[Note: This is a blog interlude pending the publication of Matthias Wivel’s discussion of Charles Hatfield’s Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature]
Of the comics which emerged through the independant press during the 80s, few comics have acquired as high a reputation as Gilbert Hernandez’s Human Diastrophism. The recent roundtable on Charles Hatfield’s Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature has provided me with an excuse to revisit this comic after a space of some 20 years. This was prompted by Noah’s disappreciation of the second last page from that story which is produced below with Noah’s commentary following:
“…the page reveals that the character Tonantzin has set herself on fire as an act of political protest. We learn about this essentially second hand, as Cathy and a white photographer, Howard Miller, see the act on TV. Cathy is really upset; Howard offers some off-the-cuff wisdom about the horribleness of the world before asking Cathy to look at his photographs.
As I said, Charles [Hatfield] really feels this page is insightful. I found it just unbelievably clumsy and trite; oppression porn executed in a shockingly half-assed manner. “The pain…is like that…are they all crazy, or..or what…?” And yes, alas, the ellipses aren’t mine. And then there’s the oh-so-clever moment when she name-drops The New Republic — ooooh, the irony! They’re liberal and engaged, yet, they don’t know what life really means!
Of course, to some extent they’re supposed to be spouting clichés; Miller’s “I truly believe that it takes real love to want to go that far in hopes of making some kind of serious change for the better — however modest the change” is supposed to reveal his callous idiocy, since he doesn’t mean anything he says. But the problem is, the revelation that he’s a callous idiot…is also a cliché. White Americans as inauthentic doofuses exist to demonstrate the authentic truth of the pain of the poor and marginalized. The entirely ritualized climax (down to the stereotypical expressions of horror on the faces of the bystanders) is built around the insistence that you, the reader, understand the ugly truth that the privileged idiots like Miller only think they know.
Miller’s a photojournalist, so Hernandez is also being self-reflexive here, calling into question his own artistic practice of packaging horror. But…that’s a cliché too! The marginal artist speaking for his community, torn between representing and exploitation — that’s a standard part of the standard package of these kinds of narratives. The pain of witnessing for a wider audience is part of the pain of the marginalized, the fascinating consumable wound.
When I see something like this pulled out of the book as an exemplary moment, it makes me feel strongly that I don’t want anything more to do with it. “When I saw some of the pictures you’ve taken of monks doing that in whatever country, I just sort of…I mean, it was terrible and everything, but…it was just this girl, Howard, just….” I’m sorry, but that is crap in the service of utterly bone-headed exploitation of one’s own ethnic identity. It’s tired, it’s poorly done, and it’s embarrassing for everybody associated with it.”
Noah has been accused of commenting on this page without reading the entirety of Human Diastrophism, but I prefer to examine the fruits of his critique rather than the methods by which it was achieved. In so doing, it must be said that his comments hold water. This is undoubtedly one of the weakest pages (if not the weakest) in Gilbert Hernandez’s story.
There is nothing new in this practice of commenting on the half-read. In his popular book on the sociology, art, and philosophy of reading (How to talk about books you haven’t read), Pierre Bayard gives us the example of Paul Valéry who, after having read only selected pages from À la recherche du temps perdu, managed an entire obituary for Proust and a critique of his book. Bayard explains:
Shrewdly, Valéry explains that the value of Proust’s work lies in its remarkable ability to be opened at random to any page: “The interest of the work lies in each fragment. We can open the book wherever we choose; its vitality does not depend on what went before, on a sort of acquired illusion; it depends on what might be called the active properties of the very tissue of the text.” Valéry’s stroke of genius lies in showing that his method of non-reading is actually necessitated by the author, and that abstaining from reading Proust’s work is the greatest compliment he can give him.
This was not an isolated case as far as Valéry was concerned. Such an approach to criticism is difficult, very specific in its intentions, open to its own set of problems but otherwise completely viable in the hands of a master. It is possible to see the virtues and faults in a single page of comic art without relating them to the whole.
Having said this, it should also be noted that the fullness of the observations derived from such an approach may be limited since Hernandez’s tale is filled with recurrent images reinforcing our sense of connection, deepening and enriching the text. The third page of Human Diastrophism is an example of this and perfectly reflects how a single page only tentatively reveals its secrets.
The image of a body floating in the river is one which is recapitulated at various points in Hernandez’s tale. Some of these bodies have long expired…
… while others lie at the edge of life.
[One of Tomaso’s victims discovered by Khamo; a greeting from the river Styx and a premonition of his eventual fate]
The open mouthed grimace of the corpse reflects the howling monkeys of the title page…
…and their systematic pummeling throughout Hernandez’s tale…
…a reflection of the weathering down of the residents of Palomar and the benevolent god which wraps Guadalupe in his arms (see first image above). These monkeys reveal truth, forestall madness and are befriended by some of the most innocent inhabitants of Palomar (Luba’s daughters Doralis and Casimira).
Their destruction echoes the cloud of ash which envelops the final panel of Hernandez’s tale.
In the same way, what an isolated reading of the penultimate page from Human Diastrophism won’t tell the reader is how Gilbert Hernandez sets up his climax (one of the most moving for a generation of readers) with a flurry of misdirection. Chelo’s accidental shooting of Casimira, a moment of exceptional drama, is defused in short order by the depiction of her cheerful face just 3 pages after the fact.
The serial killer, Tomaso, who had appeared to be on the cusp of escape and more murders is apprehended and is now in jail. Luba seems to be returning to a kind of balance in her life and may soon be elected mayor (the trigger here being Chelo’s guilt at shooting her daughter). Even Tonantzin seems to have returned to a level of sanity and is leaving for the capital with her lover, Khamo. The only inkling of the tragedy that is to follow is her sudden change in expression as she travels away from Palomar just 5 pages before her death, a death which will leave her lover horrendously scarred in a testament to his love and hubris.
These are the fractures which give Hernandez’s story its title; the faults cracking and shifting before a kind of stability is achieved; a quiet which only precedes even more disruptions and tragedy. The moment which Noah has commented on above is not an ending but a continuation of this churning of human life.
Similarly, a bibliomanaical approach would lead one to reflect on the entire history of this story’s presentation: the spaces where the story was held on hold for months during serialization, the stories which were chosen to precede the main text which differ between the paperback compilations and the hardcover Palomar collection, and the history of the orientation of its pages (and the impact of this) which differs between publications.
Yet none of this serves to negate the accuracy of Noah’s critique.
Where Hatfield sees a stirring and “brutal coda” which resonates not only with “Humberto’s [1] earlier abdication of responsibility” but also Susan Sontag’s reference to photography as “a way of refusing as well as certifying experience”, Noah can see only “clumsiness” and “cliché”. Where Valéry once took “refuge in the favorable (and, more important, convergent) assesments of André Gide and Léon Daudet” (regarding Proust), Noah uses Hatfield’s close reading of the full text and the page in question to aid his analysis. It may be that it is Noah’s distance from the text, his failure in this respect to succumb to the power of Hernandez’s narrative staging which has allowed him to see quite clearly Hernandez’s indiscretions here.
The feelings expressed on the penultimate page of Human Diastrophism are earnest but clumsily delivered compared to almost everything that has preceded it. Apart from its tired ideology, it is clear where the central problem lies in this page: its narrative didacticism. This is a technique which Gilbert Hernandez opted for in his earliest stories (including the first story in Heartbreak Soup) and it is a type of storytelling that he has almost completely abandoned over the last decade. What this page displays is a ponderous attempt to press and direct an emotional response from his readers with a list of rhetorical question and their accompanying answers:
“Why does a person do something that extreme to herself…the pain…is life that…are they all crazy, or..or, what..?” and “Public suicide sounds pretty nuts to me!”
