Comics as Literature? Reading Graphic Narrative Author(s): Hillary Chute Source: PMLA, Vol. 123, No. 2 (Mar., 2008), pp. 452-465 Published by: Modern Language Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25501865 Accessed: 09-09-2015 15:46 UTC
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the changing profession
Comics as Literature? Reading Graphic Narrative
COMICS?A FORMONCE CONSIDERED PURE JUNK?ISSPARKING IN TERESTIN LITERARY STUDIES. I'M AS AMAZED AS ANYBODY ELSE BY THE HILLARY CHUTE an comics boom?despite the fact that Iwrote English department dissertation thatmakes the passionate case that we should not ig nore this innovative narrative form. Yet if there's promoting of com ics, there's also confusion about categories and terms. Those of us in literary studies may think themoves obvious: making claims in the name of popular culture or in the rich tradition of word-and-image inquiry (bringing us back to the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages). But comics presents problems we're still figuring out our (the term doesn't settle comfortably into grammar; nomencla ture remains tricky and open to debate). The field hasn't yet grasped we its object or properly posed its project. To explore today's comics need to go beyond preestablished rubrics: we have to reexamine the com categories of fiction, narrative, and historicity. Scholarship on ics?and specifically on what Iwill call graphic narrative?is gain ing traction in the humanities. Comics might be defined as a hybrid one word-and-image form inwhich two narrative tracks, verbal and one visual, register temporality spatially. Comics moves forward in time through the space of the page, through its progressive counter point of presence and absence: packed panels (also called frames) narra alternating with gutters (empty space). Highly textured in its tive scaffolding, comics doesn't blend the visual and the verbal?or use one simply to illustrate the other?but is rather prone to pres a ent the two nonsynchronously; reader of comics not only fills in the gaps between panels but also works with the often disjunctive back-and-forth of reading and looking formeaning. Throughout this essay, I treat comics as a medium?not as a lowbrow genre, which is atten how it is usually understood. However, Iwill end by focusing tion on the strongest genre in the field: nonfiction comics. HILLARY CHUTE ?sa junior fellow ?n liter I'm interested in how comics considers the ature in the Harvard Society of Fellows. particularly problem of because own work has centered on what She iswriting a book on contemporary representing history my graphic narratives by women. the comics formmakes possible for nonfiction narrative, especially
452 2008 BY THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA
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a on the ability of comics to spatially juxtapose in 1964 newsletter circulated tomembers of y fi and and futuremo the Amateur Press and the term (and overlay) past present Association, ? ments on the I'm interested in was borrowed Bill in y page. Further, subsequently by Spicer s? how comics modes of historical and his fanzine World. think 3 expands Graphic Story Many W personal expression while existing in the Will Eisner invented the term because he used 3* CTO field of the How does contemporary it in a more commercial context, to sell A Con popular.1 o comics histo tract with God to A series approach devastating public (1978) publishers. 0 ries?Why do female artists blur the distinc of four serious, linked vignettes chronicling tion between "private" and "public" histories? the sordid circumstances and assimilationist com a 5* The aesthetics and narrative impact of desires of immigrants in Bronx tenement in 3 ics that address history are a large focus of the 1930s, A Contract with God was the first a MetaMaus, a book by Art Spiegelman about book marketed as "graphic novel."3 the thirteen-year process of making his Pu Decades later, we find "graphic novel" litzer Prize-winning Maus: A Survivors Tale, sections in many bookstores. Yet graphic I am to a which helping edit. novel is often misnomer. Many fascinating works grouped under this umbrella?includ ing Spiegelman sWorld War II-focused Maus, Overview which helped rocket the term into public consciousness?aren't novels at all: are Three journals have devoted special issues to they graphic narrative. Art Spiegelman recently rich works of nonfiction; hence my emphasis taught a seminar at Columbia University here on the broader term narrative. (Indeed, called Comics: Marching into the Canon. The the form confronts the default assumption as a Norton Anthology of Postmodern American that drawing system is inherently more Fiction includes comics. Outside the academy, fictional than prose and gives a new cast to graphic narrative is coming to the forefront what we consider fiction and nonfiction.) In of literary-critical and cultural conversations: graphic narrative, the substantial length im a Time magazine, mainstream barometer, plied by