Well done earlier posters on getting to some of the big issues early. As a result, I’m going to focus on one aspect of Jimmy Corrigan I found fascinating (but probably wouldn’t have blogged on as a first choice): the introduction.
Perhaps it’s better referred to as a primer than an introduction. Or an introduction to reading comics. Either way, Ware’s playfulness in this section actually helps reveal a lot about the text as a whole. His intricate and elegant language (especially in the third section, as Lars mentioned on twitter) help set a tone oft-repeated (and drawn) throughout the book. And just as importantly, his primer to comics, including the “how to read these/do you see a mouse or just lines in the box” section and the short quiz, help reveal his expectations of his readers, and some preconceptions that permeate the comic world.
On a side note, another reason I’m compelled to work with the introduction this week: no page numbers.
Jared’s directions to find the text he’s referencing in this week’s post:
1. Open front cover. 2. Stop.
If you’re like me, maybe you skipped over what looked to be a silly part of the book and just dove right into the text. If you’re like me, you may have found yourself gloriously lost by about page 30 and decided that perhaps returning to the introduction might help sort things out. In my experience, the introduction was not nearly as helpful as the first and only recap when it came to making sense of the multiple threads in JC, but the introduction was still an interesting and informative read that bears heavily on the remainder of the text.
Ware starts by outlining a brief history of visual storytelling, much like we did our first week in class. One thing I think this does is open the table for the possibilities that come with telling stories with pictures. Cavemen did it one way, paintings of the Renaissance another, and “comic books” still another. Looking back on this now, it’s almost as if Ware is spelling out a warning: this will not be like any other “comic book” you have read. And Jimmy Corrigan isn’t like any other comic book I’ve read. Panels only sometimes have a clearly defined direction, thanks to the arrows, and as others have mentioned, dreams, past stories and the present story form an interwoven story that can get really confusing. Like Ulysses confusing.
Moving on to section 2, Ease of Use, we begin to see even more of the funny tone Ware brings. Here the ease of use has nothing to do with reading (which he handles in general instructions), but the ease of portability, and convenience to transport and read the book as you please. But this does not mean this will be an easy book to read, just an easy book to carry around and read as you wait. When it comes to the actual reading experience, it’s best to read the first line of the introduction:
“While it was not the intention of the author of this publication to produce a work which would in any way be considered “difficult,” “obscure,” or, even worse, “impenetrable,” it has come to the attention of our research faculty that some readers, owing to an (entirely excusable) unfamiliarity with certain trends and fads which flow through the tributaries of today’s ” cutting-edge culture,” might not be suitably equipped to sustain a successful linguistic relationship with the pictographic theater it offers.” Again, it’s important to remember the tongue-in-cheek nature of this entire piece, but at the same time to recognize some of the kernals of truth he drops. I’m somewhat familiar with comics, but my ‘linguistic relationship’ with this ‘pictographic theater’ was frequently strained, rarely sustained. Thanks for the warning, Ware. I just wish I’d taken it more to heart. In this sense, JC is easy to use (as a book is used), but not easy to comprehend/follow. At least not without a lot of work.
I will move on to the third section now, then leave sections 4 and 5 open for comments since they also help reveal some of the themes and difficulties presented in JC.
My only note for Section 3, “Role,” is scribbled at the top of the page. It reads: “awesome.” No, this note is not very deep, nor is it very scholarly. In my defense there’s not a lot of room for notes here, and I dislike the notion of writing in any graphic novel, even if it’s just the introduction. This section blew me away. It was more than just hilarious, profound writing as the importance of a line such as: “As such, the thinking person would have to conclude that, in general, the seeking of of emotional empathy in art is essentially a fool-hardy pursuit, better left to the intellectually weak, or to the ugly, for they have nothing else with which to occupy themselves. Besides, it is unsightly to feel sorry for oneself, and such ‘unfortunate times’ eventually pass, anyway, and if they don’t, then mercifully, for the rest of us at least, suicide is, of course, an option.”
This one line is incredibly loaded, and has implications for our entire reading. Is Ware talking about himself here? We know Jimmy is somewhat based on him, and this line seems to directly reference the lonely, sad, pathetic, passive, ugly, intellectually weak main character in the novel. Jimmy frequently feels sorry for himself, or at least that’s how I’ve read his character, and that is unsightly. At least there’s always suicide. At the same time, though, some of my previous tongue-in-cheek questions come back into play in this section. I don’t think it’s complete farce, but I also don’t think Ware intends us to take it as fact. It falls somewhere in between, and I’m still trying to understand how, exactly, I should be reading this.
