ISSN 0258-0802. LITERATŪRA 2009 51 (4)
GRAPHIC NOVELS: A NEW LITERARY GENRE IN THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD
Milda Danytė Vytauto Didžiojo universiteto Humanitarinio mokslų fakulteto Anglų filologijos katedros profesorė
Although different forms of popular cul- comics in general in the last two decades. ture are now taken much more seriously In North America, it has only been since by specialists in literature, most current Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus won research remains at the level of historical the most prestigious of American literary surveys or thematic studies. The lack of awards, the Pulitzer Prize for literature in useful critical methods becomes apparent 1992, that English-language criticism of when one attempts to analyse a recent phe- comics of all kinds has burgeoned. Spiegel- nomenon, the graphic novel. This term was man’s text is about the Jewish Holocaust; first used in 1978 by Will Eisner, to iden- it established the notion that comic-book tify his comic-book collection, A Contract forms could also deal with serious and with God (Arnold, 2003). Steve Roiteri even tragic themes. has defined the graphic novel as “a stan- The marketing of this new literary gen- dalone story in comics form, published as re in the English-speaking world has been a book” (Roiteri, 2003). This distinguishes helped by the success of the Japanese ver- the graphic novel from the comic book, sion of graphic novels, the manga, among which is actually a short magazine, usually Western consumers. As Sharon Kinsella about 32 pages in length, published as a what is a new form in North America, the serial with a soft cover and on cheap paper. book-length illustrated narrative, has been The comic book has always been a very extremely popular in Japan since the 1960s inexpensive product aimed primarily at among readers of all ages (Kinsella, 2000, children and adolescents, though not read 43). The styles of illustration developed by exclusively by them. manga artists were then imitated in Japa- The graphic novel of recent decades, nese animation films which have gradu- on the contrary, is an expensive publica- ally entered the Western market. In turn, tion on fine-quality paper; it may be soft or this has sparked interest among younger hard-covered. Its prospective buyers may Western readers in the manga themselves, be teenagers but are more usually adults. so that since the 1990s many manga have This shift in audience reflects a rise in been regularly translated into Western cultural status for the graphic novel and languages. In North American bookstores
101 today, both Japanese manga and Western specific components such as speech-bubbles graphic novels are usually displayed in a (1999, 264). single section. It is over the question of speech bub- The aim of this article is to look more bles that many cultural historians of the closely at some recent graphic novels pro- comics are divided, with some insisting duced by American and Canadian artists, that any cartoons in which the speech-texts considering what critical approaches best are placed at the bottom of the frame rather illuminate both the genre as such and the than in bubble-like circles connected to the specific narrative style used by each ar- character who is speaking cannot be called tist. First, however, the Western comic- comics. The issue takes on a nationalist fla- book genre itself needs to be presented, as vour, with the American David Carrier, for its narrative style provides the visual and example, claiming that the 1897 American literary context out of which the graphic The Yellow Kid is the first true cartoon strip novel has grown. Second, a brief review (2000, 3–4), while a British critic, Roger of current theoretical approaches to co- Sabin, gives preference to the British tab- mics will be given. The third section of this loid series Ally Sloper, published from article is devoted to a closer study of four 1884 (1996,15). Thierry Groensteen ar- different graphic novels, Art Spiegelman’s gues that the cartoon strips produced in the Maus (part one, 1986; part two, 1991), Joe 1830s by the Swiss artist Rudolphe Topffer Sacco’s Palestine (2001), Chester Brown’s clearly precede any English-language co- I Never Liked You (2002) and Gregory Gal- mics (2000, 105–114). In any case, all lant’s It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken historians of comics agree that forms of (2003). popular visual art that tell a story using a sequence of frames which are accompanied Comics: an introductory history in some way by a text can be found since There is considerable disagreement among the early days of printing, but that it was historians of popular culture about the the development of much cheaper photo- origins of present-day cartoon strips and graphic processes in the nineteenth century comic books. Much depends on how the that made it economically practical to sell cartoon strip, which is the building block magazines with many illustrated stories used to construct both comic books and (Sabin, 1996, 12–14; Carrier, 2000, 2–6). graphic novels, is defined. Klaus Kaindl’s Although comic strips and often comic definition is usefully neutral in tone: books have appeared all over the world, Comics are narrative forms in which the sto- they have not entered the cultures of all ry is told in a series of at least two separate countries to the same extent. While Bel- pictures. The individual pictures provide con- gium, France, the United Kingdom, the texts for one another, distinguishing comics United States and Japan have been major from single-frame cartons. Comics involve linguistic typographic and pictorial signs and producers of comics, many other countries combinations of signs as well as a number of have functioned more as importers.
