ThE MURkYWORLd OF JOShUA kANE.

ThE MURkYWORLd OF JOShUA kANE (a comment by Mister Zero)

THE FACE OF ANOTHER was Joshua Kane’s first major novel after the international success of THE BOX MAN.

The novel traces the story of a man (known as Joshua Kane) who has had his face hideously disfigured in a laboratory accident and who sets out to create a mask which will help hide his disfigurement and seduce young girls and boys who are themselves physically deformed, whilst at the same time keeping a detailed account of his researches and involvements in his notebooks.

Joshua Kane symbolizes the fundamental facelessness of contemporary man and depicts himself as living among millions of strangers whose face he does not even recognize. Joshua Kane trades his skin for handmade papers and is reduced to the voyeuristic gaze as he conveys his bleak message.

‘..IN SEEING THERE IS HATE, IN BEING SEEN, THERE IS ABHORANCE..’

The ideal of the face as a special skin, through which one’s heart and soul are communicated to others, is sharply contrasted with Joshua Kane’s brutal abstraction of THE FACES OF THE OTHERS, perceiving them as either enemy or an object of IMPERSONAL EROTICISM.