The half-engaged white liberal denies the madness of a such an act suggesting that it comes from a place of deep love emanating from pain, something which (judging from his final reaction) he has no hope ever experiencing. In a sense, this is where the artist makes his stand with his creation and, as Noah suggest, directs some guilt towards himself. It is notable that the artist has almost never returned to this style of narrative. It suggest a moment of weakness tied, perhaps, to a strong emotional connection to what he was depicting; a lapse in faith in his own abilities as a storyteller. Hernandez’s love for spaces in his narrative and spaces in meaning temporarily abandon him in the closing pages of this famous work.
The damage is considerable but not total. I am reminded of that incongruous moment towards the close of The 7th Victim where a sermon is delivered to a group of Satanists and the Lord’s Prayer recommended to them. Undoubtedly a nod to clarity and an affirmation of the superiority of the Christian faith (perhaps preempting the censors), this cringeworthy moment does not, thankfully, obscure everything which has gone on before. The same may be said of Hernandez’s story. A rejection of the whole because of a single page may be premature in this instance but a level headed and ultimately negative assessment of the inherent qualities of that page is not.
NOTES
[1] An artist who upon witnessing one of Tomaso’s murders fails to come forward with his identity.
Update by Noah: The entire roundtable on Charles Hatfield’s book is here
“Such an approach to criticism is difficult, very specific in its intentions, open to its own set of problems but otherwise completely viable in the hands of a master.”
Nietzsche, also, if I remember correctly commented on books he had only glanced at. And it’s true that “a master” like Valery and Nietzche can take a very small piece of evidence, extrapolate it into a general view and produce valuable criticism.
But the idea that Noah is a genius (or “master”) on par with Nietzsche and Valery is not something I’m willing to give easy or automatic assent to. At the very least, I’d like to see Noah produce a work of genius or masterpiece first.
I have to say, there is something weirdly cultic and hermetic about The Hooded Utilitarian site. Certain susceptible minds seem easily swayed by Noah’s charisma.
A word of advice: if Noah tells you to drink the Kool Aid or chop off your genitals, please don’t listen to him. At the very least, talk to your family first before you move into Noah’s compound.
regarding pierre bayard, i actually disagree that it takes a “master” to produce criticism of books you haven’t read (hopefully this comment doesn’t turn me into a kool-aid drinker)… but also that such criticism has to be conscious of its own limitations. the fact is, you can talk about history without having been there, but you still have to get your information somewhere… so why not literature?
there’s also some danger to take bayard’s book at face value & derive clear “theories” from it… the author himself has stated that his book is to be read as though the “narrator” isn’t actually himself i.e. the author. which sort of calls into question the status of the book itself: essay or fiction? (the original french version is published in a collection named “paradoxe”, with no further generic indication). but then you might say that valéry (& nietzsche, sure) sort of had that ambiguity in their writing.
Well, it’s certainly a very playful book and not even remotely close to a theoretical text; filled with false summaries and comments on totally fictitious novels. I think it can be recommended for being entertainingly educational and for its elaboration on examples of non-reading through history.
i again disagree. it is an entirely theoretical text, but one with an ambiguous relationship with fiction. namely, the critic is a character, but the criticism is meant to be real (to the character). but yeah, it is very playful, in the sense that “pierre ménard” is playful.
Jeet-
>>I have to say, there is something weirdly cultic and hermetic about The Hooded Utilitarian site. Certain susceptible minds seem easily swayed by Noah’s charisma. >>>
Have to disagree with you here, although my personal tastes seem to be more aligned with yours than Noah’s. The fact that Noah seems perfectly comfortable encouraging, editing and publishing writers like myself, Erica Friedman, Alex Buchet and others who have radically different approaches and aesthetic sensibilities than his own speaks of a kind of broadness that you’re really not touching with the above criticism. I love writing for the HU, and I like arguing with Noah on his opinions, when it’s a conversation I feel capable of engaging in. It seems like, at least based on your posting frequency, that you feel the same way. So, (in my best Wendy’s voice), where’s the cult?
That being said, I’ve enjoyed lurking on the edges of the conversation the past two days, and in my own estimation, the award for silliest thesis shouldn’t go to Noah, but to Robert, for suggesting that works of quality will inevitably get the attention they deserve. Sometime, Robert, we’ll have to have a conversation about the music industry…
Actually I’m going to stop responding to posts now because I’m deathly afraid that I’ll be invited into the compound.
Shrewdly, Valéry explains that the value of Proust’s work lies in its remarkable ability to be opened at random to any page…
I am not persuaded by this appeal to authority. Bayard’s playful, perhaps polemical, reading of Valéry does not convince me that Noah is capable of generating a thoughtful reading on the basis of manifest contempt for, and refusal to engage, Hernandez’s text.
Indeed I think the following statement is, in the case of a text like “Human Diastrophism,” false:
We can open the book wherever we choose; its vitality does not depend on what went before, on a sort of acquired illusion…
This too easily becomes an excuse for “reading off” quick impressions based on supercharged imagery, for turning the comic into, above all, an anthology of provocative pictures disconnected from meaningful narrative context. One may be tempted to celebrate the ingenuity of Valéry, or by extension Bayard, but the problem of half-reading remains a problem, not least in the world of comics where classism and iconophobia continue to ensnare otherwise smart readers who are unwilling to admit that they need to read an entire text before understanding its use of images.
I agree that the coda to “Human Diastrophism” is didactic, and I don’t fault any reader for preferring the less didactic, less textually overdetermined, portions of Hernandez’s work. Indeed I think Suat has offered here a useful reading of numerous recurrences in Hernandez’s book. I respect his views on the book’s shortcomings despite not sharing them. Suat’s post is carefully argued, and I dig that.
But I’m leery of the logic implicit in the following:
It may be that it is Noah’s distance from the text, his failure in this respect to succumb to the power of Hernandez’s narrative staging which has allowed him to see quite clearly Hernandez’s indiscretions here.
The phrase succumb to the power of Hernandez’s narrative staging suggests that reading is a kind of capitulation, or surrender (as indeed Robert Scholes argues about our initial reading of texts in his book Textual Power). It also implies a resistance to such surrender: a wariness about, or unwillingness to submit, to “narrative staging.” Implicitly, such staging is characterized as an act of seduction that moves us against our better judgment. The hint of moralistic appraisal here becomes more obvious in the reference to “indiscretions,” as if what Hernandez had committed were not simply (in Suat’s view) a narrative awkwardness but a kind of moral lapse. There’s a current of moral disapproval here that has emerged again and again in our discussions, based on suspicion of “sentimentality,” obviousness, or manipulation.
I am not about to argue that every reader should be moved and challenged, as indeed I was, by the coda to Hernandez’s book. But I think it’s specious to argue that one can apprehend what Hernandez is up to only by resisting the pleasures of the text, and that, per Bayard, such “non-reading is actually necessitated” by something the author has done.
The break, abruption, shift that comes when an author shows his hand and begs for closure, as indeed Spiegelman does in the final pages of Maus, as Hernandez does at the close of “Diastrophism,” as Bechdel does over and over in the psychologically fraught, painfully self-conscious self-unwinding that is Fun Home, this to me is fascinating, and not necessarily an “indiscretion.” I appreciate moments of sentiment when they are hard-won, and I don’t mind the shift in register that occurs as “Diastrophism” nears its end.
Oh for Christ’s sake Jeet. Writers on this site tell me I’m an idiot on a regular basis. That includes Suat, who thinks many of my favorite cartoonists are mediocre at best. And Matthias, and Alex, and Domingos, and Erica, and Caro, and (very politely last week) Sean…and my own brother, who comments frequently, and…well you get the idea. Would that someone would think me worthy of undying devotion and (ideally) generous donations, but it doesn’t seem likely to occur anytime soon.
The only thing “cultic” is your weird hysteria/promulgation of conspiracy theories whenever anyone expresses contrary opinions about creators you hold dear.
But, on the plus side, I’ve got you talking about genitals. Hopefully you’ll call a cartoonist a shithead someday soon, and then…the world is yours….