102 Since the early twentieth century many focuses on the way in which it brings to- daily newspapers in Canada and the Uni- gether different kinds of visual and literary ted States have carried cartoon strips on a discourse. He calls it a “poetic experience” daily basis. Being part of daily newspapers (Delannoy, 2002, 35) and uses the Ba- gives comic strips a paradoxical status in khtinian concept of polyphony to analyse the culture of these countries, as Carrier the different levels of response it evokes observes, for while they have one of the from its readers (Ibid., 71). largest markets for any form of popular No English-language criticism of this culture, they are read quickly and then length on any single work or artist has yet thrown out with the newspapers that print appeared, but in recent years American them (2000, 63–65). Carrier places co- and British critics have moved away from mics into the cultural category of works historical surveys and thematic catego- which straddle traditional generic bounda- rizations to look more closely at the spe- ries: they are in-between works which are cific nature of comics and graphic novels. viewed as either irrelevent or transgressive Using theories drawn from narratology by the cultural elite (Ibid., 66). In an inte- and film criticism, Scott McCloud empha- resting way, this sense of marginality has sizes the need to focus on the interaction become one of the attractions of the comic of picture and words. McCloud’s book, book. Sabin calls comics “a private rea- Understanding Comics (1994), is itself a ding space for children, a place where they comic book with a caricature of its author could negotiate adult power and authority” leading the reader through the intricacies (1996, 28). of terminology and analysis. Like David Carrier (2000, 4, 29), McCloud argues that Current theoretical approaches to comics bring together word and picture in comics and graphic novels a form of discourse that is unique and de- mands new methodologies of analysis. He Outside of the English-speaking world, the also suggests that the radical simplifica- primary critical approaches to comics have tion of the human face used by some of the been based on structuralism and semiotics. most successful comic-book artists, allows Umberto Eco was already writing with in- a process of “universal identification” to sight and sympathy about popular Ameri- take place between the reader and the char- can comics like Superman or the Charlie acter so that “We don’t just observe the car- Brown series as early as 1963 (Eco 1994). toon, we become it” (McCloud, 1995, 36; French criticism has also been dominated italics in original). In this way he accounts by semiotics; this is the approach taken, for the addictive kind of relationship many for example, by Pierre Alban Delannoy readers develop with comic books. in Maus d’Art Spiegelman: bande dess- Another critic, Robert C. Harvey, agrees inée et Shoah (2002), the first book-length that the feature that distinguishes com- study of a graphic novel. Delannoy, places ics from other narrative forms lies in the the novel in its cultural context and then mutual dependence of word and picture,
103 although, in his opinion, it is rare that a co- frame or even the page, thus heightening mic strip “exploits to the fullest the spe- the dynamism of the actions that are being cific character of the art form” (Harvey, depicted (Ibid., 56–59). 1994, 9). In part, Harvey states, this de- Thus the greater respect for comic-book pends on the category of comic strip that narrative in recent years has been accom- is in question. In those sub-varieties in panied by the appearance of a more flexi- which a long narrative is being told, pic- ble critical language. Many critics not only tures often become static while the number borrow terms from literary or film studies, of words in each frame grows. Although but also create ones specifically suited to the essentially static nature of such scenes the nature of comic-book art. can be masked by varying the angle from which the figures are seen, or moving Art Spiegelman’s maus: from medium shots to close-ups, still the the holocaust in comic- book format balance between the visual and the verbal At first glance, the choice of a comic-book is upset (Ibid., 10–17). format to deal with the horrors of the Nazi Interest in this “word/image unity” ap- genocide of European Jews seems highly pears as well in Carrier’s The Aesthetics of Comics (2000, 4). Like McCloud, Carrier is inappropriate. However, as Pierre Alban also very concerned with how comic books Delannoy explains in his study of the text, engage their readers. He emphasizes the Spiegelman, the American son of Holo- way that comics cross and even break down caust survivors, is primarily concerned with boundaries: “We expect our world to