ARIEL SCHRAG, SUBJECT & OBJECT
“I don’t wanna write something that like, other people would read, flipping through, I’d wanna write something important, you know?”
“Not really.”
When I read any fictional work, as much as I try not to, I’m always reading it as disguised autobiography. Most manga, as much as I like it, is mainstream genre fiction: written to satisfy a perceived market, rigidly editorially controlled, and produced in discrete chapters and story arcs. Artists are not encouraged to get personal; only a few Hideo Azumas and Yoshihiro Tatsumis, and possibly artists like Hiroyuki Takei whose interests show through in their mainstream work, share their lives with the reader on anything but the most trivial subjects (“I got a cyst on my finger from drawing too much…I love model kits!…Did you see the new Harry Potter?”). Looking for the artist behind the work usually leads either to opaque psychoanalysis (the uniformly corrupt portrayal of sexuality and adulthood in the work of Kazuo Umezu, the androgynous bisexuality of The Rose of Versailles) or the torture-gameshow appeal of watching artists crack and strain under the pressure of their deadlines, producing noble failures which spin off track in interesting ways (the endings of Ashita no Joe, the crassly-marketed-yet-personal anime Neon Genesis Evangelion). Contrarily, American comics culture, even the commercial side, tends towards the idea of “comic artist as rock star.”
So, while I admire formal skill in storytelling, I also have a weak point for art as voyeurism. This cult of personality was part of what drew me to autobiographical comics in the 1990s, a world about as different from manga as possible, although it shared a taste for nice black and white linework. I am the worst type of autobio comics reader. The feeling of a personal connection with the artist, however imaginary, was what got me reading artists like Howard Cruse (furtively, secretly), Gabrielle Bell, Juliet Doucet and Ariel Schrag. I want to feel that I am watching artists go insane for their work, martyrs like Joe Matt, whose works have a sort of “there but for the grace of God go I” quality, and Dave Sim. My shamelessly prurient tastes in “autobio” could be gleaned by the fact that I didn’t read much Harvey Pekar (middle-aged guy, mundane daily issues, who cares) or pre-Fun Home Alison Bechdel (too adult, too secure in its sexuality). Rather, I would have been a perfect target for Benjamin Godfrey’s forgotten 1990s minicomic Girltrap, a spiritual precursor to the fake video blog “lonelygirl15,” which Godfrey wrote under the pen name “Betty Godsmear” as a parody of the whole girl-who-exposes-her-life-to-mostly-male-readers phenomenon (“In this issue: Panties! Stoned! Handcuffs!…Sorry, gang! Less sex in this issue than in the past! But look for my sex tips issue, coming soon!”). Apart from the fact that the other person’s life was presented as “real”, was this fetishistic fascination with another person’s life really so different from Japanese moe manga, those creepy-sweet stories about the cutesy lives of teenage girls, stories consumed by male readers by the ton? So my first reaction to Ariel Schrag’s Definition and Potential was voyeuristic (“She’s so awesome! So insightful! So angsty!”) and only secondarily to appreciate the formal and artistic qualities of her work.
Ten years later, reading different analyses of Schrag’s graphic novels, I’m wary of the trap of thinking of them as “just lala girl story” (to quote Schrag), of basically admiring Definition and her other early works as a kind of teenage art naive, the work of comics’ child star. It’s the same reaction made by many people within Likewise itself, who are disappointed by the clinical nature of Potential (an appropriate feel to a work which draws its metaphors from laboratory science) compared to the exuberance of Definition. To dismiss Likewise for not being Definition is to dismiss Schrag for growing up. Admittedly, my own initial reaction to Likewise was disappointment too. Partially, this was from reading the beginning of the story in the floppy comics form, for which it simply wasn’t suited. But part of it was from the wordy, challenging narrative (my reading muscles made flabby by manga), and the growing distance of the author, the lack of the eagerness which dominated her earlier works. It’s an eagerness which Schrag herself parodies, when she imagines flinging herself under the wheels of a car, a regressive act drawn in Definition‘s chirpy, regressive style. In Likewise Schrag’s art is better (less stiff than Potential) and her dialogue more finely heard than ever, but the emotions which ran wildly throughout the earlier works are now subtler and increasingly mitigated by self-analysis. The dewy-eyed Ariel Schrag who in earlier books had sometimes seemed carried along by the tides, who suffered through unrequited crushes and objectification (whether within the story, or from readers and fans like me) begins Likewise very much as a subject, by breaking up with her girlfriend. Throughout the book Schrag continues to be the primary actor, the experimenter, taking matters (and dildos) into her own hands. And most of all, pens; she self-documents with many tools and layers of narrative, her tape recorder, her notebook, her art. Like Eddie Campbell’s The Fate of the Artist, or Joe Matt’s comics, it becomes the story of the telling of a story, but it generally stays unpretentious, and for every panel at the drawing desk there are ten others outside it.