“we’ll have to have a conversation about the music industry….”
This means you don’t like Beyonce, doesn’t it? That means war, my friend.
(Funnily, the most notable time I tried to discuss Beyonce online was in the comments at CC. The thread got shut down, alas.)
“Actually I’m going to stop responding to posts now because I’m deathly afraid that I’ll be invited into the compound.”
I’d be happy to have you do a guest post sometime Jeet. Door’s always open.
Charles: Indeed I think the following statement is, in the case of a text like “Human Diastrophism,” false: We can open the book wherever we choose; its vitality does not depend on what went before, on a sort of acquired illusion…
Well, yes, I think I can agree with that, and I’m not entirely sure how true that statement is for Proust in the first place. But it does present an interesting avenue of approach in the case of À la recherche.
“The phrase succumb to the power of Hernandez’s narrative staging suggests that reading is a kind of capitulation, or surrender…”
Charles, I can agree with most of your line of reasoning which follows the above sentence. No moral lapse was implied at all in my use of the word “indiscretion”. My own statement (in bolds) was deployed in praise of Gilbert Hernandez; that the accumulation of detail and events which preceded the point in question makes any flaws (in my view) almost inconsequential. I am not opposed to “hard-won” sentimentality but this is one emotion which did not come through on my current reading for the reasons given in my article. That’s entirely my loss I should add since this story had a big emotional impact on me when I first read it over 20 years ago. It is the power which this text had over me all those years ago which I am alluding to.
Charles, I think the way Suat frames the issue is quite interesting; it does sort of nod to the argument I made in my post, that one of the dangers of your approach is that your enthusiasm for formal elements (and the comics form itself) can lead you to ignore, or gloss over, problems of content — reading inconsistencies or clichés as validated because they’re part of the form. I’d say that your insistence that aesthetics is not moral, or that it is invalid or unfair (immoral?) to use moral language or approaches to evaluating it fits nicely into those concerns. Or, to put it another way, you’re only willing to deploy morality (at least in this instance) in the condemnation of a moral approach to texts.
I’m happy to reject that view directly. Art is about desire; it’s about interrelationships between people, which means it’s (among other things) about politics and about morality. I’m reading (possibly rereading; can’t remember) Laura Mulvey’s famous article about the gaze, in which she argues precisely that the pleasure of the text is to be mistrusted and rejected on moral grounds (“It is said that analysing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it. That is the intention of this article.”) In this case, Suat is saying that the pleasure of Hernandez’s narrative can cause readers to slide over the cliched and (I’d argue; not sure about Suat) poisonously stupid politics expressed on that page. And again, it’s pretty interesting that in defending the page, you respond not by insisting that the writing is good, or that the politics expressed are actually thoughtful, but rather by situating it as a justifiable and evocative formal element. (You may well think the politics expressed are thoughtful; my point is that that is not where you go first.)
So to rephrase the thesis of my post: you consistently, and brilliantly, in your book, interpret form as an expression of artistic intent, and as a kind of content. You don’t (at least in general) interpret it in terms of morality or politics. Form, for you, very rarely has its own moral or political meaning in despite of, or not directly related to, author intent. I suspect this is in part because of your sympathy with the underground and with comics history more generally; if there’s one thing the subculture despises, it’s puritanism.
I was also interested in this:
“the problem of half-reading remains a problem, not least in the world of comics where classism and iconophobia continue to ensnare otherwise smart readers who are unwilling to admit that they need to read an entire text before understanding its use of images.”
Comics here become a subaltern form (since the word’s come up) which need defending from the amateurs and philistines — all those small Werthams — who think the form can be approached without rigor. I understand the impulse; the medium has been in a defensive crouch for a loooooooong time; it’s hard to come up out of that. But…who exactly are you helping here by suggesting that this wild, untamed, marginal medium can only be understood when approached with proscriptive care? How exactly have I hurt Gilbert by pointing out that this page is badly written, or by raising concerns about fetishism in his work? Who are you defending and from what?
I don’t think I understand Gilbert’s use of images after looking at a page. I question whether you “understand” his use of them in some absolute sense after years of study. Art isn’t an algebra problem; there isn’t a solution. What there are are different perspectives, insights, and arguments. The great thing about academic perspectives is that they are so passionately engaged, professional, and knowledgeable. The bad thing about academic perspectives, I think, is that there can sometimes be a tendency to think that passionately engaged, professional, and knowledgeable in itself constitutes truth, or, for that matter, morality.
It’s certainly not the best page of the book, as Suat points out…but the rest of the book overcomes its didacticism… I think Suat has that right too. It’s a useful page for literary criticism, because it writes largely and obviously some of the themes explored more subtly in the rest of the book…But this is a kind of problem of criticism too…These things are helpful for us as critics (or at least as teachers!)–even if they may be the least compelling parts of the text aesthetically.
I think the notion of reading one page of Proust and getting everything you need is crazy though. Much of the point of the recherche is in the way that events are constantly revisited, revised, seen in a new way, repeated (adjusting previous iterations), etc. Yes…every sentence has some kind of repetition, thanks to Proust’s use of the iterative tense—but, no, you don’t get Proust by reading a couple of pages…even Valery (or Nietzsche or whoever). And, no, I’m definitely no expert on Proust…but I’ve read the same four hundred or so pages a few times…and I can say that it’s a vastly different experience than reading a two page excerpt.
The same is true of Hernandez…an, no, I’m not putting him in the Proust category.
…one of the dangers of your approach is that your enthusiasm for formal elements (and the comics form itself) can lead you to ignore, or gloss over, problems of content — reading inconsistencies or clichés as validated because they’re part of the form.
Point taken. I’ve been called the Cleanth Brooks of comics criticism.
But I’m not simply defending the coda of “Diastrophism” in terms of form, which is a concern held over from our other discussions that I think you’re importing here without due regard to what I’m actually saying in this particular instance.
What I’m saying is that I found, and find, “Diastrophism” wholly engaging and provocative and troubling on grounds that are moral and ideological as well as aesthetic. I think the writing is good, and I don’t, emphatically don’t, think the politics are “poisonously stupid.” I’m entirely opposed to your reading of the text on bases that are not simply formalist, but entirely engaged with content, with politics, with moral and ethical concerns, and with writing.
The larger argument about iconophobia, or intellectual iconoclasm, that I’m raising here is not specifically aimed at your distaste for the Hernandez. That argument is about the larger implications of “reading off” comics images without respect to larger contextual frames and of venting superheated responses to them on the basis of cursory glances only. The argument is informed by W.J.T. Mitchell’s seminal Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology, a study that calls into question various forms of iconoclastic (lit., image-destroying, image-denying) rhetoric and dismantles various, as Mitchell calls them, “figures of difference” that purport to explain the difference between communicating via images and communicating via words (and that usually involve resisting the irrational “seduction” of images, etc., a hoary intellectual cliche about the virulence of the image). I grant I’m still trying to get you on a methodological failing, that is, reading a chunk of something without really reading it; that’s because it is emphatically important to me, as my book points out, to distinguish between comics skimming and comics reading.
This is not only a formalistic concern. It’s also an ethical one.
Anyway, if you want me to say (as I thought I had been saying implicitly all along) that I think the politics of “Diastrophism” are thoughtful and that the writing is good, then, absolutely, I think the politics are thoughtful and the writing is good. That’s not only a formalistic assessment; it’s an encompassing one, my overall “take” on the novel.
I have no problem with a moral approach to texts. Ch. 3 of my book repeatedly offers moral assessments, or ideological interpretations, of Hernandez’s work. What I was trying to point out is that sometimes moralistic appraisal creeps unregarded into other kinds of language, in other words that a critical statement (such as Suat’s) can be suffused with moralistic judgments without bringing those judgments to conscious awareness. I think this is a tendency worth observing in ourselves, because we too often take moralistic stands, in effect, that inflate differences of taste into unexamined ideological position-taking.
