HENRY DARGER

Henry Darger

After timid Chicago custodian Henry Darger died in 1973 at 81, tomes and tomes of his tightly-typed journals and manuscripts were uncovered from his dusty room. Most notable was the manuscript for a 15,145 page 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 — complete with illustrations of epic battles, butterfly shift-shapers, and Christian-themed martyrdom of child warriors, their shapes retraced from magazines and coloring books. These illustrations now hang at art galleries, so, naturally, they’re open to misinterpretations, like that the little girls had male genitalia for some sort of metaphorical reason. More likely, Darger just didn’t really know or care what the anatomically appropriate alternative would have been