New York Drawings by Adrian Tomine

I received a few new books in the mail yesterday. My excitement could not be contained. Instead of re-reading the Odyssey for a free online course I am taking I dove right into one of these new books. New York Drawings is a collection work from Adrian Tomine, most of which originally appeared in the New Yorker over the last decade. I bought this book thinking I would be disappointed. I had seen some of Tomine's New Yorker covers before - I have a copy of the great Amazon delivery one somewhere - but most of my exposure to his work had been through two of his graphic novels (Shortcomings and Summer Blonde). The main thought running through my mind as I opened the book was will Tomine's themes of loneliness and alienation blend well with his love of awkward moments in a single panel?

My worries were for nothing! This collection is amazing. I want to leave it on my coffee table so everyone can marvel over the images as I have. Some of my favorites - The Lost Girl and Meditation - are not available online to show you and I am to lazy to scan them myself, but trust me they are so beautifully simple.

Tomine manages to condense complexity to one page over and over. Take the cover above. Has one image ever so subtly mocked our entire conception of reality? We are obsessed with seeing what is real on T.V. and experiencing simulated realities. Yet, the image mocks this whole concept. It seems to call for the people watching the movie to take down the screen and stare at the real existence behind it.

The image below is equally stunning and simple. Two strangers on trains heading separate directions make eye contact as they read the same book. The loneliness and sense of lost opportunity that this image conveys needs time to be properly absorbed. Perhaps this is love for Tomine - two strangers destined to be heading separate ways.

There are also a few short comic strips in here that showcase the wit and dialogue of Tomine - which is almost always great. However, if you really want to have more experiences with Tomine's comic work I would suggest picking up Shortcomings, Summer Blonde, or Optic Nerve #12 - they are all pretty amazing.

If you are looking for a coffee table book, love drawings, are a fan of Tomine, or just want something different check this book out. If you happen to see it somewhere take a few moments to browse through it. This book is worth a first and second look.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver

The collection of short stories What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver is essential reading for short story writers. I say this because what he did seems to be the constant source of bad imitation.

You could easily say his stories are about nothing - as I have heard said before. However, this would be inaccurate. Carver's stories are simply about people and the mundane everyday. His stories are minimalist to the extreme - which is what he is known for - and yet Carver still manage to create an entire world in them. Carver's stories are filled with small holes, but the familiarity of his stories allow the reader to automatically fill in the blanks. (I am left thinking about the amazing things many verbose fantasy writers could learn from Carver's more "literary" form of world creation)

My favorite story of the bunch is "I Could See the Smallest Things." The story is a perfect example of Carver's writing. It takes place in a brief moment in time. Nothing happens except the passing of life. I would recommend you all to check it out.

Many of the other stories are equally fantastic. There are really no complete duds in the bunch. If you are at all interested in the short story, I would go read a few of these quick gems in a bookstore or online somewhere and see if its for you. Carver is not a writer I would read everyday - I enjoy things a little more out there - but I am sure I will read more of his stories and books to satisfy my sporadic reality based literary fiction cravings.

Invisible People by WIll Eisner

Will Eisner was one of the most recognizable names in comic history. He invented the graphic novel and changed sequential art doing what he loved. He has a yearly comic award that shares his name. For these reasons I have always wanted to read some of his work. However, the logical starting point, The Spirit, his serialized "superhero" story, has never appealed to me  - I do not think it will live up to its reputation. As a result I took the suggestion of a number of friends and critics whose opinion I trust and started with Invisible People (W.W. Norton).

This book is nicely put together, which can be especially important for graphic novels. There are no cut off images in the cracks (although Eisner doesn't seem to have that style) and no problem with binding. The book is divided into three stories, all of which deal with the anonymity and alienation of city life in a different way. Each story has a distinct flavor and contained plot, but they are designed to be read together.

I greatly admire the plotting of the stories. There is no wasted space, which astounds me as someone who has read their fair share of modern comics. The stories flow from one point to the next and it never seems choppy or rushed. 

The dialogue is a little sub-par at some points. Every time a character says the line "they are an invisible person," it feels forced and stale. For the most part though it is passable and standard, but nothing spectacular.