That said, I’m all for over ideological criticism, if it makes its bases clear. Far be it from me, Noah, to deny you a warrant for ideological criticism, even when I think your substance is wrong.
So, not having read Human Diastrophism, I’m struggling a bit here. Have I missed a close reading somewhere that actually does account for the page being problematic?
The reason I’m asking is because I think we got a little derailed into this question of “critical responsibility” and I’m actually curious about specifically how Noah’s critique is disproven by the rest of the book. Suat seems to think Noah’s right and Charles et al. seem to think Noah’s wrong, but everybody’s kind of assuming the reader of the criticism has read the book and is in a position to form a reading that debunks Noah, who hasn’t read it — except I’m in the same place as Noah, and (having read the page now on Suat’s scan, out of context) I also find that page really offputting, not because it’s “badly written” but because, even though Cathy is depicted as feeling something, even though she’s not a callous douche like Howard, her reaction still stages a vicarious experience of trauma in a way that displaces the Real terror of the actual trauma onto a Symbolic horror when it’s watched from afar. I too reject it on moral grounds — I believe the moral response to other people’s trauma is not the distancing protection of horror, but the intimate indentification of grief. That’s what’s wrong with the writing to me — it documents a fear of shared grief that perpetuates the distanced position of privilege. (I find something similar absolutely impossible to get beyond in Faulkner as well.)
So that’s the reading I start with, when I read the one page – entirely subjective, entirely embedded in my own moral code, admittedly removed from Hernandez’ project which I know nothing about. It’s a “readerly reaction”, not a “reading in reaction”.
So I mean, I’ll go read it and see whether that sense resonates with me through the whole text, and whether the girl who dies is also part of the story in other ways, so that her trauma is depicted both immediately as well as through Cathy’s eyes.
But I’m just wondering if anybody can articulate specifically what it is that Hernandez does thematically, if anything, with Cathy’s horror and Howard’s distance on watching that girl’s death, or if it’s just in the service of characterization. Or is there something else about the characters that makes the reading just flat out wrong? Did I miss that somewhere in Charles’ book or the comments here?
Eric:
“The same is true of Hernandez…an, no, I’m not putting him in the Proust category.”
That would be Aristophane.
Hey Charles.
“This is not only a formalistic concern. It’s also an ethical one.”
Yep; and it’s an ethical stance I think is wrong. You’re distinguishing between serious readers and less serious readers and saying the first are moral and the second aren’t. That’s the definition of academic elitism. I think it’s a flawed ethical position and a flawed aesthetic one.
” I grant I’m still trying to get you on a methodological failing,”
Aha! To the compound with you!
Trying to get me because I don’t read images seriously enough because they’re images will only work if you don’t read any of my non-comics criticism. I pull the same shit there. Observe. You must read my whole oeuvre to truly appreciate my methodological failings!
I was trying to indicate that, with some caveats, I actually appeciate the way as a formalist you engage with issues of content and morality. I probably didn’t say that clearly enough.
______
Caro. I’m not entirely getting your point. You’re saying that your moral problem with the page is that it suggests that the proper response to tragedy is horror rather than grief? So his callous response is contrasted with her response of horror, and we’re supposed to reject him and accept her, but you’re rejecting both?
I thought Charles did respond to that, but rereading his discussion on pages 85-86, he does seem to read Cathy fairly straightforwardly. “Cathy’s position as spectator is our own. Shocked by televised images of real-life violence, she doesn’t know how to respond.” I think there’s an implied meta-questioning though in his argument that “Hernandez implies that while art may open up new worlds to our appreciation, it can also insulate us from tragedy by aestheticizing it, turning it into a series of images and objects for our consumption.”
You could argue, then, that Hernandez is criticizing both Cathy and the idiot photojournalist for aestheticizing tragedy, the second by making it art, the first by turning it into horror and melodrama.
This is where the writing problem factors in for me, though. The tragedy itself, the horrified reaction, and the criticism of the distanced artist are all so familiar, the move from tragedy to melodrama done in such a heavy-handed way…it’s supposed to be implicating the viewer, but it just seems to be giving the viewer what he wants, and then patting him on the back for noticing he’s not supposed to want it. (Or she/her/she’s; don’t want to upset Jeet.)
The argument to make would be in response I guess that the rest of the book’s material makes it clearer that this whole page is ironized or otherwise complicated — especially Cathy’s position. But, as I said, Charles’ reading from the book doesn’t say that, and Suat doesn’t think it’s the case either, so….
What Faulkner don’t you like? I’m a pretty big fan of his….
…her reaction still stages a vicarious experience of trauma in a way that displaces the Real terror of the actual trauma onto a Symbolic horror when it’s watched from afar. I too reject it on moral grounds — I believe the moral response to other people’s trauma is not the distancing protection of horror, but the intimate indentification of grief. That’s what’s wrong with the writing to me — it documents a fear of shared grief that perpetuates the distanced position of privilege.
That’s exactly the point! The larger plot of the novel questions the social responsibility of artists who create Symbolic representations of trauma, and does so not only through the walk-on recurrence of an earlier character (Howard, the photographer), but also, and more importantly, through the creation of a new character, Humberto, a failed artist who seeks to intervene in real trauma in a merely Symbolic way, thus prolonging and perpetuating the crisis at the heart of the novel.
The “distanced position of privilege” is just what is indicted in the novel’s conclusion. And this is done through the humble tools of serial narrative: the self-immolating girl in the climax is a major recurrent character in Hernandez’s stories, so far readers of the entire novel, and even more so the entire series, her sacrifice is not mediated in the same way that it is for Howard and Cathy.
…it’s supposed to be implicating the viewer, but it just seems to be giving the viewer what he wants, and then patting him on the back for noticing he’s not supposed to want it.
Speaking anecdotally, as a L&R reader at the time, when this story was serialized, I was actually stunned and upset by this conclusion, because of my investment in the fate of Tonantzin, the character who dies here. I don’t see how this was a case of giving readers what they wanted.
I agree that the politics of representing something like this are dicey at best…but I thought, think, that that was precisely the point.
You’re distinguishing between serious readers and less serious readers and saying the first are moral and the second aren’t. That’s the definition of academic elitism.
I simply do not see how it is elitist to ask critics to engage the totality of a work. You’re not just any “reader” here, Noah; you’re a critic, doing critical work. You’re held to a different standard, one that I don’t have to be an academic to ask for. Please don’t play that “academic elitist” card on me; it’s such an old canard, and it’s so fundamentally untrue of my outlook and goals.
Nothing in my work dictates responses to readers or tells them how they should read. I’m talking about what I expect critics to do; I’m not policing the habits of individual readers. Read or don’t read Hernandez for all I care, but as soon as you start making pointed critical commentary, be ready for the challenge. Do the work, and be ready.
Thanks, Charles, that’s exactly what i hoped you’d say! that there is self-awareness of the things that feel awful and sad, and that hernandez does something meaningful with the depiction, which it sounds like he does. i can’t tell that from the single page – which i guess is the point (although there are many other points.)
sometimes it can be enough, though, that i know i cant handle the whole thing. i cannot read cormac mccarthy, regardless of ethics. the representation is just too much.
i am being given belgian ale and feijoada so i will answer the faulkner question asap but later, noah…
Hey Charles. You don’t really feel I’m eschewing challenges, surely? I mean, I’m not having you over to the compound to beat on me, obviously, but I’m hardly ducking the discussion.
“I simply do not see how it is elitist to ask critics to engage the totality of a work. You’re not just any “reader” here, Noah; you’re a critic, doing critical work. You’re held to a different standard, one that I don’t have to be an academic to ask for. Please don’t play that “academic elitist” card on me; it’s such an old canard, and it’s so fundamentally untrue of my outlook and goals.”
This is great! You start out by saying you’re not an elitist…and then in the next sentence you scold me for not upholding professional standards!