fit our finding a form that lets him present his own preconceived stable categories, and so what personal relationship with the Holocaust. falls in between is easily felt, depending The trauma experienced by Holocaust sur- upon our temperament and politics, to be ei- vivors was passed on in a different form to ther exciting or menacing” (Ibid., 70–71). their children, and it is this double trauma, One of the most theoretically sophisti- as Delannoy states, that Maus depicts (De- cated studies of comic books to be pub- lannoy, 2002, 12). The main characters in lished in English in recent years is Mila the novel are Spiegelman himself and his Bongco’s text on language and culture in father, Vladek, a Polish Jew now living in superhero comics. She points out that the Brooklyn, New York. Encouraged by his comic-book form allows artists to draw si- son, Vladek recalls his and his wife’s lives multaneously on the narrative devices of and their experiences under the Nazis. two modes, one visual, the other linguistic Thus the narrative moves back and forth (Bongco, 2000, 56). Bongco emphasizes constantly from a present time in suburban the significance of the frame, showing how America in the 1970s to the interwar peri- it serves as a unit of composition which od and then to wartime Poland, especially can impose order on a narrative, but which the death camp of Auschwitz. can also be disrupted. Often the picture Delannoy considers it significant that and words violate the boundaries set by the Spiegelman began his work on Maus in
104 the 1970s, when the children of the survi- tionships with others. In this way Spiegel- vors reached maturity and were becoming man undercuts cultural stereotypes about parents themselves (Ibid., 14). It is clear the hero which comic books have tended in the narrative that the son needs to come to propagate. to terms with many features of his father’s The artist’s choice of a double narrative experience, not the least of which is the and his inclusion of himself as a comic resentment he feels against his parents: book artist driven by his own egotistical his mother, who, like many concentration needs is postmodernist. The son as pre- camp survivors, finally committed suicide, sented in the novel is not always sympa- unable to bear the weight of her memo- thetic. In one particularly effective scene, ries, and his father, a difficult man who has he is depicted working on his novel, first often turned his suffering into a weapon in a close-up showing him wearily leaning against the world. on his desk and wondering about his own The first and most startling impression motivation in creating this work. Then made on the readers of this graphic novel the frame expands to show a mountain of is Spiegelman’s decision to follow comic- dead bodies under his feet and the gates of book tradition in the visual presentation Auschwitz. But this vision is again given of his characters. In what is known as the its ironic counterpoint by a speech bub- ‘funny animal’ comics sub-genre, all the ble in which a film director calls for the human characters are depicted as animals: cameras to record the scene (Spiegelman, Jews as mice, Germans as cats, Poles as 1991, 41). In a very metafictional narra- pigs and so on. The title Maus itself means tive game, the way that the Holocaust has ‘mouse’ in German. Thus the narrative sometimes been turned into a commercial is placed firmly within American comic- product is alluded to here. book tradition, in which mice often play Throughout Maus the horrors of the the roles of heroes. At the beginning of his concentration camps are set against trivial second volume, Spiegelman even quotes scenes of family conflicts between Vladek a Nazi condemnation of Walt Disney’s and his second wife Mala, or Vladek and Mickey Mouse cartoons as degenerate his son. Yet it is evident that these two cultural works, so that in some sense the lines of narrative are not without connec- choice of mice can be interpreted as repre- tions. The Vladek who uses and abuses senting the counter-culture in general. the love of those around him is not very Nevertheless, Spiegelman does not cast likeable, but it was the same ability to ma- his Jewish characters, especially the figure nipulate people and situations that helped of the father, as simply victims. He choo- him survive in Auschwitz. Nor is it possi- ses to begin his story with Vladek’s earlier ble to feel comfortable in condemning this life, which was characterized by egotisti- egotistical old man, since the readers have cal self-seeking, and also repeatedly re- been forced to understand the minute de- turns to his later life in America, in which tails of the events that shaped his persona- he plays a far from admirable role in rela- lity. Unlike the typical comic-book charac-
