08:00

Tv series I am looking forward to see.Fab novel, so I hope for a just as fab tvseries.....we´ll see.
Good old Cowboy and indian story....

2008-01-08T03:27:00.000-08:00

Found this wonderful site today.
GO check.

2007-12-17T06:52:00.000-08:00

Have been collecting drawings and stuff for fantastic Ashley Wood´s Swallow 4.
Did a remix and translation of an old story, which was great fun to do.Judge yourself.Story is 6 pages in all.

I thank Ash for asking me to be part of this amazing collection.

Also,a Spanish and a Danish version of Carnet Rouge is coming out soon.
Working hard so I can finish GENIUS with my old friend Mr.Seagle for Firstsecondbooks in february, so lots of stuff on its way.

Festival

2007-11-13T23:36:00.000-08:00

Will be at FESTIVAL DE BOREALES this weekend(17-18 november), so if you are in the near, please come.Program is here.

Page is from book 2 of my war trilogy (Carnet Rouge book One).
Have loads of pages from my new book GENIUS with STEVE SEAGLE, but will wait a while before I can blog a few of them.

A Tribute To The Poet Ted Hughes

2007-11-05T23:50:00.001-08:00

A collection of his letters have just been published.
Seems like a must for Christmas.

Finally...

2007-11-05T06:54:00.000-08:00

Finally a new Posy Simmonds book:TAMARA DREW
Just ordered it and are dying to read it.

She is a Master storyteller and her books are HIGHLY recommended.

The Telegraph have a longer interview with her here.

Big Man

2007-10-29T03:01:00.000-07:00

Cav Bøgelund from Danish film school is making his graduation film and has made a working blog, with his brotherinarms, Andreas Monty who has made these cool designs for the film.
Looks great I think and look forward to see it finished.

Go check out

Humans!

2007-10-17T00:48:00.001-07:00

Great little film about HUMANS!!!!!!!

New album...

2007-10-10T01:28:00.000-07:00

Follow link regarding Sigur Ros new album....super cool.....November release...

Sigur Ros - Saeglopur

2007-10-10T01:13:00.001-07:00

And one more...

Sigur Rós

2007-10-10T01:10:00.001-07:00

The lovely Sigur Ros.
Re-reading Sjón´s Shadow Baldur (Skygge Baldur) and got in Icelandic mood again.Dont get why this book never have been published in english?Winner of Nordic Literature 2005 and fabulous.

Talk Talk - I believe in you

2007-10-09T05:19:00.001-07:00

Mark Hollis fantastic voice...

Talk Talk - Life's what you make it

2007-10-09T05:11:00.001-07:00

Cool good old Talk Talk...pity we will have no more from them anymore.Mark Hollis made a great (really great) solo album 7-8 years ago, and since then...nothing...I want more...

Work...

2007-10-03T08:01:00.000-07:00

While working full pace on GENIUS book with Seagle, I have done some work on 2 short stories for Soleil.
Se more at this Newsarama link.

M is for Magic

2007-09-27T23:10:00.000-07:00

Just saw HarperCollins had made this little site for M is for Magic.

sol seppy Slo Fuzz

2007-09-07T06:05:00.001-07:00

Just found Sol Seppy...was playing support for Sparklehorse(that I love to listen to).Reminds a bit of Elizabeth Fraser...great stuff...

Depeche Mode - Precious

2007-09-07T05:36:00.001-07:00

Love Depeche....

(2008) Be Kind, Rewind Trailer

2007-09-06T02:38:00.001-07:00

(Science of Sleep)Michel Gondry´s next film with Jack Black...looks great.

Mazzy Star -

2007-09-05T07:28:00.001-07:00

Good old Hope Sandoval and Mazzy Star...wish they would do more albums...
Always a delight...

Another page from old Unpublished stuff....

2007-09-04T04:07:00.000-07:00

Here is the first page of old story(see earlier post).
I liked to push myself in colours then, and then wanted to go more mute and pale as time passed.

Idea have been to see how pale I can go and still tell a story vibrant, without big flashes.
On Batman Black and White I did a story with the idea of seeing how pale I could get my pages, when I knew that most people would go for the harder blacks.
Always go the opposite way.he he....

Take away as much mystery as possible. What is left?
Oblique Strategies.

Hyacinthe - Thomas Fersen

2007-09-04T00:15:00.001-07:00

Cool Sfar video....

old stuff 4....

2007-09-03T00:26:00.000-07:00

And last a piece done for portfolio for a con in Spain...I never got my original back so if anyone have seen this on someones wall please write to me...would love to get it back.

Use an unacceptable color.oblique strategies.