Anyway…the distinction between critic and reader is one I’m in general interested in collapsing. One of the great things about the blogosphere (and one of the frustrating things too, of course) is the way those boundaries get blurred. Because…yeah, I’m a critic and get paid (a little bit) for it. But here, at least, I have no editor; no peer review; nobody really to answer to except my commenters, if I’m lucky enough to have any. I’m essentially just a doofus with a keyboard, one among all the dooffusi.
That doesn’t actually mean that I don’t take what I do seriously…but it does mean that I have a fair bit of latitude to decide what “seriously” means. Sometimes it means doing very close readings of works I care a lot about, looking at lots of relevant literature, and generally behaving (somewhat) like an academic. And sometimes it can mean other things.
Sooooo…what you mean when you say you don’t care if I read Hernandez, only that I’m doing critical work, is, essentially, as far as I can tell, that I can read what I want as long as I don’t talk about it. If I do talk about it, I have to do so in ways that for you pass methodological muster. This is annexed to your program of consolidating comics as serious literature, worthy of study in the academy. You’re engaged in a program based in the academy which is intended to restrict the methodological ways on the basis of which people can speak. Again, I don’t know what to call that other than academic elitism. (Which, you know, though I think it’s kind of a sin, it’s not the worst sin in the world or anything. Some of my best friends are elitists!)
___________
The conversation about that penultimate page has actually clarified several things for me. My qualms are somewhat different from Caro’s, I now realize. You say this:
“The “distanced position of privilege” is just what is indicted in the novel’s conclusion. And this is done through the humble tools of serial narrative: the self-immolating girl in the climax is a major recurrent character in Hernandez’s stories, so for readers of the entire novel, and even more so the entire series, her sacrifice is not mediated in the same way that it is for Howard and Cathy.”
That’s very nicely put. But thinking it through a little, I realize that indicting the distanced position of privilege is precisely the problem for me. In public tragedies, there’s a massive desire to share in the grief of strangers. If the past decade has shown us anything, it’s that that desire is as likely as not to lead to staggering amounts of bloodshed. Empathy and sentiment are powerful political levers, and where they lever you is often really, really not anywhere good.
That page is indicting the photographer most of all for not caring. It’s not at all clear to me that it’s indicting Cathy as well; I think I find the reading in your book on that matter more persuasive than the one you give here in comments. However, even if it *is* indicting her to a lesser extent, the final oomph, the last sneer, is at the photographer when he turns to other concerns.
But, from my perspective, that’s the one moment when he’s actually being honest. He doesn’t know this person (I mean, he does, because Hernandez has stacked the card to show us how we’re all connected, but he doesn’t know he knows); her death can’t actually be an occasion for grief. So he goes about his business — and doesn’t, say, run off to bomb some random country in order to assuage his emotions. In short, if the problem is imperialism, the solution is not necessarily a sentiment that connects distant people in a web of grief. The solution may well be borders. Isolationism now, as my dear friend Bert Stabler is wont to say.
“Speaking anecdotally, as a L&R reader at the time, when this story was serialized, I was actually stunned and upset by this conclusion, because of my investment in the fate of Tonantzin, the character who dies here. I don’t see how this was a case of giving readers what they wanted.”
Desire is pretty complicated, you know? As I said above, one thing people really want to do in a distant tragedy is feel personal grief. You can talk about why that is — I think Zizek in his book on 9/11 calls it the rage for the Real. It definitely exists, though…and so what does Hernandez give you, in your reading? You get to sit by these people who don’t get it…and you get it. You understand what they don’t. The fact that a character you care about dies isn’t so much the price you pay as the payment itself. Caro sees grief as a moral bridge, and maybe it is. But it’s a moral bridge people will line up to buy. And the clumsy manipulation of sentiment, language, prejudice, and imagery on this page suggests to me that Hernandez is all too eager to sell it.
The funny thing is, Suat’s reading of the comic makes me much more likely to try it than yours. If this page is a mistake or a blip, I can see my way clear to liking the rest of the book. But if it’s a feature, if this is the sort of thing I’m supposed to like when I like Hernandez’s books, then I’m really sunk.
Caro–
“So I mean, I’ll go read it and see whether that sense resonates with me through the whole text, and whether the girl who dies is also part of the story in other ways, so that her trauma is depicted both immediately as well as through Cathy’s eyes.”
Well, this is what you get from basing your partial reading on Noah’s partial reading. Cathy and Howard appear only on that page (and, ok, in two panels on the previous page) out of a 105 page story. (Howard had appeared in an earlier story, “An American in Palomar;” I don’t remember if Cathy was in it too.) The story *is* the story of Tonantzin and of other characters in Palomar (but her character arc is the most interesting). It’s just that the end of her story is expressed not directly, but at second hand as viewed through the eyes of strangers. It’s also powerful because it’s unexpected–the last time we had seen Tonantzin, five pages earlier, she was leaving for the US, but there was no inkling it was for the purpose of this sacrifice (or maybe the decision to immolate herself was only made during the narrative ellipsis in her story?)
Yep, got all that from Charles. Partial readings need to be based on his description! Also Suat’s, who points to the moment of of decision, since Andrei was wondering:
“The only inkling of the tragedy that is to follow is her sudden change in expression as she travels away from Palomar just 5 pages before her death, a death which will leave her lover horrendously scarred in a testament to his love and hubris.”
Andrei, I actually didn’t base my partial reading on Noah’s: it was just a close reading of that scene. I don’t think Noah and I actually agree: we’re just both responsive to and skeptical of the tensions of that limited snippet. I’m very pleased by the logic of Charles’ description, though, the notion that GH is addressing these very issues of the subject position that enables representation, whereas I think Noah maybe doesn’t feel that it matters.
I have a general problem with the idea that the story is the same and that points of view is not constitutive. When a story is expressed indirectly, it’s not the same story as when it’s expressed directly. The Faulkner I was thinking of, Noah, is the scene in the Sound and the Fury where Jason Compson won’t give the little boy the nickel to go to the circus (or something like that — it’s been decades — all I remember now is the cruelty). Faulkner depicts the cruelty so starkly from Compson’s perspective — effectively, accurately, with great literary weight, but it’s still cruelty. Compson’s voice is so well represented that even though I know we’re supposed to be repulsed, and assume Jason’s guilt through having to assume his subject position, it just doesn’t work for me. It’s just too cruel, too saturated with hate, that even it’s assimilation back into the larger narrative doesn’t mitigate its terror. I feel violated by Faulkner’s forcing me to assume the subject position of such a cynical, racist character. The first time I read it I threw the book out an 8th-story window into a fountain. I swear to God; that’s not hyperbole. I wanted to kill Jason Compson with my bare hands. I cried through the whole night. I didn’t want that child’s story to be told from that monster’s perspective. Jason Compson didn’t deserve for his subject position to be so validated.
That was 1989 and I still want to spit on the book every time I see it. Do I think it’s art? You bet I do. If it wasn’t art I wouldn’t hate a fictional character with that kind of passion: I probably wouldn’t hate Jason Compson like that if I wasn’t actually a Southerner and wasn’t able to see him as an aggregate of a large number of real people and the real effects they have on living individuals, past and present. It focused my hate. But I can’t soften my response to it through some distancing analysis of literary form. Faulkner’s too cynical — too realist. I don’t feel that his indictment of Compson is sufficient to resolve the anger that his representation aroused.
In the same way, that page makes the end of Tonantzin’s story not quite Tonantzin’s story any more — it’s becomes Cathy and Howard’s story, because the “owner” of the story is the owner of the subject position from which the story is told. At the very least that’s a non-neutral rhetorical gambit. It feels like violence to me, taking her story away from her. That’s why I was so pleased that Charles says GH uses to interesting effect.
There’s no “just” about such a shift in vantage point (Andrei says “it’s just that the end of the story is expressed not directly.”) The issue of who gets to speak, whose voice tells the story: that’s political, and if you give the pulpit to the villain, you’d damn well better mitigate the power of that voice somehow. That’s why I was so glad for Charles’ assertion that GH does mitigate it.