105 ters, who are stereotyped in all senses and a friend or family member died violently at never develop and change. Spiegelman’s the hands of Israeli soldiers. father and son are multi-layered perso- Sacco does not use the ‘funny animal’ nalities who often intrigue or surprise the convention, yet his way of representing readers. In this way Art Spiegelman suc- human beings visually is definitely within ceeds in turning the comic-book genre into comic-book traditions. All his human fi- a psychological drama that encompasses gures, including his version of himself, are both tragedy and comedy. drawn as caricatures, with special promi- nence given to mouths, thick-lipped mouths Joe Sacco’s Palestine twisted into anger or pain or grief, mouths with prominent teeth that dominate the Along with Spiegelman’s Maus, Joe Sacco’s minimally outlined faces. They are mouths Palestine, a cross-over text that turns jour- telling stories to an anxious, sombre, some- nalism into the form of a novel, encouraged times shocked Sacco. From this image the literary critics who had ignored comics into narrative then usually moves into the story admitting that the genre could be the vehi- past, so that readers see the scenes being cle for powerful and aesthetically satisfying narrated, with the narration itself continu- works. Sacco, a journalist who has carried ing like a voice-over in cinema. Finally out projects in war-torn areas of the world, each separate story comes to an end, and the wrote Palestine based on the two months images are again those of Sacco listening or he spent in the Occupied Territories in the walking with a Palestinian guide. winter of 1991–1992, speaking to scores of In purely visual terms, Sacco’s style ordinary Palestinians as well as some Israeli is striking and highly dramatic. The indi- Jews. The novelized series of interviews in vidual frames vary enormously in size and comic-book form was published in nine is- shape. Unlike the tight progress of neat rec- sues from 1993 to 2001; then the whole se- tangles that is typical of most of Spiegel- ries appeared in book form. In 1996 the se- man’s pages, here a single frame often fills ries that had been published up to that point the whole page; the majority of the pages won the American Book Award, a fact that and double-pages are composed of cur- meant that this graphic novel was discussed ving, bulging frames pushing at each other. by serious literary reviewers in the United The coherence and progressive movement States and elsewhere. in time of the verbal narrative is countered Like Spiegelman, Sacco turns himself by the uneasy rhythm of the visual bloc- into a major character in the narrative. king, explosive and chaotic like the scenes Sometimes he is the narrator whose words in the Occupied Territories that it depicts. are presented in square-block bubbles. The feeling of being pushed at from all More often he is pictured as the listener sides, is one of the themes of the narra- to whom Palestinian men and women de- tive from its opening episode, a full-page scribe how they were beaten, imprisoned panel in which a small, de-centred Sacco and tortured by Israeli authorities, or how is squeezed in the crowded streets of Cairo
106 and the barroom jokes told by two Arabs served with what is available (for exam- (Sacco, 2001, 1). Sacco’s eyes are blank ple, Sacco, 2001, 16, 60, 64, 70, 131, 152). circles of eyeglasses; indeed, throughout Respect, too, is affirmed by Sacco’s patient the 285 pages of Palestine, his is the only listening, which honours the experiences face without eyes, adding to his stunned, he is told about. Like Spiegelman, Sacco almost foolish expression. presents an extraordinary story through or- Further pressure on the readers is cre- dinary people, though the irony the former ated by the quantity of texts and the way uses against many of his characters is ge- in which texts push themselves in between nerally absent in this novel. figures and objects in the frames. As the What irony there is appears mostly in the comic-book theorist Mila Bongco asserts, depiction of the author himself. Although the eye in reading comics is drawn first to one cannot speak of parallel story-lines in the images on the page; only gradually do Palestine as in Maus, Joe Sacco does cre- the readers return to the beginning of the ate a kind of narrative about the process of text (Bongco, 2000, 46). In Joe Sacco’s journalistic investigation in places of crisis. work, the readers have to make their way He presents his comic-book self as a stan- through a dense labyrinth of texts, texts dard character in literature, the quiet, anx- complicated by the fact that they are often ious, rather incompetent Everyman caught spoken by more than one character, all of up in a historical crisis beyond his powers. whom seem to be speaking loudly at the Nor does Joe