TwoI can take myself too seriously. It actually happens a lot less than it used to. When I was a teenager I think I took myself very seriously most of the time. Nowadays I’m more likely to see myself as a baboon trapped in some elaborate prank. I was taking myself quite seriously when we got back from the library. I was taking myself so seriously that I farted. Eleanor stopped what she was doing and regarded me quite philosophically for some time before saying: “Daddy poo time?”
I think that you’re supposed to take comics seriously if they’re called graphic novels. This seems unnecessarily pretentious. This is probably a way for academics who like comics to justify their study by giving them a serious sounding name. When I was at school I think graphic design was called technical drawing. It is likely the subject got a name change because “drawing” didn’t sound serious enough. It’s funny that the word novel now gives weight to something when it used to be regarded askance, not as a serious art form itself. Still, some stereotypes hold up when you think about comics: the three people over in the comic section when I went there were young men, by themselves with hygiene issues.
It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken is a comic by Seth. The lead character takes comics very seriously. He buys old issues, collects them, thinks about them. He is a hoarder of old comics and old records. He is alarmed by change, he is a bit of a loner. One day he discovers a one frame gag comic by a guy called Kalo in a back issue of the New Yorker. He becomes fascinated by Kalo and begins to try and find out more about him. I like this about the lead character. I love to do this kind of thing; to hunt down information about people who were once known, and try to put them back together again. Last summer I tried to do this with Captain William Hobson.
In the end we find out quite a bit about Kalo, although quite a bit turns out to be not very much. The protagonist reflects on how a life can be reduced to half a dozen comic strips in another person’s folder. There is a great deal of attention to the beauty of things in this comic. Just as the lead character pays attention to the design and brush work of the single frame gag comics of Kalo so he also stops to notice ordinary things: buildings at night, the passing landscape outside a train window. The collage of our senses and the slowly changing continuity of our identity seem to be what life is really. When a person we know dies then the glue that holds a whole series of things together also dissolves leaving only the their possessions, objects somehow drained of their power. There is memory of course, but memory of a person is different from the person themselves. Memory of a person is mixed up in the identity and perspective of the one who remembers.
Writing a book is a way of putting things back together – taking scatterings from the past and fitting them in a way that makes sense like building a motor out of scrap. I mentioned awhile ago that I was going to write a book. It’s going to be a bit like this motor-building. It will be disguised as a set of biographical essays about people from New Zealand history. I have had a long standing obsession with Richard Seddon so he will be in there. Writing this has reminded me about Hobson. I’m going to start with Hobson.
After Eleanor said “Daddy poo time?” I looked back at her quite steadily and said no. Fatally, I then smiled. Probably it was because I smiled that she didn’t believe my denial. I can tell you this, after you’ve been chased around a bedroom by a two year old who is grabbing at your bum and shouting “Daddy poo time” it is very, very hard to take yourself seriously.
I think that you’re supposed to take comics seriously if they’re called graphic novels. This seems unnecessarily pretentious. This is probably a way for academics who like comics to justify their study by giving them a serious sounding name. When I was at school I think graphic design was called technical drawing. It is likely the subject got a name change because “drawing” didn’t sound serious enough. It’s funny that the word novel now gives weight to something when it used to be regarded askance, not as a serious art form itself. Still, some stereotypes hold up when you think about comics: the three people over in the comic section when I went there were young men, by themselves with hygiene issues.
It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken is a comic by Seth. The lead character takes comics very seriously. He buys old issues, collects them, thinks about them. He is a hoarder of old comics and old records. He is alarmed by change, he is a bit of a loner. One day he discovers a one frame gag comic by a guy called Kalo in a back issue of the New Yorker. He becomes fascinated by Kalo and begins to try and find out more about him. I like this about the lead character. I love to do this kind of thing; to hunt down information about people who were once known, and try to put them back together again. Last summer I tried to do this with Captain William Hobson.In the end we find out quite a bit about Kalo, although quite a bit turns out to be not very much. The protagonist reflects on how a life can be reduced to half a dozen comic strips in another person’s folder. There is a great deal of attention to the beauty of things in this comic. Just as the lead character pays attention to the design and brush work of the single frame gag comics of Kalo so he also stops to notice ordinary things: buildings at night, the passing landscape outside a train window. The collage of our senses and the slowly changing continuity of our identity seem to be what life is really. When a person we know dies then the glue that holds a whole series of things together also dissolves leaving only the their possessions, objects somehow drained of their power. There is memory of course, but memory of a person is different from the person themselves. Memory of a person is mixed up in the identity and perspective of the one who remembers.
Writing a book is a way of putting things back together – taking scatterings from the past and fitting them in a way that makes sense like building a motor out of scrap. I mentioned awhile ago that I was going to write a book. It’s going to be a bit like this motor-building. It will be disguised as a set of biographical essays about people from New Zealand history. I have had a long standing obsession with Richard Seddon so he will be in there. Writing this has reminded me about Hobson. I’m going to start with Hobson.
After Eleanor said “Daddy poo time?” I looked back at her quite steadily and said no. Fatally, I then smiled. Probably it was because I smiled that she didn’t believe my denial. I can tell you this, after you’ve been chased around a bedroom by a two year old who is grabbing at your bum and shouting “Daddy poo time” it is very, very hard to take yourself seriously.
1 comment:
I still take you seriously - except when you come to the staffroom, on any given school morning, and look around suspiciously before entering.
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