Read Henry Darger, Throwaway Boy: The Tragic Life of an Outsider Artist by Jim Elledge Online

Drawing on his far-ranging investigation and keen psychological perception, Elledge poignantly and convincingly argues that the torture Darger depicted and his fantasies of revenge and rescue were cathartic responses to the traumas he suffered. Elledge reveals Darger as a damaged, fearful, gay man, raised in a world unaware of the consequences of child abuse or gay shame—and his strange art as a triumph over trauma." —Dick Donahue . Now, 40 years after Darger’s death, justice is finally served in Elledge’s gripping, humanizi

The subject matter is worthy of a much better treatment than supposition and surmise Sadly, this is a poorly written biography. The subject matter is worthy of a much better treatment than supposition and surmise. Whether drawing conclusions based on nothing but the author's wishful thinking, or mischaracterizing Henry Darger's artwork (the author repeatedly refers to Henry's "canvases" when Darger only worked on paper), this is shoddy workmanship. It is hard to discover who Henry Darger was when the author crowds his pages with his own politically correct and well-adjusted view of this deeply damaged soul. This is a reimagining of Henry Darger a. More Fantasy Than Biography Dr. Rico Peru Elledge did a fair amount of research while writing this book. Unfortunately what he did with that research pretty much ruined the book. This isn't so much a biography as it's Elledge using circumstantial evidence to draw conclusions about Henry Darger and treating those conclusions as fact. For example, Elledge is convinced that Darger was sexually molested as a child. He presents no concrete evidence of this. His logic works like this: Darger lived in institutions in which children were molested and since this abuse probably happened at the same time that Darge. The early speculation eventually turns to hard evidence, making for an illuminating read about a difficult artist H. Williams The quick view: Henry Darger (1892 - 1973) was a disturbed man who escaped from a mental institution as a young man to work his entire life at menial jobs in Chicago. While his public life was dismal, his private life was outrageously creative. He wrote the illustrated novel "The Story Of The Vivian Girls, In What Is Known As The Realms Of The Unreal, Of The Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused By The Child Slave Rebellion" (at 15,000+ pages), the memoir-like "The History Of My Life" (at 4,000+ pages) and the highly auto-biographical (and apparently homo-erotic)

in Professional Writing Program at Kennesaw State University. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia. He is currently director of the M.A. . Jim Elledge is the award-winning author and editor of twenty-two books, including a textbook on publishing, four anthologies on queer culture, and numerous poetry collections and chapbooks

Utterly unknown during his lifetime, Henry Darger led a quiet, secluded existence as a janitor on Chicago's North Side. Drawn from fascinating histories of the vice-ridden districts of 1900s Chicago, tens of thousands of pages of primary source material, and Elledge's own work in queer history, Henry Darger, Throwaway Boy also features a full-color reproduction of a never-before-seen canvas from a private gallery in New York, as well as a previously undiscovered photograph of Darger with his lifelong companion William Schloeder, or "Whillie" as Henry affectionately referred to him. This thoughtful, sympathetic biography tells the true story of a tragically misunderstood artist. When he died, his landlord discovered a treasure trove of more than three hundred canvases and more than 30,000 manuscript pages depicting a rich, shocking fantasy worldmany featuring hermaphroditic children being eviscerated, crucified, and strangled. While some art historians tend to dismiss Darger as possibly psychotic, Jim Elledge cuts through the cloud of controversy and rediscovers Darger as a damaged and fearful gay man, raised in a world

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