=======================
Noah, I think your reading mistakes mourning for grief. Mourning is very public and very theatrical. Grief is very personal. The theatrically of public mourning (for example, over 9-11) isn’t the same thing as a transformative, identificatory grief. Mourning is much easier to co-opt than grief, and I think mourning has an element of horror that grief does not. Grief is always immensely, painfully, incontrovertibly private.
Charles observes that the novel “questions the social responsibility of novelists who create Symbolic representations of trauma” and that sounds like an incredibly responsible, powerful, and much needed question to raise.
I like the distinction between mourning and grief, and the insistence that grief is private. I think what I’m doing is questioning the possibility of leveraging the second as a political force without ending up in the first.
I do think the complicating factors Charles talks about matter. I don’t think they could save this page for me, but they make the rest of the book seem potentially more appealing.
I haven’t read Faulkner in a long time; I don’t remember that incident, though I certainly remember the Jason chapter — which I have to say I loved. There was a really visceral catharsis in the loathing, both of Jason and of everyone else. As you say, there’s a purity to the hate; it’s the reason to love metal, too, or some horror films. Baptism in abjection. It’s something I definitely dig in art…and it’s certainly really ethically iffy. You’re supposed to detest Jason, but Faulkner clearly loves him too. I don’t see it as cynical, exactly, or at least not as cynically despairing or anything; Faulkner’s having too much fun. You get that in Swift too, or Christianity; the joy of misanthropy. Sound and the Fury in general is such a exuberant book…
When I interviewed Johnny Ryan ages ago, he talked a lot about how inspiring the Jason section was to him, which makes a weird kind of sense. Have you seen Ryan’s stuff? I bet you would haaaaate it….
I don’t get why you’re so occupied with who specifically is being indicted on that page. I never read it as an indictment of any of the characters. Gilbert tends not to do that kind of thing.
That’s part of why Suat sees the page as (unfortunately) atypical, yes?
Possibly, but I really don’t think he is indicting anyone on that page, merely stating a state or affairs.
The characertization of Miller in “An American in Palomar”, which introduces his character, is more bluntly critical and not particularly compelling, but here I think Hernandez is merely showing how we typically might react to this kind of remote, largely incomprehensible tragedy, with the added poignancy that Miller of course unknowingly is acquainted with the victim. If anything, it’s a critique of a greater political and social reality, rather than of specific people.
Years later, in the second “Chelo’s Burden”, Miller returns to Palomar, partly, we understand, because of his realization of what happened after he left. The seeds for this development are sown here.
Noah,
There’s more of this kind of thing in the early L & R Palomar stories…the more GIlbert goes forward, the less moralizing/didacticism revolving around imperialism/ethnicity there is. The Marquez pastiche basically drops out completely in the later work. There’s very little, if any, in Poison River. On the other hand, there’s an increasing amount of kinky sex (and fetishism of various kinds) once the action shifts principally to the States. Maybe you’d like the later stuff better (Poison River and beyond—the stuff collected in the Luba hardcover).
“Just when I try to get out, they pull me back in.”
Two points:
For an interesting example of how Gilbert has evolved over time, it’s fruitful to compare “Human Diastrophism” with “Scarlet by Starlight” (in the new Love and Rockets annual: volume 3, #3). The new story is a re-writing of “Human Diastrophism” (and especially the themes of imperialist exploitation) as a science fiction allegory. It’s much bleaker and punchier than “Human Diastrophism.” The didacticism that some people see in “Human Diastrophism” is replaced by a comedy that is as black as Beckett’s humour. Very interesting to compare the two stories as examples of early and recent Hernandez, showing his persistent thematic concerns as well as his evolution as a storyteller. Warning to Noah: Of course, to make this comparison you actually have to read the two stories, which I know will be an impossible chore for you.
I’m amused at how Noah’s defence of non-reading is cloaked in the language of populism. It’s elitist, we’re told, to expect Noah to actually read a comic book before commenting on it. Actually, the reverse is true. The true egalitarian position is that everyone interested in a book should have access to a text, read it, and then offer their analysis. Critical discourse would come from the interaction between these competing readers, all of whom bring something to the table because they’ve done taken time to read. What is elitist is the idea that someone like Noah is a super-reader (a genius or “a master” to use Suat’s words) who can just glance at a page and offer a visionary reading that gets to the heart of the matter.
To put it another way, implicit in this hermeneutics of non-reading is the idea that “Noah is a master. One could almost say he’s THE master. The master is always right. He knows how to glance at a comics page and offer a complete theory of the essence of the cartoonist’s work. We must defend the master from outside attack. Please continue to enlighten us more, master.” As I said before, this is not populism, it is cultism. The next step is to want Noah to move into his heavily-armed compound and offer your mind and bodies up to Noah’s complete bidding.
Having said all that, I should add that as always I found Suat’s visually-sensitive reading of the comic itself to be very eye-opening and valuable. I also really liked his earlier visual essay on Jaime Hernandez’s original art.
If I may enter the fray…
It seems to me that there is a shared consensus here about GH’s political intent expressed on that page– that he’s indicting the two gringos as insensitive liberal assholes, that Tonantzin’s sacrifice is authentic and noble. But reading the entire graphic novel, and placing it in the context of the ongoing Palomar saga, reveals a far subtler and more ambiguous reading.
We find out that Tonantzin’s radicalisation was largely a constructed artifice, created by Luba’s teenage daughter who had a crush on her. Note that at no point is T’s cause spelt out. (Note also that her radical lover never has a single line of dialogue.) What exactly is she killing herself to protest? Oppression, exploitation, neo-imperialism? That’s what we assume, but who knows? GH allows each of us to cast our own preconception into an empty ideological vase. What’s important is the act itself.
We the readers, who have come to love Tonantzin, are shocked and dismayed by her self-immolation. We are led to question whether such extreme action, such martyrdom, is ever justifiable. I’m sure the grieving family and friends of Jan Palach felt the same…
On the other hand, Cathy’s and Howard’s separate reactions strike me as presented sympathetically. Cathy is horrified: this act is, to her world-view, beyond all comprehension. Howard is more understanding: he’s been there, and had his gringo smugness shaken up. He doesn’t endorse the martyrdom, but he comprehends how a person can arrive at such a point.
The cruel irony is that he may have indirectly led to Tonantzin’s change of spirit, after having toyed with her affections during his stay in Palomar.
I think the distancing via a double mediation (people watching TV) is wise. I’m with Brecht: deliberate alienation is a way to make the reader/spectator think as well as feel.
To conclude, when read in a larger context, the page is far more nuanced than the cliche-ridden tract Noah professed to find in its isolated state. And that’s my argument against such reviewing…
There’s a large measure of satire and irony in that Bayard book, BTW.
“What is elitist is the idea that someone like Noah is a super-reader”
I don’t think I”m a super-reader; I’m really quite sure Suat doesn’t either — he thinks I’m wrong at least as often as he thinks I’m right. You, Jeet, are systematically misrepresenting my words (or actually, I”m not sure what you’re misrepresenting, since I never said anything even remotely like that and you provide no quotes other than the thing from Suat, who is lovely, but is not me— perhaps you’re misrepresenting my psychic emissions?) In any case, to the compound with you! Off with your genitals!
The point…or maybe I shouldn’t talk about points what with all the castration anxiety? Anyway, what I”m trying to say isn’t that I can give the true reading from looking at a single panel. As I said, I don’t think my reading is the true or essential one. I don’t think such things exist. The point, rather, is that you (or anyone) can interact with a work of art in various ways. One of those ways is to be very engaged with it…engaged enough to want to read the whole thing and think about it as an entire work, to trace out the sources of your engagement. Another way (and not an uncommon one among readers of all sorts) is to look at a small bit of it and really not want to engage with it further for various reasons. And my contention is that you can just as easily talk about the reasons for that disengagement — and that that approach is valid and potentially interesting, just as a engaged approach can be interesting. The experience of art is not just about fascination and embrace; it’s about disinterest and rejection. And I think it’s worth talking about both.