novel remains intact, but the term named Alison Bechdel's graphic narrative shifts to accommodate modes other than memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic its fiction. A graphic narrative is a book-length best book of 2006?the same year Houghton work in themedium of comics.4 Mifflin, which publishes the Best American There are many formats for comics, series, inaugurated the first Best American which all carry unique cultural baggage. The Comics volume. The New York Times Maga comic strip, which emerged in the United a cover zine, in article in July 2004, asserted States before the twentieth century, ranges that this "new literary form" is "what novels from less than one page to several pages or used to be?an accessible, vernacular form more. This is a comics segment that can be a with mass appeal" (McGrath 24). minimal unit or what we might think of as a a more common Graphic novel is much short story. The comic book, which emerged and term than in recognizable graphic narrative.2 the 1930s, is typically thirty-two pages long as a Graphic novel?which took shape market and either is a collection of comic-strip stories a ing term?has specific history in the second or ismade up of one sustained story, often an half of the twentieth century. Part of the impe installment in a series (see Lef?vre).5 (Comics tus came from a vital underground publishing inhabits all kinds of serial forms and contexts, that wanted works with or community greater fromweekly daily strips tomonthly comic in the medium of comics: impact the first books to serial characters represented across use public of the phrase, by Richard Kyle, was formats; I argue elsewhere that the comics
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? a page itself is material register of seriality, a McCloud defines comics as: "juxtaposed .2 on in narrative architecture built the establish pictorial and other images in deliberate se Hm ment of or deviation from regular intervals quence, intended to convey information O im of As a form, comics differs from the and/or an aesthetic in the a space.) produce response since cartoons are im cartoon, single-panel viewer" (Understanding 9). ("Before it's pro c ages. While both forms often involve a similar jected," McCloud notes, "film is just a very w s: visual-verbal punch, comics, usually unfold very very very slow comic" [8].) The weight over frames, carries a different on sequence here allows McCloud to w ing multiple placed narrative push than a cartoon does. Yet com track a prehistory including pre-Columbian ? ics authors are still routinely called cartoon picture manuscripts, the Bayeux tapestry, ists; in fact, the historical definition of cartoon and "The Tortures of St. Erasmus" (1460), continues to resonate with authors who em among other seemingly unlikely cultural an brace the mass reproduction of comics?the tecedents. Writing in 2001, Robert Harvey aspect of the form that keeps comics from be disagrees with McCloud's notion that comics ing considered "fine art." Cartoon comes from do not have to contain words (see also Smol the Italian word cartone, meaning cardboard, deren, who rejects sequence as the defining or and denotes a drawing for a picture design property of comics and analyzes the "swarm intended historically to be transferred to tap ing effect" in single images from illustrated estries or to frescoes (see Harrison; Janson; Bibles and Bosch and Brueghel up through Harvey, "Comedy" and "Describing"). Yet, as children's books). Harvey counters, "It seems Randall Harrison points out, "with the com to me that the essential characteristic of ing of the printing press, cartoon' took on an comics'?the thing that distinguishes it from other meaning. Itwas a sketch which could be other kinds of pictorial narratives?is the mass produced. Itwas an image which could incorporation of verbal content.... And the to be transmitted widely" (16).6 history of cartooning?of comics'?seems But what is the comics form?its prop me more supportive of my contention than erties, purviews, abilities? Even comics afi of his" ("Comedy" 75-76). Harvey's history as starts is cionados might say, Justice Potter Stewart in the eighteenth century and located did of pornography, that one simply knows in figures including Hogarth, Gillray, Row itwhen one sees it.Comics is a creative and landson, and Goya (see also Katz; Sabin). are expansive form that has always been con McCloud's and Harvey's positions not strained?unlike, say, the artist's book, which so contradictory. The form of comics always cen on can has a parallel history in the twentieth hinges the way temporality be traced en across the tury?by formats dictated by commercial in complex, often nonlinear paths this in both terprise.7 The question ofwhat Scott McCloud space of the page; largely registers calls "functional descriptions" fuels an area words and images, although itdoesn't always comics of comics criticism,8which is almost gleefully have to.As Spiegelman suggests, works free of institutionally entrenched definitions. "choreograph and shape time" ("Ephemera" 4). done McCloud's 1993 Understanding Comics, the And while many forms do and have this, accom first book to theorize comics in themedium it is in the specificity of how this is we can is often most of comics, suggests a deliberately broad?and plished that locate what about comics. Panels? provisional?definition. His analysis of the formally interesting form includes but is not limited to the print which McCloud calls "comics' most important are a indicator context, which many practitioners and critics icon" and which "general that or most understand to be essential (e.g., Kunzle, Early time space is being divided"?are the comics as Comic Strip; Dowd and Reinert). basic aspect of grammar, because,
