It is not bad in our arena
“After whole days we have fun / We have different toil.” Those who are interested in the game and outside of it hit their feet and paws, specifically the gladiators themselves are hitting each other, such work. If you do not know where this is from, download Kaczmarski’s discography for reading Debtors Arena , it will explain a lot to you. Pay attention especially to Raj (Kaczmarski, Gintrowski and Łapiński), Gołkowski was inspired by the songs from this album, inventing his epic, twisted end of the world.
As you remember, the main character of the Bailiffs trilogy returns in the Debtors Arena to relive the apocalypse once more. In a world for Everything, everywhere, at once, and other multiverses, you really shouldn’t be surprised. Theoretically, the Zek knows everything about the disaster that surrounds him, although in this volume we already get hints that the seams are starting to come off and all this intrigue is falling apart, we are starting to deal with a reboot , not a retelling . But slowly, first you have to get blasted with swords, tridents and other crap … noble tools to kill colleagues from the company.
The Zec, whether he wants to or not, has to grab a wooden gladius and learn the profession of an Olympic deliverer. He looks around the more and more ancient Rome, tests the limits of kosherness, slowly notices how his fellow citizens are starting to arrange this worldwide ass. The plot unfolds slowly, someone is constantly fighting with someone, sleeping in front of someone … running away, up to something. The smarter part of mankind learns to find loopholes in God’s law and apply the camouflage to fool the Messenger. Our boy is generally doing great, it is not a novelty for him, but sometimes the reality overwhelms him and mumbles the golden hits of various bards who, as you know, are the best response to a totalitarian regime.
The sentimental Miss S.
To survive the apocalypse, you have to roll out the heaviest cannons – get together and act together. Good old trolling is also useful, flourishing on the Internet, but possible without them. The second volume of Arena is a paean in honor of the entire network pathology, in which he sees a tool, after all, freedom. Badly used, abused, simply wasted in a rude manner, but in fact it is absolutely beautiful. And completely impossible. It is also a praise of the general confusion with the confusion of the online palimpsest, paste and sample culture. Deconstruction, that is, busting and scooping up everything that flashes nicely and has elegant associations.
How, in such a saturated solution of exalted godliness, to build a community that will stand together against the tyrant? After all, writing on the walls (which will fall one day!) Slogans about the fact that Archangel Michael likes goats. And by drawing him, very happy, in the company of weeds, not necessarily goats. Simple, effective messages, which do not need to be factually correct, are only meant to lighten. The best medicine for fear is laughter, and we know from the American gods that all mythical and biblical beasts feed only on faith and fear.
Trak Spartakus likes this
The debtors’ arena promises to be pure entertainment, much lighter and more carefree than the bailiff . Here, Gołkowski uses proven solutions, throws ugly words and pictures, does not save on the massacre, promotes friendship to the maximum. He sticks together a new apocalypse from samples from his previous books, Bibles, bards, cenzopap… all sludge lingering on our collective imagination fed by the Internet. He pushes the text with descriptions of gladiatorial skirmishes, spectacular cuts, silly poems about one angel.
You can skim through this book without much reflection, but there is also an option to admire the quotes, look for clues, reflect on the machinery of human nature that reacts more or less to the climate crisis as the surroundings of the Zek to the apocalypse. The arena is a mirror that strides along the road, even if colored. And also wonderfully iconoclastic.