Academic and subcultural communities are committed to an ethos of expertise in various ways. That ethos comes out in demands for competence, complete reading, familiarity, historical knowledge — the idea that you need to be informed or do (as Charles said) “work” before you can participate in the conversation. Those kinds of demands are the traditional tools of professionalization, specialization, and disciplinary cohesion. It’s a way of deciding who can speak and who can’t.
And (to read your psychic emissions) this is precisely what freaks you out, Jeet, and causes you to spin off into ludicrous conspiracy theories and unfortunate (though amusing) psycho-sexual revelations. From everything I’ve read by you, you’re very committed to having comics scholarship be a serious and validated undertaking, with disputes occurring between people of a certain level of prestige, conducted with collegiality. When you go after someone, it’s, say, Craig Yoe, for not maintaining high standards of scholarship. I happen to think that high standards of scholarship are valuable, and I thought that Yoe article was totally worthwhile.
At the same time, I’m also open to other approaches, and to allowing people (including myself) to speak even when they aren’t experts, or aren’t particularly interested in expertise, or scholarship, or even, really, fact checking. When you open the door to people like that, you get different perspectives — you can hear from people who are, for example, repelled by Hernandez — the people who picked up Gilbert’s book in Charles’ anecdote and put it down instantly. Charles ventriloquizes them, more or less, through Hernandez, speculating about why they didn’t like the book, or what it means. But, you know, you could also ask them and take their comments seriously. But to do that, you need to allow different kinds of people to participate in the conversation.
To you, that’s a barbarians at the gate argument, yes? The whole point of having conversations is to talk to people who meet a certain standard, otherwise, why bother? Thus your palpable frustration and/or paranoia when you deal with this site. Every time you comment, you can kind of hear the extended whine in the background, “Whhhhhyyyyy are you talking to this guy! It…it…it must be because he’s hypnotized you!” Then you scurry away because you’re not supposed to be talking to people who aren’t serious, damn it….and then you scurry back because you! must! show! them! all! the error of their ways in deigning to have discussions with me. The oscillation is pretty entertaining, I have to say — not least because, as I mentioned before, the frustration brings out a vindictiveness and even an imaginativeness in your writing that you often seem reluctant to commit to print. The Kool Aid, genitals, compound thing is really funny. I wish you’d unleash more of that sort of thing when you wrote about comics creators, but I’ll take it where I can get.
I agree with you about criticism and history, incidentally; they are of course blurry categories, and rely on each other.
Noah-
Have you considered renaming HU “the Compound”? Maybe we can all have matching hats or something.
Actually, I think I’ve been more open-minded about the hermeneutics of non-reading (or if you want, the hermeneutics of partial and incomplete reading) than most of the other people who have commented on it like Eric B. and Alex Buchet.
Another precursor for this type of criticism (Noah Criticism? No Criticism?) is Nicholson Baker’s “U&I” — a small book about how John Updike influenced Baker. Baker admitts in the book that he’s read than half of Updike body of work, but still feels justified in writing a book about Updike because that’s how we relate to living authors that we read outside of school (we read them partially and in bits and pieces). But even Baker admitts that “U&I” was meant to be a one-off and he want to see this methodology become the norm.
But even Baker had actually some of Updike’s works.
But I don’t think it’s a question of professionalism at all. I read lots of criticism that isn’t done by “professional” critics — blog posts here and elsewhere. Or take Donald Phelps, a critic I admire immensely. Is he a “professional”? He never completed college. He’s retired now but spent most of his life as a white-collar office worker. So by any typical criteria he’s not a professional but he’s written wonderfully well about books, movies, and comics. The difference between Phelps and you is that Phelps has actually read the books and comics he writes about.
If a critic offers a detailed analysis of a book or movie but says in passing “by the way I only read a few pages of this book” or “by the way I’ve only seen a 5 minute youtube clip of this movie” then I’m going to be skeptical of their analysis. It could be that such a critic will have a great, stunning insight that will cast that book or movie in a totally new light. But it’s much more like that such a partial reading or partial viewing will lead the critic to pull something out of his ass or her ass (which I what I think you did with your comments on that one page by Gilbert).
It really is amazing that we (not just you and me but everyone in this discussion ranging from Charles to Suat to Alex) have been spending so much time debating the question of whether your non-reading or partial reading of “Human Diastrophism” and “Poison River” is valid or not. In the time we’ve taken to debate this issue, you could have easily read those comics. Reading isn’t hard Noah. In fact, it’s often fun!
The debate has mostly been because you (and a couple of other people) freaked the fuck out, Jeet. I think the resulting discussion has been fairly productive; I’ve enjoyed it probably a lot more than I’d enjoy reading Hernandez’s work, as far as I can tell. But I know you tend to see criticism as a less valuable pursuit than comics. It’s just not where I’m coming from.
“Or take Donald Phelps, a critic I admire immensely. Is he a “professional”? He never completed college. He’s retired now but spent most of his life as a white-collar office worker.”
This is the subculture thing. There are sort of overlapping circles. The subculture isn’t tied into traditional institutions necessarily. That makes it often more resistant to different perspectives, not less — though by the same token it can be very, and wonderfully, open to anyone who is willing to jump through its particular hoops.
“If a critic offers a detailed analysis of a book or movie but says in passing “by the way I only read a few pages of this book” or “by the way I’ve only seen a 5 minute youtube clip of this movie” then I’m going to be skeptical of their analysis.”
I just don’t feel that way. I really am interested about how and why people don’t like to engage with something. I mean, if somebody hasn’t read something I’m interested in (like Twilight; this happens with some frequency) I’ll often say, well, I think you’d change your mind if you read the book for this reason and the other. But the moral, semi-hysterical tone you’ve taken in this discussion just seems silly to me. If you don’t agree with what I have to say, explain why you don’t agree or just ignore it and go about your business. The ad hominem methodological attacks just seem insecure and defensive to me.
Charles is actually and refreshingly open about this, linking his distaste for my method to his desire to solidify the cultural position of comics — that is, he needs to call me out because comics is marginal and/or weak and needs defending. I appreciate his honesty and his commitment, but I think he’s misguided. Art benefits in the long run from openness, not defensiveness.
I probably will read some more Gilbert at this point though. Don’t expect it to make you happy, though. You didn’t much like it when I finally read Crumb’s Genesis.
I ain’t read hardly no Faulkner nor mostly none Hernandez neither. But I was just wondering what happened to calling Noah a racist because he thought that appreciating charming ethno-kitsch was politically questionable.
But, in regard to both Love and Rockets and Faulkner, I think it’s mostly okay for white men to like big butts.
Isolationism Now!
“But the moral, semi-hysterical tone you’ve taken in this discussion just seems silly to me.”
As I was explaining to a friend off-list, when I write posts on this list, I generally try and parody Noah’s rhetoric and characteristic obessions. Noah is given over to moralistic and semi-hysterical writing, and likes to apply gender theory to comics and is quick to find a racial subtext in other people’s work. So is thought it would be interesting to apply Noah’s critical methods to Noah and the Hooded Utilitarian site.
I learned this technique of “criticism by parody” from Hugh Kenner. When Kenner wrote T.S. Eliot: The Invisible Poet, Kenner’s tone was feline and anglophilic, just like Eliot’s essays. Kenner’s two books on Samuel Beckett are composed in sentences that have a Beckett-like syntax.
I think Noah-parodying works very well in analysizing Noah’s work and the other writing on this site. Of course, Noah-mimicry wouldn’t work for analysising most comics or other works of art.
Ah, good to see you embracing your inner troll. Carry on then.
