Ben Passmore is an artist living in New Orleans and of course dipshit me just now found out about him. Got an ad in the care package from Birdcage Bottom (who also distribute Those Dark New Hampshire Woods) about his apparently funny Goodbye, and now my friends at Èxitos Gnosis just brought me back Pantomime Horse 1 from Skylight Books in Hollywood. Passmore is great, to paraphrase the white supremacist and child rapist you just elected president, and you all should check out his stuff.

The zine is intentionally as in-the-moment and ambiguous as possible, swinging for the purpose of explanation between two worlds that presumably represent different generations of a family. What I like most is how Passmore presents a narrative in pictures but then has the characters talk around an unspoken truth at the center of the story. Not to bring up 2666 again, but it reminded me of the toilet water circling around the void that is the narrative style of 2666. I guess I’ll have to read the rest of them to find out.

It ends with a letter addressed to someone with whom the speaker was confined to a place he or she had to flee from. It may be written by Passmore the person or by some character. All in all, a rousing and spooky zine. Thanks Ben! Visit him at Day Glo Ayhole.