yong : book 6/25 : Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid On Earth by Chris Ware
Think about that title for a second. And think about everything you associate with graphic novels and comic books. You probably have some kind of expectation of the kind of story you'd find in such a book. I certainly did. I couldn't have been more wrong.There are no superheroes in this book, though there are sad people who dress up like one. There are no superpowers, no fantasies, except in the pitiful brief daydreams that punctuate Jimmy's even more pitiful real life. There isn't even a kid. Jimmy Corrigan is thirty-six years old, balding, socially inept, and his mother still calls him every day at work from the nursing home. The title is all irony, and not the funny kind, but the bitter kind.
The story is about the essential, inherent loneliness of the human condition. It's about growing up without a father, growing up in an adopted family, the parents who leave such kids behind. There is profanity, but it has never seemed more harsh; as "Munich" does for violence, this book does for profanity: strips it bare of all glorification, all satisfaction, all guilty pleasure, leaving only its core ugliness for our gawking eyes to take in.
It's a harsh reality that Chris Ware presents, but it's also a harsh reality that many people live every day. That he manages to find in it bits of redemption, of hope, of beauty, both visual and emotional... Graphic novel is a term usually pasted onto glorified comic books. This is a groundbreaking work that actually deserves it.
(Setting: Requested this book through the library after tagging along with Kayan and Rich to a talk a couple months back by Chris Ware and an NPR guy...Ira Glass. Picked it up today despite steady rain and spent the day reading (and writing this) rather than working on the wedding toast I have to give in a week. --y, 9:55p, 12/30)
[You can take a look inside the book at Amazon here.]
[Or you can zoom in and explore the mess on my desk instead. Thanks again for the monitor, Kayan. And happy new year, everyone. :) ]
posted by yong at 1:09 AM
2 Comments:
come on, you're afraid to say that you didn't like it. In fact, you avoided any sort of judgment on the book at all. Just because something is groundbreaking doesn't mean you hit buried treasure.
True. And there are other things that are buried besides treasure. And some things buried ought to be left buried. I didn't realize my recap was so ambiguous in judgment, as when I wrote it, my mood was pretty clear to me: very somber. This is a dark, sobering, maybe even depressing work, which isn't easy to get through, but does offer some redemption at the end. Not much, but some. Definitely not for everyone. But as a visual art form, if you're into that kind of thing, it's pretty impressive. At the end of it all, my take was more positive than negative. But a third of the way into it, when I was ready to give up on it (and where you did give up on it), it was pretty much all negative. It's not the kind of thing most people can enjoy, but it is something some people can appreciate.
Alright, you want a straight up or down opinion? Am I glad I read it? Well...yeah, I am.
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