Wow. One of my 2022 reading resolutions is to dip a toe into the world of graphic novels. This is a genre I am woefully ignorant about. I tend to thinWow. One of my 2022 reading resolutions is to dip a toe into the world of graphic novels. This is a genre I am woefully ignorant about. I tend to think of stalwarts like Alan Moore when it comes to graphic novels. But Adrian Tomine has shown me there is so much more to this art form than meets the eye (literally).
Each story is like a mini movie with its own mood, aesthetic, and characterisation. Probably my favourite here is ‘Translated from the Japanese’, where all the characters are out of frame, creating a weirdly disjointed and omniscient effect. Plus, the writing is top notch, and no story ends up where the reader expects it go.
Probably what also appealed to me directly is that these stories are quite dark. Many characters are unlikeable, and many of the situations depicted are unpleasant, whether domestic, casual, or work related. But there is a thin thread of empathy that Tomine lays like a trail of breadcrumbs for the reader to follow to the end and achieve a sense of quiet redemption. Evocative and magnificent....more
This was lovely. The reprint edition has an introduction by Alan Moore and is book-ended by interviews with artist Mia Wolff and both Dennis and DelanThis was lovely. The reprint edition has an introduction by Alan Moore and is book-ended by interviews with artist Mia Wolff and both Dennis and Delany themselves, looking back on the events of how they met. It is an extraordinary story by any account: The academic and author who strikes up a conversation with a homeless man in New York, and eventually invites him for a night of sex in a rented hotel room. After a bath and a good scrub, of course: The issue of Dennis’s personal hygiene is cause for much humour. An excellent showcase for Delany’s descriptive writing, this is not for the fainthearted.
A few detours later, and Dennis and Delany have been together ever since. Much of the story presented here in graphic-novel format is relayed in more detail in ‘Letters from Amherst’. What gives ‘Bread & Wine’ a particular poignancy is that it is such a wonderful representation of two of Delany’s abiding concerns, the ethics (and mechanics) of pornography and comic books (or graphic novels, as they are now known) as a form of ‘para’ literature.
Wolff’s drawings give the book a sense of a realistic fairy tale, if that description makes any sense. Being Delany, his sense of dialogue and detail in the text itself is mesmerising, intercut as it is with quotations from the long poem ‘Brod und Wein’ or ‘Bread and Wine’ by Friedrich Holderlin, which begins:
Round about the city rests. The illuminated streets grow Quiet, and coaches rush along, adorned with torches. Men go home to rest, filled with the day's pleasures; Busy minds weigh up profit and loss contentedly At home. The busy marketplace comes to rest, Vacant now of flowers and grapes and crafts. But the music of strings sounds in distant gardens: Perhaps lovers play there, or a lonely man thinks About distant friends, and about his own youth....more
Primer for E01 It does not bode well for a tv series if you watch the pilot, only for it to make some kind of sense after reading a short comic book. IPrimer for E01 It does not bode well for a tv series if you watch the pilot, only for it to make some kind of sense after reading a short comic book. I only found this passably interesting because it is Ridley Scott and it hints at a broader mythology. This became overly burdensome for the Alien franchise, so it will be interesting to see if Scott can make something fresh here....more
This is a really special graphic novel, so heart-warming and affirmative about mutual difference and attraction, the ongoing struggle for self-acceptaThis is a really special graphic novel, so heart-warming and affirmative about mutual difference and attraction, the ongoing struggle for self-acceptance, and the empowering recognition of the responsibility we have to others as mentors, friends, lovers. WARNING: It has an, er, heart-stopping cliffhanger of an ending that makes you want to read the next volume straightaway....more
Reading this in conjunction with watching Damon Lindelof's HBO tv series is a salutory exercise in how an adaptation can be reverent, but not by-the-nReading this in conjunction with watching Damon Lindelof's HBO tv series is a salutory exercise in how an adaptation can be reverent, but not by-the-numbers, and in so going elevate the original....more
Loading...