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McCloud writes, "[c]omics fracture (Kunzle, Nineteenth Century and Father; Wil y panels ft both time and a stac In Goe space, offering jagged, lems). 1832, extolling T?pffer's work, n y cato rhythm of unconnected moments"; they the praised themass-culture potential ofwhat 3 alternate on the page with blank space (Under had come to be called "picture-novels."9 (g a was standing 98,99,67). A comics page offers rich Even in this early incarnation, comics 3 CTQ as much what understood as an antielitist art form.Yet Amer temporal map configured by Xi isn't drawn as what is: it is conscious ican comic are set from the earlier n by highly strips apart 0 -h was never a mass of the artificiality of its selective borders, European form?which same use which diagram the page into an arrangement market product in the way?by their 5* of encapsulated moments. McCloud alleges of continuing characters and their appearance 3 that the empty space, called the gutter, "plays inmass-circulated newspapers (see Gordon). It host" towhat is "at the very heart of comics" is commonly accepted that inAmerica comics and that "what's between the panels is the only were invented in 1895 for Joseph Pulitzer's New element of comics that is not duplicated in any York World (the same year the Lumi?re broth other medium" (66; "Scott McCloud" 13). ers invented narrative film in Paris) with Rich Among these learned scholars and critics, ard Fenton Outcault's The Yellow Kid, which on a history of comics is being assembled as a way focused contemporary urban immigrants of carving out a tradition, in a rich history of and featured an endearing, obnoxious child forms, that leads to a contemporary excitement resident of an East Side tenement.10Pulitzer re about graphic narrative. The following abbre alized that the stripwas a circulation booster; viated history points to several key figures and the struggle that ensued in the sensational events (here I offer a context for American press between William Randolph Hearst and work but do not emphasize the development of Pulitzer over The Yellow Kid reportedly gave the commercial comic-book industry, which birth to the term yellow journalism, after the is dominated by two superhero-focused pub Kid and his recognizable yellow gown. lishers,Marvel and DC). Even while McCloud Unlike modernist fiction that developed are and Harvey at odds, they affirmHogarth's around the same time, themedium of comics was importance to comics (Understanding 16; marked from the beginning by its com "Comedy" 77). As I and Marianne DeKoven modity status. However, it is still largely un write inModern Fiction Studies, for works recognized that the comics in the firstdecades such as A Harlot's Progress?which, like com of the twentieth century was both a mass framed moments in one ics, represents punctual, market product and that influenced and an understand was influenced ongoing narrative?"[w]e may by avant-garde practices, espe as ex Hogarth's influence by reading his work cially those of Dada and surrealism (Gopnik tending ut pictura poesis from poetry to the and Varnedoe; Inge). It is also little known modern genre of the novel: he introduced a that in the late 1930s, while comic books be a sequential, novelistic structure to pictorial gan their ascent on the back o? Superman, the form" (769). Later, in the nineteenth century, firstmodern graphic narratives, called "word a when Swiss schoolmaster who is considered less novels," had already appeared: beauti the inventor ofmodern comics, Rodolphe T?pf fully rendered woodcut works?in some cases fer (1799-1846), established comics conven marketed as conventional novels?that almost tions?he a a created what he called "pictorial entirely served socialist agenda and that in an on language," abbreviated style hinging the corporated experimental practices widely as of on appearance panel borders the page?he sociated with literary modernism (Joseph). as on described his work drawing two forms: Although called wordless novels, these works the novel and the "picture-stories" ofHogarth often did incorporate text,but not as captions