For example, Ware writes that emotional empathy is a foolhardy pursuit. Now, as far as Jimmy Corrigan goes, I agree. I can’t empathize with this character, and after a point I stopped trying and just started enjoying the interesting way he goes about creating a comic narrative. But I can’t say this is the case for 99% of the other fiction I’ve read. Any good writer knows that if you don’t have a character people can relate to (think empathize with), then you don’t really have a good story. That’s not to call Ware a bad writer, he just fits into the echelon of folks who buck the rules, and somehow make it work anyway. They’re a class all their own. Does he know this? I feel like he must, and that’s what gets us some of the lines in the introduction.
Only after reading a good amount of JC and returning to the introduction could I really see some of the hints and warnings Ware drops both the experienced and inexperienced comic reader about reading his text. This helps make it hilarious, but also seems to reveal some of the aspects Ware was more than aware of (and there’s a pun) when constructing the book. So, now I leave it to you as my word count just keeps increasing:
Is Section 4 another warning, but this one for non-comics readers? Or is it just another joke? What else does it tell us about our reading?
Oh Section 5, how I loathed you–or how you made me loathe myself? Anybody else notice the sexism (or at the very least gender bias) that comes after question 1. “Are you male or female? (if b [female], you may stop. Put down your booklet. All others continue”?
Or is he getting at something else here? Like perhaps that a female comic fan wouldn’t have any of these issues of self-hatred and distant daddies that apparently all comic fans (or maybe just Ware himself) have? What does the instruction that women not take the test mean?
Anyone ever read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius? Eggers does something similar with his copyright page. He plays with the idea of that page as non-writely space and includes a gay meter instead of a number line (he was around a 3) and also a warning: stop reading this book 3/4 of the way through because it gets really heavy. It’s a good warning.
I neglected to mention it in my post, but it reminds me a lot of this introduction.
Jared,
Some great points. While I navigated the tiny text of the main narrative with relative ease, the minutia of the beginning I skipped with the resolve to come back to it later. Thanks for forcing me back to it!
Like both you and Ware point out, this is a comic book quite unlike anything else we’ve read so far. As such, I was completely in awe of its scope and ingenuity. Throughout my reading, I kept thinking, how long did it take Ware to do all this? (Well over five years, according to casual wikipedia “research.”)
You and I join with all the others in saying that the book is not easy to comprehend. I wonder how hard we should fight to comprehend it. For me, I found it best to just sit back and absorb the ride. It wasn’t until the middle of the book or later that I figured out the existence of the two intertwining narratives, for example. But isn’t that the point? As our supplemental reading from this week verbosely pointed out, the interplay with time and place is not only a complex artifice, it is the reality inside our narrator’s head.
All in all, I suspect Ware is more about communicating a state of being, more about sharing an emotional headspace than he is trying to intellectually comment on life and construct philosophical “meaning.” Am I mistaken in thinking this? Do we really buy the authorial snarl to the contrary?
Regardless, I do feel unashamed empathy at points for the main character. Ware (or the narrator) may hate that empathy (or do they just hate smug pity?), but there is no denying the paradoxical, constant, near-primal demands for that very emotion. Even the art itself has an oddly surreal, cold tone to it—a world without shading, harsh colors delineated by heavy, repressive borders. It’s intricate, complex—and ultimately alienating.
I would even go so far as to say that yes, my empathy is born out of identifying with the character on some subconscious level or another. Who doesn’t have their alienating fears, their historical demons in the closet—or interacted with someone we care about who does? Yes, it does also make me squirm—and for that, I am also largely unashamed. As I told my fellow readers of Beckett’s MALONE last year, our revulsion for the text may very well be a hatred born out of the discomfort for our own darkness, our own potential for insanity—and that may be a very healthy thing.
Anyway, I agree that there’s quite a bit of dark, gallows humor here…it’s a humor in line with the rest of the book’s self-loathing. For example, I read section 5 as a jest at the expensive of the stereotypic comic fan, and in the context of the rest of the book, this is clearly a damnation of the narrator far more than it ever is of the reader.
At a certain point, I too just sat back and enjoyed the ride. I think it’s one of those novels that teaches you to read as you go along. Once Ware establishes a writer’s contract that includes flashbacks to a far distant time, dreams and daydreams on top of the “real” story, I think he sticks to it pretty well. That said, I still did find it confusing, but at a certain point I got the feel for reading it and ended up really enjoying the story. Most of my frustrations come from the first 1/4 of the book, which was overwhelming.
Good point – Ware does stick to his patterns and teach you to follow them. I just wish the ride was more worthwhile – I’m much more goal oriented than process driven in my reading/life habits, and thus the final non-resolution/hinted redemption made me wonder why Ware had spent so much time and energy in creating such a beautifully detailed and constructed system and narrative that seems to have as its whole purpose “leading nowhere, meaning nothing.”