Suspicious Anatomy just took a flying leap to the top of my book wish list.

This project arose from the combined efforts of writer Wythe Marschall and multimedia artist Ethan Gould (of the Hollow Earth Society).

After staring at a Cognitive Neuroscience textbook continually over the past few months, I immediately became enraptured with Gould’s illustrations.

From the Suspicious Anatomy website:

In the tradition of John Hodgman, David Cronenberg, and H. P. Lovecraft, The Human Cranius explores an alternative anatomy at once mesmerizing and deeply unsettling. Gould and Marschall ask: What do we know about our own bodies? The answer: Very little…

Suspicious Anatomy does not purport to represent or speak on behalf of anything; it seeks rupture with discourses. Or should we say, with the discourses that it, in some ways, reminds us of. Because Suspicious Anatomy is not a discourse, and cannot prove anything. It is pure Surrealism—the mutilation, combination, and recombination of discourses (or, at the molecular level, of images and words associated with those discourses) towards the Impossible Discourse: The (Unconscious) Mind. Or, in our case…? The Unconscious Body?

Click on the images for a slightly larger view and be sure to examine the details and read to the absolutely brilliant labeling.

I have, at times, been known to invent body parts, but could never be quite so adept at illustrating them. I cannot wait to get my hands on this and lose myself in the “physio–psychomological quandaries” of the Shadow Self made flesh.

See more illustrations from the book here.

Suspicious Anatomy
Artist website