Two major things to discuss in this past selection: 1. The tone and style in which the Escapist changes after Sammy and Joe see Citizen Kane and 2. an examination of how one writes a novel about graphic novels. Come along, fellow readers, as we delve further into the meat of this entertaining novel…

Nothing seems to have been quite as influential in shaping Sammy and Joe’s art as their exposure to Citizen Kane in 1941:

All of the dissatisfactions he [Joe] had felt in his practice of the art form he had stumbled across within a week of his arrival in America, the cheap conventions, the low expectations among publishers, readers, parents, and educators, the spacial constraints that he had been struggling against in the pages of Luna Moth, seemed capable of being completely overcome, exceeded, and escaped. The Amazing Cavalieri was going to break free, forever, of the nine little boxes.

‘I want us to do something like that,’ he said. (p. 361)

What a beautiful and fascinating passage! Chabon has mentioned Joe’s frustration several times throughout the book, but never with as precise examples as this list. Notice, too, that the words “escaped”and “free”, the essences of the novel, are featured in Joe’s moment of epiphany. Often called one of the greatest films of all time, it’s easy to see why Welle’s directorial style captured his fellow artists’ admiration and awe. From his classing panning scenes to atmospheric shots where light and cigarette smoke create ominous tension, Welles changed the way people looked at movies. He used different artistic conventions to seemlessly convey,  in pitch-perfect narration, his story.

“It was that Citizen Kane represented, more than any other movie Joe had ever seen, the total blending of narration and image that was–didn’t Sammy see it?–the fundamental principle of comic book storytelling, and the irreducible nut of their partnership…Citizen Kane was like a comic book.” (362) Although I would like to spend another several paragraphs or so looking at what the last 7 words of Joe’s observation mean (could the idea be reversed: a comic book is like a movie? Then why choose one or the other? Which media form tells a better story? What does each form do that the other can’t?), at this point, I would like to bring up the idea, just to ponder, of what Chabon is doing: writing a novel which in turn, describes a graphic novel.

It has to be hard, on some level, to write about a visual medium, in poart because, the very defining feature of what you’re writing about has been taken away. It reminds me of Magritte’s famous picture of the pipe with the words “ceci n’est pas une pipe”.  We are receiving Joe and Sammy’s comic book in translation–from image, to word. One of the beauties of the English Language is that it allows us to communicate on several levels–we can respond to the sound of the narration (aural), the words of the narration (oral), the story (read: idea) of the narration, or the visual images that we receive when we read.  Although we are allowed to create our own idea of what the Escapist looks like, we are also given fairly concrete descriptions. Would you have liked Chabon to have included a few sketches in the novel, or do you prefer to leave it up to your own imagination? How successful do you think Chabon’s novel is in terms of combining the overarching Joe and Sammy storyline with the art, style and tone of their creation? Do the occaisonal chapters in which the reader is plunged into their graphic novel (albeit, without any graphics) work seemlessly for you, or are they jarring? Would you have opted to read a graphic novel that told Joe and Sammy’s story? How much of a wider audience do you think Chabon has attracted to an art form (comic books) that tends to have a relatively selective niche?

~AB

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