buy
it from 
"The Hero Book is a striking work that defies easy categorization: a hybrid of art and text." Montreal Review of Books mRb Spring 2007.
The Hero Book (3rd edition)
an illustrated memoir
by Scott Waters
64 pages (24 of them in colour)
32 b&w + colour images
isbn 0-9733499-7-2
quality paperback with flaps
15$
read press release: Oct 24, 2006;
Click here for The Hero Book in the media
| media
type |
media
name |
date |
language |
|
| cultural weekly | review | "Scott Waters Soldiers On" by David Jager in Toronto's Now. | Mar 30 2008 | [en] |
| gallery website | review | "Time Heals All Wounds (Negotiating a Lie, Pt. 2)" at Craig Scott Gallery | Mar 2008 | [en] |
| blog | review | "Expozine Exposes the Antisocial" Homosocial at No Media Kings | Mar 4 2007 | [en] |
| literary magazine | review | Men Behaving Badly by Angela Carr in the Montreal Review of Books mRb | Spring 2007 | [en] |
| quarterly magazine | review | Matrix Magazine by Lateef Martin | Issue 77 | [en] |
| cultural weekly | review | "More books to give!" in Montreal's Hour by Brett Hooton | Dec 7 2006 | [en] |
The
Montréal book launch
/ exhibit of The Hero Book and the housewarming
/ fund-raising shindig in Cumulus' new offices
was great! We managed to raise $440 for
local youth homeless shelter, Le
Refuge des Jeunes. Thanks to everyone who came!
“Google 'hero book' and you will find links to 'memory work', a practice that began in Africa, notably among mothers living with HIV/AIDS. Keep surfing and you will learn that the 'hero book' is both a document and a process, whereby a child, through guidance, tells the story of their life relative to the conflicts and problems that beset them.
Scott Waters' has taken this format and, using text, photos, and painted
image, applied it to time spent in the military. The results are stunning.
Waters' prose is matter-of-fact, and stands in contrast to his meticulously
painted images, many of them set against that mass-produced, knots-and-all
surface known as 'plywood'—an accurate metaphor for what we in the
civilian world call 'military training'.
Reading The Hero Book, I am reminded of the similarities between
children's skipping songs and military marching cadences. The content
differs, but the narrative stays the same.”
—Michael
Turner, author of Hard Core Logo and The Pornographer's
Poem.
Scott
Waters once had to choose between art school and the infantry.
He chose the latter, then the former. He now spends his time painting,
drawing and making little books about a life he thought he hated. Having
been recently chosen for the Canadian Forces Artist Program (CFAP)
he will, accordingly, use his past to help edge the world towards selfawareness.
Scott lives in Toronto and has recently found a family.
“Perhaps this is all I need to show you. Everything I’ve tried to drag across this chasm of time can be distilled down to a hairless torso, a farmer’s tan and a GPMG.”
Now’s
your moment
Floating in the blue lagoon
Boy, you better do it soon
No time would be better
“What a great
fucking movie,” I often thought to myself back in the winter of
1990. So did the guys I was stationed with.
We knew the songs and dialogue by heart and knocked back beer, vodka or sometimes rubbing alcohol and would pause the scene where Ariel ascends, in her now human form, to the world above. After a few hours of drinking we would head down the hall to the communal showers to get cleaned up for the prairie girls who would later be in the bars, as drunk and desperate as we were.
First though, we would wash our hair and lather our bodies. Taking our
drinks with us, the soundtrack tape would be turned up loud enough to
echo around the shower walls and through the steam. I would sing along
with Dacon and Prevachal and swill Black Label and we would sometimes
pee on each other.
Darling it’s
better
Down where it’s wetter
Take it from me