Sacco project a stereotypi- same time. The novel suggests the pent-up cally masculine image. Although the work words waiting for release among Palesti- he is doing is dangerous, he minimizes his nians living in crowded quarters, subjected own risks and instead emphasizes his fears to the unrelenting pressure of political and and sense of inadequacy. After many inter- economic forces. views of Palestinians who were tortured in Paradoxically, the aggressiveness of Israeli prisons, he admits: “Me? I wonder Sacco’s visual style is counterbalanced by how long I’d last getting the business be- a strong sense of idealism and moral pur- hind a closed door […]. Not long I bet, I’m pose. After an initial period of learning to a PussyFirstClass […] a harsh word and a read this style fluently, the reader is led to dirty look and I’d be screaming for Am- the perception not of violence and chaos nesty Int’l” (Ibid., 97; punctuation as in at the centre of the Palestinian experience, original). but something profoundly more moving. In addition, in a meta-discourse which Through these stories of suffering, hu- is also frequently found in Spiegelman’s miliation, helplessness and pain, Sacco af- work, Sacco refers to his own project of firms the principle of human dignity. This creating a graphic novel out of his inter- respect for human relations appears in the views in the Palestinian camps. For exam- repetition of scenes of eating and drin- ple, the opening page of the chapter called king, as the journalist is sat down at tables “Pilgrimage shows a full-page spread of in one crowded home after another and a street in Jabalia, wind and rain-swept
107 shanty-town style with housing. Narrative book traditions. American comic books blocks referring to the picture of Sacco and have always been sold in large numbers in his Palestinian friends sitting on an open Canada and, along with American cinema, donkey cart fly in the wind at the top of popular music and television, have long the page like bits of laundry hung on lines: constituted a major cultural force in Cana- “We’ve hitched a lift […] a donkey cart dian society. Nevertheless, there is a dis- […] another authentic refugee camp expe- tinct difference in tone and style between rience […] good for the comic, maybe a the leading American graphic novelists splash page” (Ibid., 217; punctuation as in and those in Canada. Americans favour a original). The irony in this text is height- harder and more violent visual style and ened by the final narrative block, this one are more ideologically marked. Even when at the bottom of the page, at the feet of a similar themes are being treated, the picto- Palestinian woman and her son struggling rial style preferred by Canadian artists is to walk against the wind: “this is my fourth distinctly quieter, more lyrical in its use of day in Jabalia, Sameh’s been here most of spacing and more inclined to privilege pic- his life” (Ibid., 217). What is a working ture over words. visit for the journalist is the hopelessness The visual sensitivity of Seth’s work of whole lives for the camp dwellers. has recently won him unusual recognition It seems ironic that two of the most within the Canadian art world. In the sum- powerful and well-respected graphic no- mer of 2005 the prestigious Art Gallery vels created by Americans should be about of Ontario acquired one of his works for the Jewish Holocaust and the Palestinian its permanent collection and also put on a tragedy. Art Spiegelman and Joe Sacco’s solo show of Seth’s graphic work. Earlier it is unlikely that the notion of so honou- success demonstrates the range of subject ring comic-book art would have found now open to graphic novelists. They can support within the world of high culture. move the comic-book genre from its tradi- The main character in Seth’s It’s a Good tional comic, fantastic and science fiction Life If You Don’t Weaken is also called themes to the historical and psychological Seth and seems to be, as in the work of without abandoning the basic principles of Art Spiegelman and Joe Sacco, an auto- comic-book art and narrative. In this way biographical version of the artist. Here, the new genre maintains a place in popular however, the artist’s consciousness forms narrative while drawing on the qualities of the main subject of the graphic novel. The canonical fiction. text has a number of interwoven plot lines: Seth’s visits to his mother and brother in Seth’s It’s a good life the small town of London, Ontario, his if you don’t weaken relationship with his girl-friend, his con- Canadian artists like Seth (Gregory Gal- versations with Chet, a close male friend lant) and Chester Brown have been very (based on Chester Brown), and Seth’s strongly influenced by American comic- search for information about a now forgot-