Reading Likewise as it’s now printed, as a single 350+ page graphic novel, takes care of my problems with the pacing. The story moves at first slowly and then with accelerating speed, changing and disintegrating (and sometimes reforming) as it goes, like Schrag’s uncertain family situation, like her feelings on homosexuality, like her love for her ex-girlfriend Sally. In the spirit of a senior year in high school, Likewise gives a sense of waiting, of frustration, but also of purpose, of climbing page by page to the top of a mountain of pages (and experiences) to “the point of no return.” The first two-thirds of the book, the most linear part, is an excruciating portrayal of a post-breakup, a breakup so intense it causes Schrag to question not only her own sexuality but her gender and the entire biological purpose and existence of homosexuality. None of these “arcs” have tidy endings; just when we think Sally is out of Schrag’s mind, she reappears in some other form. The story contains, not emotional climaxes, but emotional fades and dissolves. A relationship only “ends” when every possible combination of the players has been tried and retried. There are no one-liners or unquestioned pearls of wisdom, the kind Schrag’s mom tries to throw out (this is documentary realism all right, having your parents suggest things you should put in your comics). The discussions of “It” (who has “It” and who doesn’t) feel like high-school cliquishness disguised as philosophy, but Schrag faithfully documents this stage in her life along with the rest.
If I could only use one word to describe Likewise, it would be “deliberate”; deliberate choices of what to put in and leave out, subtle effects of insertion (pun intended) and repetition, making a story out of the information overload of life. Having never read Ulysses, I can’t offer an analysis of Schrag’s James Joyce influence, but that’s fine, since Likewise obviously contains more personal and textual references than any one person can get apart from Schrag herself. I think this is the natural outcome of epic, solo comics produced without editorial interference; the tremendous time spent alone, thinking and drawing, makes one want to put everything into the work, and why not? Some reviewers have commented that the increasing (if always selective) sketchiness of the art in the last 1/3rd shows that Schrag was growing tired of the story, as she finished inking her high school epic into (presumably) her mid-20s. But this suggestion isn’t incompatible with a conscious choice: as Schrag cuts her emotional ties to Sally and to high school, as she lets go, the art breaks apart, fading into the past, focusing only when it needs to. The book’s vocabulary of formal and stylistic tricks is huge and sometimes hard to analyze, but it succeeds in that you never have to stop to analyze it; the length and scope of the work gives each technique its time and place. Both visually and textually, it’s dense and deliberate and emotionally affecting, and it establishes Schrag firmly as more than a character in her own story, but as a comics creator of tremendous ambition and skill. And her minicomics are good too.
Update by Noah: The whole Likewise Roundtable is here.
I like that many of the key moments you mention (like Schrag’s imaging herself being hit by car at the end of high school) are things that haven’t been mentioned yet in the roundtable despite all the prose spilled. Even if it isn’t Ulysses, it really is a book with a lot in it….
“I am the worst type of autobio comics reader. The feeling of a personal connection with the artist, however imaginary, was what got me reading artists like Howard Cruse…”
I would have thought that this would have made you one of the “better” types of autobio comics readers.
I think that one of the chief differences between comics (at least indy comics) and film, even the most DIY indy films, is that comics (like music) can be created by a single person with fairly simple tools. Film is by its nature collaborative; comics and music can be produced fairly easily by an individual, although of course there are plenty of studio-produced comics, just as there are big commercial rock bands.