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e or as see scene o speech balloons (Beron?; also Cohen). self-published work that?without While they have not always been analyzed as commercial strictures?experimented with & Hm part of the history of comics, including them the formal capacities of comics. Out of this O in the of narrative, as culture, most narra a development graphic today's enduring graphic some have to allows scholars to tives took works M begun do, shape?serious, imaginative S demonstrate how graphic narrative early in its that explored social and political realities by a s: modern history combined formal experimen stretching the boundaries of historically JE tation with an tomass mass medium. the y appeal readerships?a (Autobiography, arguably crucial to the of the form dominant mode of current narrative, & development impact graphic x mass was today.11 In showing the tensions between first established in the underground.) printing and artisanal practice and between Spiegelman provides a prominent exam convention and experimentation, these works ple. His experimental underground comics show theway early versions of graphic narra stories and his autobiographical pieces, in as as tive responded to contemporary culture and cluding the prototype "Maus," well his anticipated the elaboration of genres and the two magazines, Arcade (1975-76) and RAW an mixture of high and low modes we recognize (1980-91), translate and transvalue anti in present-day fiction. narrative avant-garde aesthetic for the popu In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, comics re lar and populist medium of comics. Initially flected the seismic cultural shifts?often pro Spiegelman toyswith narrative expectations in duced by war?in American culture of those of temporal movement, working opposi decades; comics bridged the experimental tion to "diversionary" mainstream comics. was ism of literary and visual modernisms and In the later RAW, where Maus first pub mass-produced American popular culture. lished serially, he expands this practice. We see as weaves Founded by the cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman that historical enunciation jag in 1952, Mad Comics: Humor in a Jugular gedly through paradoxical spaces and shift was a comics?as a form that Vein (laterMAD magazine) rigorously ing temporalities, on self-reflexive comic book deeply concerned relies space to represent time?becomes with comics aesthetics. With Mad, Kurtz structurally equipped to challenge dominant man established the project of comics as a modes of storytelling and history writing. won a Pulitzer critique ofmainstream America, particularly Maus, which "special" the media; as such, Mad was an inspiration Prize and introduced the sophistication of to as forunderground comics (often termed comix) comics the academy, portrays Jews as cats. It the in the late 1960s and early 1970s. mice and Germans tells story Like the fiction of the 1960s, comics of a cartoonist named Art Spiegelman and Vladek a Holocaust during that period was dominated by oppo his father, Spiegelman, com back and forth between sitionality. The full avant-gardism of survivor, by moving New York ics arrived with the "underground comix World War II-era Poland and City revolution" in the latter years of the decade, a in the 1970s and 1980s. Maus has been writ It is an a movement that explicitly termed itself avant ten about widely.12 absorbing story, a reaction to of a flawed It is also garde. Underground comics, moving portrait family. the censorious content code that debilitated complex aesthetically and politically inways to Marianne Hirsch themainstream industry,were an influential specific comics. points out of text that are cultural vehicle, challenging and arresting aspects Spiegelman's on ta to thework the nar because theymeditated the violation of widely applicable graphic can do. use of boos. Rejecting mainstream publication out rative form Spiegelman's pho in his hand-drawn she lets, the denizens of the underground comics tographs text, argues,
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raises not only the question of how, forty "modernist moment of form... may be behind y $ years after Adorno's dictum, the Holocaust us" In narrative of (324).13 particular, graphic ft can be represented, but also how different fers diverse that y compelling, examples engage m media?comics, photographs, narrative, with different and modes to 3 styles,methods, W testimony?can interact with each other to consider the problem of historical representa 3* a more text produce permeable and multiple 99 tion. An awareness of the limits of representa that recast the of Holocaust -0 may problematics tion?which not is to the ?