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Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Acting Like You Have Nothing to Prove
I'll admit that when it comes to literature, I'm a canonist. Aside from a few exceptions, when I read, I read the tried-and-true. It means that I don't get to see a lot of the current avant-garde literature but it also means I don't read a lot of books that suck, either. It's not that I can't judge for myself what is good and what isn't (I'm reminded of an earnest religious sort of girl in high school who asked of atheists, "But how do they know what's right if they don't believe in God?"), and it's not that the canon is a "safe" place (in fact several works now enshrined were radical or controversial in their time and some remain so). But if you have certain sensibilities, the literary canon has its use--from time to time you'll run into a real groaner like An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser, but most of the books that have gone through that whole "test of time" thing are pretty good. Also, works in the canon are generally part of a shared vocabulary for literary people; we see a literary "conversation"- one work giving rise to another, authors testing ideas, others developing them in different directions, others refuting them. I can feel like I'm part of something comprehensible and continuous when I'm engaged with literary works.
And that's why I'm kind of befuddled when it comes to choosing comics to read. Comics are such a new medium that there really isn't a canon for them. There are a few essentials whose titles everyone in comics trots out when faced with talking about comics-as-literature, sure. But how long can you keep citing Maus? (It won a Pulitzer, you know.) And what does Maus have to do with contemporary works in the same medium? And from what traditions in the medium did it arise? This is my problem when I read comics -- in my mind, each work is solitary; it does not stand with its peers, working on similar themes with different nuances, adding to a conversation.
Dear god, I think, where to begin? What about bande desinee? Do I have to turn to the French? They always have theories, frameworks. I'd read that Thierry Groensteen book that they wrote about in Thought Balloonists, but, c'mon! Groensteen? That's not French enough!
But I don't think the French are going to help me. I just don't speak their language - or really read their comics. I probably should. I feel guilty for not having a library of B.D. and I don't know why I should feel guilty. Sometimes I feel like I don't know anything important when it comes to comics. The problem I'm experiencing is that of trying to form a coherent whole from disparate parts. Literature and the literary canon didn't happen by accident. Writers consciously engaged with their society and culture, as well as others who practiced their craft. Schools of thought formed; individual visions of philosophical and cultural subjects emerged. Can the same be said of comics? Do the ties between one generation and the next ever move out of the superficial realm of influence and into the active engagement of conversation? I see a score of submissions every year that ape other artists' drawing and writing style but rarely any that invoke their themes that speak to an individual voice and perspective beneath the pastiche. Is there simply no desire for a conversation? Is there no engagement with the treatment of cultural themes outside of the medium? Is there no meaningful community?
Most likely there is; I just don't see it yet. Perhaps I'm too tired of the day-to-day work of publishing comics, of looking at each book and each submission in its singularity, to see the whole. I need fresh eyes. A fresh brain. This brain I have is full of smudgy, half-formed answers to the same thought that Paul Pope recently wrote about in the First Second blog: "I often wonder why we don't see more literary quality in the comics being published today."
I think I might have come up with a theory about why this is so (smudgy and half-formed, as I said, so please indulge me): We don't see more literary quality in comics being published today because too few critics treat comics as serious literature and art, critically reading and judging them without reference to non-literary works who happen to share the same format. I'm disappointed when I see "cultural critics" like Jeff Jensen, who recently wrote an essay in Entertainment Weekly about his love of comics, elevating the very genre that keeps comics from being taken seriously: superhero comics. (I know, I know, we don't look to EW for high culture, but, really, was that the best they could give comics?) True comics advocates are not glorified fanboys. If the image of comics in society is that of source material for the latest summer blockbuster, why would anyone who wants to produce something of literary and artistic merit turn to comics as their medium? We're lucky to get the few creators we have who have looked for and recognize literary merit in comics and endeavor to emulate it. If we're going to get more of them, we need comics critics who treat the medium seriously, who, instead of glorifying the comics of their childhood and adolescence, know how to read comics and write about from as real literary critics.
So, how do we get there? In his book Reading Comics, Douglas Wolk (who totally panned my story in Put the Book Back on the Shelf: A Belle and Sebastian Anthology in a review at Salon.com, but what the hell), writes: "A lot of comics readers are unhealthily attached to the idea that everyone else thinks what they do is kind of trashy and disreputable, and that they have to prove their favorite leisure activity worthy of respect -- to show the world that they were right all along. It's probably time to let go of that strain of earnest defensiveness." And I totally agree. Some critics are already doing it, like those at the blog I reference in my thought above, Thought Balloonists. All of us who do not read comics as a "hobby" or as pure entertainment need to put aside culture's preconception of comics. In vehemently asserting the value of comics, we recognize that point of view even as we rail against it. Let's pretend we have nothing to prove. Let's treat comics without disclaimers, without explanations. Let's pretend there isn't a huge wall that divides Art and Literature from Comics. Because you know what? There isn't one. We're seeing that more and more, so let's stop acting like whiny asses. (There are the big things -- like Gene Yang's taking the literary world by storm with American Born Chinese -- but I am just as pleased at the smaller signs.
Just recently, I was reading the guidelines for what may be submitted for a literary prize, and they read, "The unpublished work-in-progress may be fiction, non-fictional prose, graphic novel, or poetry.") Let's be as tough and as reverent with comics as we would with any art form. Let's let go of the stupid arguments about whether "graphic novel" is a good word for comics and focus on what matters: art and story. Let's respect the separateness of genres and stop acting as if Persepolis has anything at all to do with Spider-Man. Let's stop treating comics - and, by extension, ourselves - as The Other. It might be the only way we can prove anything.
What is intimidating but also exciting is that we can be part of something new. This isn't just about recognizing and understanding craft; it's not about getting people to recognize comics as both art and literature. No, it's going past that; it is taking craft, artistic and literary value as givens. If we're going to be part of making comics legitimate, we have to stop arguing about that as if they're not. The best thing we can do is read comics--old (and in such a young art form, "old" is very relative) and new--and be part of the cultural work that leads to the formation of a canon in the first place.
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April 22, 2008:
February 4, 2008:
November 20, 2006:
A Comic-Con without the Captain