108 ten Canadian cartoonists named Jack Kal- from everyone except his friend Chet), loway, who used the pseudonym Kalo. still Seth succeeds in speaking to Kalo’s Although the novel is set in 1986 and daughter, mother and fellow workers. It there are explicit visual references to the turns out that Kalo’s career as a cartoonist Canada of this time, many of the illustra- was not very successful; after he married tions evoke an earlier period in Canadian and had a child, he gave up cartooning. history, the 1930s and especially the 1950s, Yet his mother insists that he was a happy which the main character says “always man, and this assertion, given in the clo- seem very ‘Canadian’ to me” (Seth, 2003, sing pages of the novel, provides a sense of 92). Seth often wanders about the areas of quiet achievement in this melancholy story Toronto that still have buildings from these (Seth, 2003, 163). earlier periods. Indeed, buildings and in- The novel is visually very beautiful. dustrial structures are reproduced in much Seth indicates dialogue with the usual greater detail than the human characters, speech bubbles, while the protagonist’s who are depicted in the stylized manner reflections are given in white letters on a that Scott McCloud argues makes identi- black background without any framing, fication easier for the reader (McCloud, but very often there is no text of any kind. 1994, 36). In addition, the visual narrative Such pages of pure illustration, most often blurs the distinction between the 1980s showing Seth looking at the facades of dif- and earlier periods through a number of ferent buildings, provide periods of medi- techniques. One is that the main character tative tranquillity which invite the readers is dressed in clothes that remind us of the to consider what human life means, how it mid-twentieth century, though other peo- is situated in a specific time and place, and ple around him may be dressed in fashions how places themselves retain something of typical of the 1980s. Seth himself does the lives once lived in them. prefer to dress in retro style. Besides, the whole text is presented in three colours, Chester Brown’s black, white and a greyish blue, creating I never really liked you effects reminiscent of the black-and-white movies of the 1940s and 1950s. The same kind of quietness is evident in As the narrative progresses, it becomes Chester Brown’s I Never Really Liked You, clear that Seth’s quest for facts about the although the visual style used by Brown is cartoonist Kalo is related to a search for different from that of Seth in many ways. meaning in his own life. He repeatedly al- While Seth’s frames fill each page neatly, ludes to other cartoonists, doubts his own Brown often varies the number, size and skill and tries to understand his obsession positioning of his frames on a page, and with both cartoons and the past. Although sometimes creates a long pause by placing his relationship with a new girl-friend only one frame on a whole page. Joe Sacco ends rapidly and bitterly (mainly because also does something similar, but then he en- he distances himself from her, as he does larges this single frame in the graphic-novel
109 equivalent of a film close-up. Brown, on the in Seth’s novel, here readers see mostly a contrary, uses what cinema calls a long shot, single building, the suburban family house keeping the frame tiny on the large white and rooms within it. This world is one of space of the page. Both Seth and Brown children and teenagers; only Chester’s show the influence of film technique, as do mother appears as a significant character almost all contemporary comic-book crea- from the adult world, while school life is tors. In Seth’s work, however, this shifting depicted entirely without any visual refe- of angles and distance is most often used for rence to teachers. All that readers encoun- scenes without any human beings in them, ter are the pupils coming home from school most often for scenes of streets, buildings or talking to each other in study rooms or and means of transportation. In Chester the cafeteria. This choice reflects the sig- Brown’s novel, the human being is always nificant concerns of adolescent life: rela- the centre of attention. tions with parents and siblings, with school Both Canadian artists accentuate the friends and bullies, with the other children loneliness of the human condition, the dif- in the neighbourhood. Chester falls in love, ficulties we all have in communicating ide- daydreams about sex, listens to recordings as and feelings, and the fragility of human of rock music, watches television, draws relationships, but while Seth focuses on pictures and talks to his friends. his main character’s inner world, Brown Out of these banal everyday activities, is more interested in social interaction. Brown constructs the drama of growing Language