{ only specific problem 0 representation and eradicate any definitively of trauma but also has become a clear-cut distinction between the documen articulating ft uconditio sine non of all w and the aesthetic. Pictures" qua representations" tary ("Family 11) 0 (Kunow 252)?is integrated into comics 3 through its framed, self-conscious, bimodal Spiegelman publicly and successfully fought form; yet it is precisely in its insistent, affective, the New York Times to get his book moved of historical circumstance from the fiction to the nonfiction best-seller urgent visualizing that comics aspires to ethical engagement. list. In competing or nonsynchronous nar Some of the most riveting books out rative layers of comics, he creates an intense ones there?the waking up literary critics level of self-reflexivity (seen in fig. 1). In the represent often vicious historical realities. graphic narrative, additionally, the non (Historians have been interested too?one transparency of drawing?the presence of of the best essays on Maus is in Oral History the body, the hand, as a mark in the through Review?but these visual-verbal texts are a par text?lends subjective register to the nar ticularly relevant to literary scholars because rative surfaces of comics pages that further of theway they represent history through nar enables comics works to be productively self rative.) For instance, three of smost ac aware today in how they "materialize" history (the claimed cartoonists, Spiegelman, Joe Sacco, striking verb is Spiegelman's [Brown 98]). and Marjane Satrapi, work in the nonfiction Discussing Mflws's place in the academy in a mode: Spiegelman onWorld War II and 9/11, 2003 interview, Hirsch noted, "As forMaus Sacco on Palestine and Bosnia, on ... Satrapi and its acceptance in academia it's more Iran's Islamic Revolution and war with Iraq. than acceptance. Everyone is rushing towrite This is not a coincidence. We may think of about Maus" ("Marianne Hirsch"). graphic narrative, in the innate, necessary formalism of its narrative procedure?in its Contexts experimentation with the artificial strictures of the comics form?as calling our attention The of one touchstone is study text,Maus, towhat Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub call developing into an area that the investigates "textualization of the context": "the empirical of the form at In his comment potential large. content needs not just to be known, but to be that "the surface [of the was a stylistic page] read-The basic and legitimate demand for to solve" inMaus, problem Spiegelman aptly contextualization of the text itself needs to be characterizes the graphic-narrative approach complemented, simultaneously, by the less fa to and form: stories style articulating through miliar and yet necessary work of textualization the aesthetics that the spatial panels, grids, of the context" (xv). Graphic narrative accom and tiers of comics offer gutters, (Complete plishes this work with itsmanifest handling Maus). Graphic narrative thus focuses atten of its own artifice, its attention to its seams. tion on what W. T. Mitchell identifies as a J. Its formal grammar rejects transparency and a "new kind of refigured political formalism, renders textualization conspicuous, inscrib formalism" that is in front of us now that the ing the context in its graphic presentation. In
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Time f lie* - VladekAie4 A t?n$e$tw?-Vteavt Vllaiek/t*fte4 working aitmmm 'mr\**chwttz.in ^ta$prin?of \9H*f..j on ?rftn?oi^tftMV ^t?fe4>M?t\? hum l$Zl\e? ^orK?n^ tto$page et ?ftthe Cat#?U>bacfcirx ?it. the verifen* ?\ feW\>*r*{i5$?t ? f\ugu In IW francoteand ?T Ia WiI after8 year5 of waprl? I" lA*f ) ^ Jeytemfeer L Ia*e&x??cim& * bafcy." / *heftot?art4 fAftv)5wvpvV\\$he4. Itw*J * c?ticaV *nd comment SwcceS*. 1fc?Wen r/fe^fifc,? ?W, and M*| M, W44 f over 100,000Hartar?an Jew* weie?a#edl At l *5t fifteenWew* editionsare commd out I've%*te*\ 4 *erioi;sY^ or V offers to turn my Voofc intoa TV-special movie. ? ?ont wanna) InfAayitoSmymother killed i su '/ ?* ~*Ker$*k (^KeHe?tnonote^?^ lately TyeVeen, feeling defied v SfVeoel*\*vw WeV?r?aAy Lto shoot '... %? FlG.1 Page 41 from Spiegelman's M?t/s //.Used by permission of Art Spiegelman and the Wylie Agency. This content downloaded from 192.65.245.60 on Wed, 09 Sep 2015 15:46:59 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 12 3-2 Hillary Chute 459 Maus, for example, the context of the text?its possibilities forwriting history that combine y ft as Holocaust cultural de formal with an to position production experimentation appeal ? aesthetic mass narrative y liberately abdicating mastery?is readerships. Graphic suggests & inscribed in the look of its that historical is not the of 3 extrasemantically accuracy opposite 99 we shaggy lines: register this rejection ofNazi creative invention; the problematics of what 3* 99 of in how we read the text, in we consider fact and fiction are made tropes mastery appar 13 our of its lines' texture. ent the role of Comics is a struc t perception grainy by drawing. 