The substance of the stories is strong. They do an excellent job of imagining the lives of people we pass everyday and have no clue exist. The stories are simplistic in some ways: They are set in an earlier "simpler" time, the characters themselves are mostly archetypes, many of the complexities of the city are ignored to focus on the main themes listed above. However, these simplifications are not made unconsciously. Will Eisner states in his introduction that he chose to set the stories in the 1930's because the intricacies of modern city life are far more complex and difficult to navigate. Eisner is trying to paint a picture that does not need a modern backdrop. These stories could have been set in almost any major city throughout history - with obvious occupation and technology changes - and they would still work. This is because they are not simple. They are probing and capture a detailed image of one of the failures of city - particularly American city - life, the inability of its inhabitants to connect with everyone around them. 

The world of these stories is a mechanical system. Reminiscent of the great bureaucratic dystopian stories like Kafka's The Trial, the sense of immobility in the shadow of an oppressive and unforgiving way of life is beautifully realized in all its despair.

Individually, the drawings are mostly unspectacular, but competent work. Sequentially the art flows well from one point to the next. They manage to capture facial expressions and moods of the characters well. Overall, good cartooning, but not my favorite art.

Verdict: I would recommend this book to anyone interested in comics in the classic vein. I will read more of Will Eisner after reading this book, but I am in no rush to do so. 

Let me know what you think below. I know this blog is slowly turning to the other kind of bi-weekly, but one day soon it should be back to twice a week!

Thanks for reading!

The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus

For the first full review I have chosen a newer book by one of the more linguistically innovative mainstream contemporary writers. I used this blog as an excuse to purchase this book and to motivate myself to review more timely books. Now that I have it finished it is time to begin my blogging quest.

Postmodernism has a tentative relationship with language. I hesitate to say it is looked on as a necessary evil, because this is too cliche and does not appropriately convey the complicated nature of the relationship. However, postmodernism teaches to be wary of language's role in our world - perhaps it even is our world. This recent - and the biblical - trepidation towards language is a central theme in Ben Marcus's new novel The Flame Alphabet (Knopf © 2012 $25.95).

In the novel language is a deadly disease that rots the body and turns the mouth into a snarl. Only children seem to be immune to this pandemic. Their free use of language slowly harming, and giving them power over, the adults of society.

On its most basic level the novel is a story about what happens in a post-apocalyptic world when language is the apocalypse. As you can imagine large swaths of the novel pass by with minimal dialogue. It seems often a loophole has to be invented for direct communication. One of the most interesting aspects of this story is the way the characters, and we as readers, come to adjust to the lack of verbal communication. Even with its sparse dialogue the book moves at a quick pace and is never bogged down with overly expository passages.

The characters are one of the weaker points of the story. They are mostly caricatures: A mom who loves her daughter more than anything, a father trying to save his family, a daughter who hates the world, and a devil that does not seem very evil, are some of the primary players. Although this use of caricatures may be purposeful, these uses of the 'everyman' characters in post-apocalyptic fiction is an unfortunate trope in this reviewers opinion.  Despite the lack of depth to these characters they are still entertaining enough to move the plot forward.

The novel is almost meant to be inferred rather than understood. It is a parable about the overuse and abuse of language. There is no understanding as a result of our failures to define clearly the speech we are using. Marcus handles this concept well. Four chapters into the novel he spells it out to us in a great paragraph:
"... It troubled us that our common sense has so little medical traction. There were doctors, and there were armchair doctors, and then there were people like us, crawling in the mud, deploying childish diagnostics, hoping that through sheer tone of voice, through the posturing of authority, we would exact some definitive change of reality. Perhaps we thought the world we lived in could be hacked into pleasing shapes simply by what we said. Maybe we still believed that."

This seems to challenge the postmodern paradigm of language. It seems to say that although we think we can alter the world with language, and our bold assertions, we have so far been unable to prove it. Perhaps language does not shape the world around us as much as bring death to it. Perhaps our mindless talk is the ruination of the world. Perhaps language makes us feel like gods. As Marcus says, "we make language in our own image and the language repulses us."

The book suggests that it is our playful useless banter, our postmodern need to speak endlessly on topics to no greater understanding is dangerous. "Child's Play" is deadly. There is no innocence in our play with language and we must recognize our impact. Language is killing us. Shut up and listen, because only by studying the byproduct of our speech can we be cured.

The book is worth checking out, but based on what I have seen Marcus accomplish in his debut short story collection Age of Wire and String I have to admit I was expecting more. However, it is obviously unfair to level critique against a book that is trying to do something in a different way than its predecessors.

If you are interested Knopf produced a video trailer for the novel, a cool concept in itself (See below). Also, please comment and let me know what you think, give me advice, or just say hello.