It’s this that gives comics their cult-of-personality appeal. As to why this isn’t so much the case with prose, which can also be produced by a single person… good question. Maybe it’s because comics, at least indy comics, has an outsider appeal — a scrappy disreputable kiddie medium jerry-rigged into something awesome — whereas prose carries a certain sense of weighty topics, high culture and big publishing houses. I mean, when I think of a self-published comic, that seems perfectly normal and respectable, but when I think of a self-published prose book, I think of lame vanity printings. This might just be my prejudice, and perhaps it’s changing — certainly, DIY publishing has become more respected and commercially viable, while big publishing houses (and other topheavy, bureaucratic media gatekeeper organizations) are suffering.
It also might be because comics has the visual aspect. Prose generally takes awhile to read and mentally process (audio readings of prose are even slower, usually, since they depend on someone else’s reading/speaking pace); visual art can be seen, instantly grasped (superficially or on a deeper level) by large numbers of people in a way that prose can’t. You may not be able to get a complete stranger to read your whole comic, but someone can look at the artwork and know instantly (or almost instantly) whether they ‘like’ the art. To break down the vocabulary, visual art “exposes” the artist; prose doesn’t. Prose is more private. The visual aspect is a form of public exposure, even of performance, which then takes us to poetry slams, and to indy rock bands and so on…
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ve been thinking more about the possible parallel evolutions of manga and American indy comics, and motivations of their readers. The autobio work of artists like Joe Matt and Jeffrey Brown, I think, has a bit of the same appeal of manga about extreme shut-ins, and the exaggerated geeks and losers who are the protagonists of romantic comedy manga: it’s got a train-wreck appeal, and like watching the people on daytime talk shows, it makes the reader feel that no matter how bad their situation is, at least they’re not as desperate and bad-off as Joe Matt (except of course that Joe Matt is a talented artist who has drawn great comics, whereas the average person reading his work isn’t…). Also, talking about rock bands and moe objectification has made me think of this manga: http://moesucks.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/this-world-is-corrupt-k-on/
“it seems like there are more comics critics who also write about music than there are comics critics who also write about film”
Are you sure? There are a lot of comics critics who write about film too — Jog, Gary Groth, R. Fiore, Tucker, me…. There’s certainly crossover with music as well (Douglas Wolk being the biggest example, I guess), but I don’t think I can see that one is categorically more likely than the other.
Nope, it’s an entirely anecdotal assertion: I’ve just noticed that as I’ve been searching and reading writing on comics, I’ve been more likely to see other articles about music than to pieces on film. I haven’t taken metrics, and the comment was intended to question how categorical it is, not to say that it is categorical.
I do think there are some real similarities between music and comics though, critics aside — the rock star thing, the industries work more like each other than they do like the film industry, the relationship of artists to the industry and the attitude of consumers toward the industry are similar. Both are subcultural in a way that film is not, and I think the cult of personality and the autobiographical voice has a stronger role.
I’m not sure the relationship of artists to the industry is similar. And the idea that music is subcultural seems weird also. Music is huge, possibly bigger than film in many ways.
I think comics are in general a lot closer to literature than anything else, honestly. Memoir is big, the distribution networks are similar, etc.
I know music isn’t a single subculture, but music “genres” map onto subcultural identity in a way that film “genres” do not. Music’s always been a driving engine of subcultural identity, and that plays out in a tension between “indie” and “mainstream” that’s really similar to what happens in comics. It happens a little bit in film too, but it’s much less tied to the ways viewers and even artists define themselves.
Comics feels pretty far from literature to me: I can probably buy an argument that the culture of mainstream comics aligns with the culture of mainstream genre fiction but the culture of art comics is “indie” overall and indie fiction is really marginal to literary culture. And indie genre comics are not “like” mainstream genre fiction.
The experience of coming into comics as an outsider is that the subcultural identity tends to trump everything else. Music subcultures are also often like that: there’s a idea of “authenticity”, of authentic identity, of authentic experience of the things that matter to the subculture. I think the autobiographical voice really ties into that. Literature overall really doesn’t have that ideal.
Internet culture has some elements of this too, so I suppose if you want to think of fanfiction as a literary culture, which it certainly is, that’s a counterexample.
You know, there were at least four issues of “Girltrap,” but I can’t find any serious mention of it on the Internet anywhere. Scary!