0 ?h The most narratives and doubled medium that can ft important graphic turally layered v? v? explore the conflicted boundaries ofwhat can proliferate historical moments on the page (as 5* be said and what can be shown at the inter we see in Spiegelman's panel shown in fig. 1, 3 in section of collective histories and life stories.14 which concentration-camp corpses word Authors like Spiegelman and Sacco, engaged lessly invade a present-day SoHo studio). with the horizon of history, portray torture To introduce some of today's promising and massacre in a complex formal mode that work, I'll briefly return toMitchell, whose does not turn away from or mitigate trauma; example of how the horizons of form and in fact, they demonstrate how its visual re politics intertwine is relevant to nonfiction tracing is enabling, ethical, and productive. graphic narrative. Mitchell considers Edward There is also a rich of work women Said's text range by cross-discursive, word-and-image writers who investigate childhood and the After theLast Sky: Palestinian Lives, a collabo body?concerns typically relegated to the ration with the photographer JeanMohr, and silence and invisibility of the private sphere. emphasizes its focus on "spatial aesthetics" Satrapi's account of her youth in Iran, Persep (324). In the book's introduction, Said writes, olis, along with work by American authors "I believe that essentially unconventional, like Lynda Barry, Alison Bechdel, Phoebe hybrid, and fragmentary forms of expression Gloeckner, and Aline Kominsky-Crumb, ex should be used to represent us.... Double vi emplifies how graphic narrative can envision sion informs my text" (6). an everyday reality of women's lives, which, Published in 1986, the same year as the in while rooted the personal, is invested and terrain-shifting Maus, Said's call for generic, threaded with collectivity, beyond prescrip disciplinary, and media crossing offers one ex tivemodels of alterity or sexual difference. In planation forhis enthusiasm for comics, which every case, from the large-scale to the local, he details in the admiring introduction to narrative a traumatic side of 2001 an ex graphic presents Saceos graphic narrative Palestine, history, but all these authors refuse to show it ample ofwhat has been called "comics journal through the lens of unspeakability or invisi ism." Comics contain "double vision" in their bility, instead registering itsdifficulty through structural hybridity, their double (but nonsyn inventive (and various) textual practice. thesized) narratives of words and images. In The excitement surrounding nonfiction one frame of comics, the images and thewords is not meant to here suggest that powerful may mean differently,and thus thework sends work isn't being done with fiction. Authors out double-coded narratives or semantics. such as Charles Burns (Black Hole), Dan Sacco's work, in its detailed density, calls iel Clowes (Ghost World), and Chris Ware attention to pace?a formal aspect that Said on (JimmyCorrigan: The Smartest Kid Earth) suggests "is perhaps the greatest of [Sacco's] have raised the of comics profile literary with achievements" ("Homage" v). Praising Pales stories are that serious in scope and heavy tine,Naseer Aruri even writes that "each page on But I would com style. suggest that the is equivalent to an essay"?an appraisal of new pounding of word and image has led to density that is not restricted to the text's prose This content downloaded from 192.65.245.60 on Wed, 09 Sep 2015 15:46:59 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 46o Comics as Literature? Reading Graphic Narrative PMLA c a o but rather indicates how the thickness of the be threat to literacy" (3). Fredric Wertham, verbal-visual form in Sacco's hands trans author the 1954 Seduction the of incendiary of 4> mits what can feel like surplus information or Innocent, which helped introduce censorship O a? in Sacco, Palestine, back cover). in comic books, called comics "an eva a plenitude (qtd. reading Few narrative texts resist con sion of and almost its M graphic easy reading opposite" (qtd. C sumption more effectively than Sacco's; the in Schmitt 157). Yet commentators on comics M C formalism of his pages presents a thicket that (e.g., McCloud, Understanding 66-93, 106; a labor-intensive out requires "decoding"-?a term, Carrier 51) point that because the form u that both framed moments alter 4) connoting difficulty, Spiegelman represents punctual, and Said use to discuss comics (Said, "Hom nating with the blank space of the gutter onto a age" ii; Spiegelman, Interview 61). Sacco's which we must project causality, comics as works push on the disjunctive back-and-forth form requires a substantial degree of reader even between looking and reading: this rhythm? participation for narrative interpretation, often awkward and time-consuming?