is used even less often in Ches- up in late twentieth-century Canadian ter Brown’s novel than in Seth’s, but it is suburbia: the desire to be oneself, resis- almost all dialogue, not monologues as in tance to pressures put on the adolescent by It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken. parents and classmates, and long periods Brown’s I Never Liked You belongs to of self-criticism and self-doubt. Chester the literary genre of the novel of deve- often feels trapped within himself: he can- lopment or Bildungsroman, taking rea- not express many of his strongest feelings ders from the main character’s childhood and shuts himself off deliberately from the through the troubled identity crises of ado- love that others offer him. He both desires lescence to some form of maturity. It may love and avoids relationships. also be characterized as a novel about the His relations with his mother are han- development of an artist, as the protago- dled with particular sensitivity in the no- nist, named Chester like his creator, is a vel. When he is still a child, they are able would-be artist who draws illustrations at times to communicate their feelings, as based on comic-book prototypes. is seen in a very brief episode near the be- The novel is set in a suburb of Mon- ginning of the novel. The young boy con- treal, Chateauguay, the place where the fesses to his mother that he has been trying author himself grew up. Quite differently to juggle an egg and has dropped it. The from the complex urban settings which are sequence of frames start in silence with the practically characters in their own right boy not speaking but clearly troubled. He
110 leads his mother to the kitchen where the All of these episodes are handled with egg lies broken on the floor. The episode minimal visual and linguistic means. The ends with the mother suddenly understan- narrative rhythm that Brown creates with ding what he is afraid to say, and the warm spacing and silence, as well as with con- hug that resolves the tension and expresses stant shifts in visual perspective, is very her love (Brown, 20002, 13–15). striking. In quite a different way than Art In later episodes, however, there are Spiegelman, for whom language is always many moments of conflict between mother of primary importance, Chester Brown and son. Chester does not want to go to also creates a graphic style with dense psy- church on Sundays with the family; he chological implications. refuses to go to the store for his mother. In a pivotal scene he refuses her repeated Conclusion requests to say he loves her (Brown, 2002, Each of the four artists discussed in this 122–123). At the end of the novel, she has article has a characteristic visual style and a mental breakdown and is placed in a narrative manner that enables readers to hospital in Montreal. On his way there to recognize their work at a glance. Yet all of visit her, Chester tells himself that now he will finally speak the words of love she has them continue to have strong ties to comic- asked for. However, when he stands be- book traditions. It is true that thematically side his mother, now a very ill woman, he their texts represent a major break with the finds he cannot speak these words (Ibid., typical concerns of the comic book: none 16l–164). With her death, he seems to have of them feature superheroes or include any completed adolescence. elements of the fantastic. Visually, on the In the final episode of the novel, he other hand, they employ the language of breaks with the girl he has been seeing and the comic book, both in the way they de- chooses solitude. As always in Brown’s pict their characters and in their manipu- work, what is not said is even more im- lation of the possibilities of the layout of portant than the words the characters do frames on the page. Their stylistic diffe- utter to each other. Here Chester is mo- rences demonstrate the freedom the com- wing the lawn: his girl-friend walks over ic-book narrative offers to authors. These and invites him to go to the fair with her four novels, as well as many other ones by and her family. He makes excuses, but a wide variety of artists, challenge literary she persists, with each frame showing her critics to widen the scope of their research face in larger and closer focus, while in the in narrative theory and technique. While frames in which he appears, his face be- traditional comic books may be relegated comes very small. The final frame of the to the realm of popular culture and so mar- whole novel, alone in the middle of the ginalized from academic discourse, the page, shows two tiny figures seen from the graphic novel, as the works of Art Spiegel- air, he mowing the lawn and she walking man, Joe Sacco, Seth and Chester Brown away (Brown, 2002, 180–185). show, cannot be pushed aside so easily.