Another stray thought: thinking about the function of a narrator and the assumption of authenticity in an autobiographical work, I’m also reminded of Seth’s “It’s a Good Life if You Don’t Weaken”, which so many people assumed to be autobiographical. Not that this I’m saying there’s any such meta-sneakiness going on in “Likewise,” which obviously tries hard to include every potential-ly embarrassing and personal incident in Schrag’s senior year (or… DOES IT??? Yeah, I think we can assume it does, for the purposes of analysis), but it’s interesting how the creation of ‘a character’ so easily, perhaps unavoidably, blends into the creation of the identity of ‘the artist.’
Not every creator is a Woody Allen, continually putting themselves out there under various thin fictional aliases, of course. But I would say that I *do* always try to look for ‘the artist’ in their work, even in genre fiction. Some authors pride themselves on being chameleons, on being able to write about any topic; others embrace their subjectivity. I don’t think there is anything wrong with striving for objectivity, but I think subjectivity is unavoidable, and it is subjectivity which gives a work its strength apart from sheer technical ability and audience manipulation (which are not to be sniffed at).
Hey Jason.
It’s funny that you’re emphasizing subjectivity since, as you sort of note in your piece, (mainstream) manga and subjectivity are not things that automatically go together.
I think often in art subjectivity is contrasted with genre, right? Since objectivity (or scrupulous meanness, or negative capability) outside of genre conventions ends up being read as a subjective aesthetic choice or personality.
I think genre is to fiction what a props closet is to a theatrical production. To achieve certain effects, or tell certain types of stories, it may be useful to have a grand piano on stage. Of course, a play staged *just* for the purposes of showing off your grand piano would be pretty awful. And to some people’s aesthetic sensibilities, it should be enough to have a bare stage and just suggest through dialogue that there is a piano present. But sometimes it’s useful to show a real piano, just as sometimes it’s useful to tickle certain parts of people’s brains through particular story conventions/plot devices.
Incidentally, my longest comment to this post was somehow tagged as written by Caro. Sorry for the weirdness, Caro!
WTF? Which comment above is yours and not Caro’s? I can probably fix things…but what the hell? Stupid wordpress, grumble grumble…
The grand piano analogy is fun…but the problem is that genre is more like having a pitched ninja battle on stage. And a lot of people would be perfectly happy to see a play staged just for the purposes of showing a pitched ninja battle….
Noah, it’s #3. That one’s not me.
Also weird is the fact that it (#3, Jason) shows up before the comment I (Caro) wrote that it’s in response to.
I think it’s because we’re talking about subjectivity and autobiography. WordPress is f’ing with our identeetees.
I’m trying to think of something thoughtful to say and I just kind of agree with everything Jason said. Maybe that’s why the post got tagged as me LOL.
I’m obviously being too wishy-washy if everyone agrees with everything. -_-; I do appreciate a good ninja battle.
Weird; that comment somehow didn’t show up in my inbox. I have fixed it now so it says it’s Jason, though.
And now that I’ve read it, I can disagree! Not necessarily with the conclusions (comics have an autobio, soul-bearing aspect which film doesn’t — though I’d maybe dispute that books don’t. Memoir is huge.) But I think trying to derive that from formal differences is probably misguided. I think a lot of this cultural positioning has to do with historical circumstance more than anything else….
I don’t think it’s that prose autobiographies aren’t popular; just that for some reason it doesn’t transfer to treating authors like celebrities. Some authors become really famous: JK Rowling probably gets mobbed routinely. But she doesn’t write memoir…
Now that I think about it, mainstream comics are really very, very “character”-driven. Stories have to have endings and structure, but characters are what commercial franchises are made of — all the major superhero comics are named after their main characters, and Kazuo Koike, creator of the “Lone Wolf and Cub” franchise, always said that character was the most important thing.
When I think of many of the really successful cult indy-comics — not necessarily the ones that get critical acclaim, but the ones that have a big fan base — it’s like the *creator* is the character. Slave Labor Graphics didn’t have Superman, but they had Jhonen Vasquez and Ariel Schrag. And a number of artists of varying levels of extroversion. Chynna Clugston-Major and Bryan Lee O’Malley were/are the stars of Oni Press. And so on. Perhaps this is no more a big deal than the realization “you gotta sell yourself,” and perhaps I’m selectively remembering certain creators as having more ‘impact’ or ‘personality’ than others just based on personal bias, but I think you could make a case for it. People want a character from a story — either a capital-C character, or the artist-as-character.