-is part fostering a kind of interpretive "intimacy" of Saceos "power to detain," in Said's formu (McCloud, Understanding 69). And within its a as lation, especially valuable in treating subject panels graphic narrative, my brief discus can as politicized and ethically complicated as the sion of Sacco suggests, require slowing Israel-Palestine conflict. Said praises theway down; the form can place a great demand on as an Saceos bizarre formal matching of accelera our cognitive skills. Just author's spatial tion (the pages jump with urgency) and decel construction of the page can beg rereadings eration (each page requires wading through) and deliberately confuse narrative linearity (in can occur "furnish[es] readers with a long enough so comics, reading in all directions), a journ among a people" rarely represented with the basic narrative requires high degree In complexity and thoroughness (v).15A comics of cognitive engagement.16 his Safe Area page, unlike film or traditional prose narra Gorazde, Sacco spatializes the elliptical prose as tive, is able to hold this contradictory flow in style of avant-garde writers such Louis tension, as narrative development is delayed, Ferdinand C?line, fragmenting boxes of text over retracked, or rendered recursive by the depth and floating them his images. Spatializing of texture. the verbal narrative to dramatize or and volume graphic disrupt To address the question of literacy pro the visual narrative threads ellipses into the we a posed by the idea of "decoding" comics, grammar of medium already characterized structure the might consider Spiegelman's explanation of by the elliptical of frame-gutter an the term. His comments attach a specific, ac frame sequence. We may note such example seems me one most in tive literacy to comics: "It to that in of Sacco's disturbing pages Safe an the comics have already shifted from being Area Gorazde, which represents testimony one translator Edin icon of illiteracy to becoming of the last of Sacco's Bosnian friend and of Edin's bastions of literacy," he told the Comics Jour and depicts the dead bodies friends, in nal in 1995. "If comics have any problem now, fourmen who died the first day of the first on in 1992 it's that people don't even have the patience to Serb attack Gorazde May (fig. 2). decode comics at this point.... I don't know The anxiety about the visual thatMitch or wrote when he identified a ifwe're the vanguard of another culture ell about "pictorial turn" in the with a of Fig.2 ifwe're the last blacksmiths" (Interview 61). 1990s?along suspicion This comment to from what a formmarked deeply by itspopular history Page 93 from Sacco's appears depart still consider themedium to be: "Com is evident in the reaction in the Safe Area GoraZde. many negative many as a writes Eisner in have to the notion of com Used by permission ics reading form," Will academy "literary" to ics as of in her 2004 of JoeSacco. Graphic Storytelling, "was always assumed objects inquiry. Hirsch, This content downloaded from 192.65.245.60 on Wed, 09 Sep 2015 15:46:59 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 12 3-2 HillaryChute 461 was with me in school -for12 yeans. "was with me was in Ihere four years dirt inhis the aime stomach. class Senads Probably fingershad they'd cut been cut open his -fromone hand,' stomach. the otherwas shut tight. rJ?2C?&<.1kL\&aK m^m^ 'was prob ably killed in thefirst attack, but "My best * we ntvtr frSnds. foundhis was body. He married, he ?"Every one | had a. child... oftWj "*?sa /^? ' / j=S*':?:* Ri/M?, This content downloaded from 192.65.245.60 on Wed, 09 Sep 2015 15:46:59 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 462 Comics as Literature? Reading Graphic Narrative PMLA S O Editor's Column "Collateral Damage," notes Notes *?/? the in our "that in the current & fear profession I would like to thank Roy Bautista, Marianne DeKoven, media our students mind our age (never pub Richard Dienst, James Mulholland, and Joe Ponce for O w lic officials) have lost their verbal and their I would also like to thank Joe Sacco a literacy suggestions. have themselves over to an overwhelm and Art Spiegelman for permission to reprint images w> given c from Safe Area Gorazde and Maus. ingly dominant, uncontrollable visuality that a *S 1.1 explore this in forthcoming essay comparing fic e impairs thought." But she also writes?intro tion and comics ("Ragtime"). to a PMLA issue on X the contributions reason as a term y ducing 2. One that graphic novel descriptive studies and the visual now so literary arts, including is prevalent is that it became, however awkwardly, on in an official for a stratum of work in the 4?? the four position papers visuality The catchphrase huge a Profession?that these works "re medium of comics. Even just few years ago, the term Changing was a sense as a urgently needed in practical label that veal tome that our field has already moved could distinguish serious, adult work from comics for this beyond anxiety" (1210). children. Publishers Weekly, writing in 2003 about a Indeed, now is the time to expand schol publisher-sponsored campaign to expand bookstore clas sification so that would?in the arly expertise and interest in comics. "What systems they campaign ers' words?"accurately reflect the diversity of the comics kind of visual-verbal literacy can respond to medium," noted, "Indeed, many retailers continue to be the needs of the moment?" Hirsch asks present lieve erroneously that comics are either primarily about (1212). Certainly, I wager?as does Hirsch, superheroes or are intended only for children." In a sub re sequent 2003 article, Publishers Weekly reported that who goes on to analyze Spiegelman's most were success Spiegelman and