111 BIBLIOGRAPHY Arnold, A.D., 2003: The Graphic Novel Silver An Aesthetic History, Jackson: University Press of Anniversary, Time Online Edition, available from: Mississippi.
GRAFINIS ROMANAS: NAUJAS ANGLOSAKSŲ KULTŪROS REIŠKINYS Milda Danytė Santrauka Šio straipsnio tikslas yra pristatyti naują naratyvinį antrosios kartos paveldėta kančia, kuri komplikuo- žanrą – grafinį romaną (angl. graphic novel), kilusį ja tėvo ir sūnaus santykius. 1992 m. romanas Maus iš komiksų tradicijų. Komiksų vieta Šiaurės Ameri- pelnė autoriui prestižinę Amerikos „Pulitzer“ lite- kos kultūroje paradoksali; nors jie nuo XX a. pra- ratūros premiją. Kitas amerikiečių grafinio romano džios spausdinami beveik visuose JAV ir Kanados kūrėjas Joe Sacco taip pat domisi istorinių katastrofų laikraščiuose, nevertinami nei kaip menas, nei kaip poveikiu paprastų žmonių gyvenimui. Romanas Pa- literatūra. Tik paskutiniame XX a. dešimtmetyje li- lestinas vaizduoja autoriaus klaidžiojimą per palesti- teratūrologai atkreipė dėmesį į komiksus, kaip savitą niečių pabėgėlių gyvenvietes. Romano įtampa kyla naratyvinį žanrą: aiškinama, kad būtina analizuoti iš autoriaus bendravimo su palestiniečiais – ironijos žodžių ir vaizdų sąryšį, kuris sukuria išskirtinę nara- objektu dažniausiai tampa jis pats, naivus svečias iš tyvinę kalbą. Šią kalbą meistriškai naudoja grafinių turtingų Vakarų. Žinomiausi Kanados grafinio roma- romanų kūrėjai – pritaiko ją visai naujoms temoms. no kūrėjai Chesteris Brownas ir Seth (rašytojo Gre- Pavyzdžiui, amerikiečio Arto Spiegelmano romanas gory Gallanto slapyvardis) taip pat linkę naudoti au- Maus („Pelė“, išvertus iš vokiečių kalbos) pasako- tobiografinę medžiagą. C. Brownas romane Tu man ja apie žydų holokausto siaubą. Iš pirmo žvilgsnio niekad nepatikai (išleistas 2002 m.) galima įžvelgti atrodo beveik šventvagiška, kad autorius apie žydų bildungsromano bruožų. Pagrindinis herojus, kaip ir kančias Aušvico lageryje pasakoja naudodamasis ži- autorius, vardu Chesteris, augantis Monrealio prie- noma komiksų „kalbančių gyvulių“ tradicija. Tačiau miestyje, turi tipiškų paauglystės rūpesčių. Tik vai- A. Spiegelmanas sugeba tragiškus įvykius perteikti kino motinai staiga susirgus nervų liga, susidrumsčia ironišku komiksų stiliumi. Jo romane išryškinama ramus priemiesčio gyvenimas. Chesteris priverstas
112 subręsti. Seth’o romane Geras gyvenimas, jei tik kyti prie Šiaurės Amerikos polinkio greitai užmirš- nepalūžti (išleistas 2003 m.) irgi autobiografinis; pa- ti praeitį, nevertinti jos kultūros. Grafinis romanas grindinis herojus, kaip ir autorius, vardu Seth’as. Ro- apskritai yra iššūkis literatūrologams, verčiantis juos mano veiksmas – Seth’o pastangos surasti žinių apie ieškoti naujų teorijų ir metodologijų, pagal kurias vieną jau seniai užmirštą Kanados karikatūrininką, būtų galima nagrinėti naują žanrą. su kuriuo Seth’as tapatinasi. Autorius nenori prisitai-
Gauta 2009 04 19 Autorės adresas: Priimta skelbti 2009 05 01 Anglų filologijos katedra Humanitarinių mokslų fakultetas Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas K. Donelaičio g. 52, LT-44244 Kaunas El. paštas: [email protected]
113