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The Best American Comics 2006.
The Best American Comics 2006. Ed. Harvey Pekar. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
Somehow I got this gorgeous book for only $3. In the spirit of sharing, I gave it to my friend K, because she will get better use of it. But I read it cover-to-cover before I gave it to her, and it's pretty awesome.
I really liked series editor Annie Elizabeth Moore's preface; she follows Scott McCloud in defining comics as an art form combining words and pictures in sequence, intended for mechanical reproduction (obligatory wave to Walter Benjamin goes here). She also writes that,
And, in fact, it does.
Since the 2006 volume (the first in the series) collects material published in 2005, which is…five years ago now, the volume necessarily is very much of that particular depressing cultural moment. There are comics here dealing with the war in Iraq, the Republican convention in New York City in 2004 ([opinion on that cynical gesture redacted]), the advent of gay marriage and the execution of a death-row inmate. One of the absolute standouts, "Nakedness and Power" by Seth Tobocman, Terisa Turner, and Leigh Brownhill, chronicles the struggles of rural Nigerian women and their allies for economic justice, political representation, and peace, over the last 20 years. Theirs is a cautionary but ultimately an inspiring tale.
I also really liked Jesse Reklaw's "Thirteen Cats of My Childhood," which chronicles his family's slow-motion disintegration via the cats they kept. Family dysfunction is a theme in these works; R. Crumb's "Walkin' The Streets" had me literally crying with appalled laughter. Ben Katchor's "Goner Pillow Company" was obscurely touching; I also really liked Rebecca Dart's "Rabbit-Head", which has to be the most visually innovative piece in the book. Another common theme is the deconstruction of superheroes, whether they be Joel Priddy's Onion Jack, Gilbert Shelton's Wonder Wart-Hog, or Lilli Carré's Paul Bunyan. Lynda Barry's "Two Questions" is a brilliant mediation on creativity, and Chris Ware's "Comics: A History" is priceless.
A lot of these comics are laugh-outloud funny, but the humor is very sharp-edged. I wonder whether that's a consequence of the time or just of cartoonists being a jaded, cynical bunch with unhappy childhoods (to take their comics as biographical truth), or whether this is how alternative comics these days defines itself against manga and Marvel + DC. Something of all three? In any case, I'd love to read the newer entries in the series (and I live in hope that they'll have more women represented).
Somehow I got this gorgeous book for only $3. In the spirit of sharing, I gave it to my friend K, because she will get better use of it. But I read it cover-to-cover before I gave it to her, and it's pretty awesome.
I really liked series editor Annie Elizabeth Moore's preface; she follows Scott McCloud in defining comics as an art form combining words and pictures in sequence, intended for mechanical reproduction (obligatory wave to Walter Benjamin goes here). She also writes that,
In fact, comics defy literature: they openly refuse to obey its rules, entirely recreating what we know of language. Yet the sheer range of storytelling forms explored and presented in this volume defiantly mimic what we accept as literature anyway. […] And if that is what we can agree is meant by "written work"–that it can be read–then this collection's merit as literature will stand on its own.
And, in fact, it does.
Since the 2006 volume (the first in the series) collects material published in 2005, which is…five years ago now, the volume necessarily is very much of that particular depressing cultural moment. There are comics here dealing with the war in Iraq, the Republican convention in New York City in 2004 ([opinion on that cynical gesture redacted]), the advent of gay marriage and the execution of a death-row inmate. One of the absolute standouts, "Nakedness and Power" by Seth Tobocman, Terisa Turner, and Leigh Brownhill, chronicles the struggles of rural Nigerian women and their allies for economic justice, political representation, and peace, over the last 20 years. Theirs is a cautionary but ultimately an inspiring tale.
I also really liked Jesse Reklaw's "Thirteen Cats of My Childhood," which chronicles his family's slow-motion disintegration via the cats they kept. Family dysfunction is a theme in these works; R. Crumb's "Walkin' The Streets" had me literally crying with appalled laughter. Ben Katchor's "Goner Pillow Company" was obscurely touching; I also really liked Rebecca Dart's "Rabbit-Head", which has to be the most visually innovative piece in the book. Another common theme is the deconstruction of superheroes, whether they be Joel Priddy's Onion Jack, Gilbert Shelton's Wonder Wart-Hog, or Lilli Carré's Paul Bunyan. Lynda Barry's "Two Questions" is a brilliant mediation on creativity, and Chris Ware's "Comics: A History" is priceless.
A lot of these comics are laugh-outloud funny, but the humor is very sharp-edged. I wonder whether that's a consequence of the time or just of cartoonists being a jaded, cynical bunch with unhappy childhoods (to take their comics as biographical truth), or whether this is how alternative comics these days defines itself against manga and Marvel + DC. Something of all three? In any case, I'd love to read the newer entries in the series (and I live in hope that they'll have more women represented).
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Which actually is sort of disappointing, in some ways; its frequently depressing subject matter is one of the things I dislike most about the literary fiction genre.
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Likewise - particularly, often, what feels like an artificial drag towards the bleak that's unnecessary and (feels to me like) it's done for street cred, as it were.
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But some people don't like Beethoven. So, you know. (Which is to say that nobody is obliged to share my distaste, nor my reading; the statement is just drawn from my experience.)