several comics publishers cent book, In the Shadow ofNo Towers?that ful in lobbying the Book Industry Standards and Com narrative some of themost graphic opens up munications committee, which generates categories that pressing questions put to literature today: assist retailers in categorizing and shelving books, to What is the texture of narrative forms that are "create a major category for graphic novels/comics, with sub-headings for fiction, non-fiction, anthologies, and relevant to ethical representations of history? comic technique, among others." See Reid; Macdonald. What are the current stakes surrounding the 3. This has been disputed; Harvey claims, for instance, to show and to tell What are the right history? that the first text to be identified as a "graphic novel" is un 1976 Time and which he re risks of representation? How do people George Metzgers Beyond Again, had the term on the title page and Eis derstand their lives through narrative design ports dust-jacket flaps. ner's 1978 book was published simultaneously in paperback and render the difficult processes ofmemory and hardcover, and, as he told Time magazine, the subtitle "A narrative has echoed on cover intelligible? Graphic Graphic Novel" appeared only the of the paperback. on it is that Eisner?who claims not to and expanded the formal inventions of fic However, indisputable in a to tion, from modernist social and aesthetic at know the term had been used earlier?"was position the direction of as he it, because his titudes and to the shift change comics," puts practices postmodern book was the first of its kind since the "wordless novels" of toward the of forms. In democracy popular the late 1920s, the 1930s, and the 1940s to be published out the we see an embrace of comics as a work of literature. See Arnold. graphic narrative, side the system as as 4. like the term for medium, a reproducibility and mass circulation well Comics, any requires as a has become as singular verb. Treating comics singular a rigorous, experimental attention to form standard; McCloud writes in his definition, for instance, a intervention. Critical mode of political ap a that comics is "plural in form, used with singular verb" to as are to proaches literature, they starting (Understanding 9). See also Varnum and Gibbons (xiii), do, need to direct more sustained attention to among numerous other scholars supporting this usage. 5. Lef?vre United States formats this developing form?a form that demands usefully compares with other international formats such as the a of narrative, and, to use European rethinking genre, runs "album" (which typically about forty-eight pages) James "ineluctable mo runs Joyce's phrase, today's and the Japanese manga magazine (which typically of the visible" dality (31). three to four hundred pages). 6. Harrison notes that while cartoon and caricature are often used interchangeably, caricature usually sug This content downloaded from 192.65.245.60 on Wed, 09 Sep 2015 15:46:59 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 12 3-2 HillaryChute 463 on gests a representation of a specific person (54). Harvey's lated into her native Farsi and is sold only the black 3" two essays on comics taxonomy argue that the modern market in her home country. ft of cartoon in London in the in refer usage began 1840s, 15.While Said's use of "detain" maybe charged, fram ence to Punch, the London humor magazine, which of and Sacco's work as a textual counterattack ing politicizing 3 fered a satirical send-up of a competition exhibit of the on the material Israeli detainment of Palestinians, Said's W cartoons, as were then known, of or on they patriotic-themed introduction to Palestine does not clarify expand decorations for the New Palace ofWestminster ("Com as this notion, instead emphasizing, I choose to do here, 77-79; edy" "Describing" 24). the nonnarrativity and the closely packed aspect of Sacco's 7. Artists' books flourished the twentieth cen during pages, which obstruct a quick purchase on meaning. most sustained of as Drucker tury's periods "utopianism," 16. Eisner points out, "In comics, no one really knows out: points during the period of the historical avant-garde for certain whether thewords are read before or after view and in the 1960s. The of artists' books, in this way, history ing the picture. We have no real evidence that they are is similar to the history of graphic narrative. read simultaneously. There is a different cognitive process 8. McCloud uses the term at the of the suggestion between reading words and pictures" (Graphic Storytelling writer Samuel R. who himself has written a Delany, 59). graphic narrative, Bread and Wine (Interview 82). 9. Goethe's associates Johann Peter Eckermann and Fr? d?ric Soret presented several of the Genevan's manuscripts to Goethe and then transmitted his enthusiasm back to Works Cited T?pffer. This encouragement prompted T?pffer to publish, Arnold, Andrew. "A Graphic Literature Library." Time in his lifetime, seven picture-stories. 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