logo

  • Books
    • 1
      • Book Works

      • Vox Populi, London
      • Cover Version
      • We are behind
      • Faker Drinker Soldier Heiress
      • Vox Populi, Switzerland
      • Auras and Levitations (Second Edition)
      • The Happy Hypocrite – A Rather Large Weapon, issue 4
      • Kidnapping Mountains
      • Teignmouth Electron
      • Strategic Questions #2: Has Man a Function in Universe?
      • ERR (Eighth Edition, 2008)
      • Feature: Reconstruction
      • Proximity Machine
    • 2
      • Book Works

      • Vox Populi, Tokyo
      • Letters 2004–2006: Confirmation That You still Exist; I Respect Your Authority; When Will It End; One London
      • Alien Invaders: A Guide to Non-Native Species of the Britisher Isles (Volume 1)
      • Ice Blink: An Antartic Essay
      • Vox Populi, Norway
      • Vox Populi, Sydney
      • Folk Archive: Contemporary Popular Art from the UK
      • Lost in Space
      • Head in the Railings
      • Remixed Water
      • Urban / Wild
    • 3
      • Book Works

      • Why and Why Not
      • I Know Where I'm Going: A Guide to Morecambe & Heysham
      • Magazine
      • Frances Stark: Collected Writing 1993−2003
      • Auto Roto Font
      • Trying to get in between
      • Active Genital
      • Ott's Sneeze
      • Spring Snow − A Translation
      • Progressive Disorder
      • Of Lives Between Lines
      • Mobile Vulgus
      • Material: Public Works − The Bridge 2000
      • Meeting #13
    • 4
      • Book Works

      • After the Freud Museum (Paperback Edition)
      • First I was afraid, I was petrified
      • The Contemporary Picturesque
      • The Uses of Literacy
      • A Case of Hysteria
      • Seven Wonders of the World
      • Smash This Puny Existence
      • The Palaver
      • Marx Angels
      • Library Relocations
      • Diary of a Steak
      • small Gold Medal
      • Book Works: A Partial History and Sourcebook
    • 5
      • Book Works

      • The Blindings
      • Rex Reason
      • Two Oxford Reading Rooms (Special Edition)
      • The Price of Words, Places to Remember 1−26
      • Notable Days
      • A Public Intimacy (A Life Through Scrapbooks)
      • What's My Name?
      • A Stellar Key to The Summerland

      Chad McCail

      Active Genital

      64 pages | Full colour | 215 x 260 mm, Soft cover | 2002 | Edition of 1,500 copies
      more detail

  • Publisher Information
  • Archive
  • About
  • Contact

Active Genital is a story told in pictures and presented as a graphic novel that traces the idealised projection of a child’s development − between the ages of four to twelve − through its struggle with darkness and shadow to its eventual acceptance of love and harmony.

The book is presented in three parts. The first part revisits drawings made by McCail that describe a homelife that at first glance appears somewhat banal, but on further scrutiny reveal a suburban hell of abuse, violence and sex. The second part is a text that recounts a succession of dreams − a recurring theme in McCail’s work − that made a powerful impression on him along with a list of written works that have inspired him. The third part consists of large scale drawings that have been broken down into smaller parts revealing a framework of symbols, icons and characters rendered in the artist’s characteristic graphic style that trace the child’s progress through the world. The limits of this world are the edges of the paper, behind each main event lie many contributing stories where details invade the background spaces as more is remembered and still more is imagined.


この本は、ー 4歳から12歳までの ー 暗闇と影に苦闘することを通じて、最終的に愛と融和にたどり着く、理想的な子どもの発達過程を描いたピクチャーノベルである。
この本は3つのパートで構成される。最初のパートはMcCailによるドローイングで、一見するとありふれた家庭生活だが、事細かに観察すると、郊外における虐待、暴力、セックスの地獄であることが明らかになる。第2パートは、McCailの作品に何度も登場する、夢の続きをテキストで記述している。第3パートは、壮大なスケールのドローイングがシンボルやキャラクターごとに細かく分割されて描かれており、世界を通じた子どもの発達を追うような形になっている。
close