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Translated literary fiction seems to have less of a case of the doldrums, but a lot of it is also pushing the bounds of the genre (Garcia Marquez and the magical realists, anyone?).
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Toni Morrison's not joyful on the whole, but Jazz exemplifies the kind of fun you can see in literary fic.
Michael Chabon's oeuvre has certain obviously very personal attractions to me, but he has fun while telling powerful stories about characters whose flaws he loves.
Zadie Smith's White Teeth was spectacular and left me wanting more of her fiction. China Mieville I have my ups and downs with, but The City and the City at least had style and excitement going for it. Jonathan Lethem's done a lot to impress me. Richard Powers blends science and philosophy and wit. Salman Rushdie's work has been filling me with glee on a regular basis recently.
I have some books on order that I think promise the same kind of excitement, Robert Arellano's Don Dimaio of La Plata and Percival Everett's A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond, as told to Percival Everett & James Kincaid among them.
These books have the humanism and wit that I search for in literature. It's certainly not absent from contemporary litfic.
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White Teeth is awesome; so is On Beauty--but note that Smith and Rushdie aren't your typical 30-something white male Americans. I really can't agree with categorizing China Miéville as a litfic writer; Jonathan Lethem and Michael Chabon are people who I think are trying to have their litfic cred and their "I love genre fiction" badges at same time, but they haven't actually written genre books. Also both of those latter two rarely write fully realized female characters (though I do like Chabon passionately, despite my problems with his work).
So I don't quite disagree with you, but most of these people are at the edge rather than the mainstream of litfic. The middle class suburbia-valorizing stuff is more in the mainstream, I think. (There might also be something to be said here about authors' gender and who gets the praise and awards; but I'm not quite sure.)
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White Teeth is awesome; so is On Beauty--but note that Smith and Rushdie aren't your typical 30-something white male Americans.
Um... what exactly is your retort about 30 something white male Americans refuting? I made no claim that they are 30 something white male Americans. Surely being a 30 something white male is not a requirement for your writing to be litfic. My definition of litfic is broad; my taste tends toward the people who know how to have fun with the stuff, regardless of race or gender.
So I don't quite disagree with you, but most of these people are at the edge rather than the mainstream of litfic.
Since litfic isn't so much a genre as a pretension, I don't know that there is necessarily a mainstream. If there is, though, I doubt I'd be interested in it. I'm rarely one for the mainstream. I'm just pointing out that here on the edges I'm having a blast.
For what it's worth, I think Chabon's early fiction does a better job with female characters than his more recent stuff. Phlox in The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is probably his best female character. It's been sort of downhill from there, though Bina rang deeply true for me.
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I do think there is a bias in literary fiction towards male authors in general and white male authors in particular--Foster Wallace, John Updike, Phillip Roth, Don DeLillo, Lethem, Chabon, also David Mitchell, whose books I love to death, to pick names not quite at random. The cream of the genre, if you listen to its proponents and apologists, definitely fit a certain pattern. I think there's also a secondary level to litfic which tends to be written by mostly white women--the sort of thing, to stereotype broadly, that sells well and gets a lot of play on the book club circuit, but never quite seems to earn the top prizes (Alice Sebold, Ann Packer, etc). There are important exceptions to these trends, unquestionably (Zadie Smith, Rushdie, Colson Whitehead), but publishing is still a pretty white place. Which isn't to disagree with your point about awesomeness not being a function of an author's race or class or whatever.
I do think litfic is a genre, too. It's a genre that insists that it's not a genre, and that furthermore it's the only genre with literary merit, but a genre nonetheless.
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Foster Wallace, Chabon, DeLillo, Lethem, surely not. Roth and Updike can write depressing books, but are certainly not limited to depressing books, and I've found that even their saddest stuff reaches moments of sublime humor. The best writers of literary fiction are masters of humanistic writing.
As to what you called the secondary tier of litfic, the stuff which I would say is written FOR white women more than it's necessarily BY white women- plenty of white men also write it- I suppose that's where the depressing tag on litfic comes from. I mostly don't read those books, but I've read enough to know that some of it is worth reading and most of it probably isn't. But that's just Sturgeon's Law.
I don't intend to exclude Mieville from SFF, but then, I've always included Philip Dick on both my list of Post-Modernists and my list of SF writers, so clearly I'm not very good at this genre thing.
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I've not read any of DFW's fiction (yet). As for DeLillo, to pick on him because I've read the most books of his, White Noise is great, but Underworld is just long and ultimately boring, I think. I liked The Plot Against America, but I have little patience for Roth and Updike and their phallo-centrism, as DFW himself diagnosed it. In some ways it's not the content of the books (they do have their moments of humour) so much as the worldview. I look at Rabbit's life and I'm just like, Shoot me if that's really all there is to it.
"Humanistic" there is a key word--I don't really see myself fitting terribly well into the definition of the humanist subject, or at least, I'm not convinced that it's better to continue to insist that the humanist subject can include everyone instead of just writing books about non-humanist subjects.
I think in some ways the idea of genres is more trouble than it's worth, but it's also a convenient way of organizing arguments, if nothing else.
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ETA: You know, it might just be easier to show you an example of my reactions to genre boundaries and litfic versus SFF: http://starlady.dreamwidth.org/272280.html
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