I really am interested about how and why people don’t like to engage with something. I mean, if somebody hasn’t read something I’m interested in (like Twilight; this happens with some frequency) I’ll often say, well, I think you’d change your mind if you read the book for this reason and the other.
I like this way of looking at it, and can see the relation to my own habits with books, comics, music, film. There are plenty of times I see a 2 minute movie trailer and am ready to make some critical assessment… Or I hear one song and write off a musician.
I think we all do this, and we often spout off about it in conversation (“man, I hate that XXX song, so-and-so is horrible.”). One thing I appreciate in good criticism is that piece which will change my mind about something I’d never have approached.
I don’t remember the context anymore, but someone wrote a blog post about a page or two from Mari Okazaki’s Suppli that got me to pick it up. I really enjoy that series now, but I never would have approached it based on the cover (kind of flowerly) or the genre (josei).
Satire is a funny thing (Weird Al!). I read “A Vindication of Natural Society,” a “parodic” piece Edmund Burke wrote about the harmfulness of all government, in response to philosophical writings on the harmfulness of all religious institutions by one Lord Bolingbroke. And the allegedly dour Soren Kirkegaard used wacky aliases in his campaign to debunk Hegel and restore mystical Christianity.
And you know, at least in these cases, it made them more honest, not less so. One might ask if Jonathan Swift himself was not a “hooded utilitarian,” of sorts.
“I probably will read some more Gilbert at this point though. Don’t expect it to make you happy, though. You didn’t much like it when I finally read Crumb’s Genesis.”
Actually I don’t remember commenting on your reading of Crumb’s Genesis but I’ll take the opportunity to say that once you read the book, your comments were much more intelligent and provocative than before you read the book. I still didn’t agree with you, but thought that you had at least written a lively and engaged response which made me think more about the book. I don’t think this should be such a controversial point: that reading a book makes you better able to criticize it than simply glancing at a page or two, or relying on other people’s critiques.
It was after I read it that you launched into a hysterical fit accusing me of dishonesty and general evilness, actually.
But perhaps that was merely a parody? In any case, glad to hear you enjoyed the review.
The accusation of dishonesty and general evilness was based on other things you wrote, not the review of Genesis written after you read the book.
Ah, so not a parody then. Good to know. Thanks Jeet.
“But I know you tend to see criticism as a less valuable pursuit than comics. It’s just not where I’m coming from.”
I don’t think criticism is less valuable than comics. In fact, I think I’ve made it very clear (via a Henry James quote:http://comicscomicsmag.com/2010/07/why-we-need-criticism.html) that art and criticism go together, that criticism enriches art (and I would now add that art enriches criticism).
The thing is I do think its important for criticism to be linked to the experience of art. As I mentioned before, it’s a really good idea to read Ezra Pound before reading Kenner’s The Pound Era. The synergy of Pound and Kenner when you read them makes for a special experience. Or another example: after I watch a movie from the 1960s to the early 1990s, I often go read Pauline Kael and other critics, to help deepen and enrich my enjoyment of the movie but also to deepen and enrich my enjoyment of Pauline Kael. It’s a case where you can’t remove the sauce from the steak or the dressing from the salad, or the cheese from the the wine. You seem to want a diet of sauce and dressing and cheese only; leaving aside the fact that this hampers your abilities as a critic (as I think has been amply demonstrated above by all those who have so acutely dismantled your reading of Hernandez) I think this type of one-sided diet also diminishes your enjoyment of both comics and criticism. You’re mainly hurting yourself by carrying on like this.
Criticism is art. It’s not the sauce; it’s a different steak. Criticism doesn’t enrich some primary aesthetic experience; it’s an experience in itself. And would I rather read Laura Mulvey on film than read Gilbert Hernandez? Yes. Yes I would.
And those aesthetic experiences aren’t only about enjoyment, as I discussed with Charles.
It’s sweet that you’re concerned for my welfare, though. If it’ll make you feel better, you could read my long series of long articles on Moto Hagio’s Drunken Dream, which is the kind of extensive focused reading I think you prefer. I do have that sort of thing in my life, so you can cease your worrying.
All criticism isn’t created equal. Some criticism can be like a steak but some criticism, perhaps most criticism, is more like a sauce. In any case, the criticism that is most steak-like is surely the criticism where the author has the most enriching relationship with art.
“And would I rather read Laura Mulvey on film than read Gilbert Hernandez?Yes. Yes I would.”
Surely the relevant comparison is not between Laura Mulvey and Gilbert Hernandez but between Laura Mulvey and a critic who writes about movies after only watching brief clips and reading comments from other critics. Can Laura Mulvey or any other critic compose criticism of value without engaging in the experience of art except in the most cursory way? I’m trying to keep an open mind on this question, but it’s hard for me to see how avoiding reading or the experience of art can make for good criticism.
I’ll read your articles on Moto Hagio after I’m more familiar with her work. Generally I don’t like to dive into this sort of in-depth criticism until I’ve made some headway into an author’s body of work. But I’ll certainly keep your articles bookmarked.
I ask this with all respectful seriousness, honestly: How much of Love and Rockets do you guys think a critic should read before he’s qualified to say something useful about it? I mean, I asked, and Chris estimated that the whole thing is in the range of 3000 pages long. How does someone who isn’t already a fan of the work have any idea where to begin, where to start and stop/cut off, etc.? Or do critics really need to read all 3000 pages to understand any subset?
@Caro. It really depends on what you’re writing. If your doing a monograph on one or all of the Bros. — as in Todd Hignite’s book on Jaime — then you should read everything. But if you’re doing an essay on a particular story or graphic novel or character, you can be more selective. Both Jaime and Gilbert have done hundreds of pages on their respective worlds but these hundreds of pages are broken down into convenient stories. For example, the pages that Noah was commenting on come from the story “Human Diastrophism” and the graphic novel “Poison River”. I don’t have the books handy but I seem to recall that “Human Diastrophism” was 40 to 50 pages long and “Poison River” is a little under 200 pages (please correct if I’m wrong — my figures are a bit on the high-side). If Noah had read “Human Diastrophism” and “Poison River” before making his analysis, I wouldn’t keep harping on this point because it would make sense to read these two works and then comment on a page from each story. What I’m amazed by, really gob-smacked by, is his unwillingness to even read these stories before offering his analysis since, as several other posters have pointed out, there is a context to those pages in the stories that materially effects how you should analyze them.
So, no, I don’t expect or want Noah to read all of Gilbert’s work — not unless he were doing a monograph on Gilbert. But I expect Noah to at least read the stories he’s analyzing. I really don’t see why this should be a controversial point.
Jeet: the monograph thing absolutely. But –asking this question as a reader, not a critic — is it correct for me to conclude, based on what you said, that reading Human Diastrophism and Poison River would be sufficient for me to see/experience the reading Charles advances in comment 18?:
.
Or do I need to read more than those two stories to really get all the pieces of that reading?
=========
Although everybody seems to have taken my earlier question as proof of the opposite, I generally tend to side very strongly with the “read the whole damn thing” standard. (I read the whole run of Moore’s Swamp Thing when we roundtabled it, probably didn’t need to, but even having done so, felt like I was missing something because there was more to the character than that run.) But the “whole things” in comics often represent years and years of work and ga-freakin-zillions of pages, and often the works are ongoing, and the activation energy can be immensely high. So still speaking not as a critic but as a reader — feeling lost and without a “way in” is one of the most difficult aspects of the “serialized” form for people like me who have no history of reading comics. General interest comics reviews could stand to do a better job of orienting readers and identifying that way in: a lot of times they assume a pretty in-the-know reader.
I’ll answer since Jeet isn’t around. To ascertain the truthfulness (or falsity) of Charles’ statement, all you would need to do is read the chapter titled “Human Diastrophism” in the Palomar hardcover collection (it might be in your home library already; there are lots of cheap softcover collections of this section of Love and Rockets as well). It has all the background information you will need. There’s also a Love and Rockets consumer guide written by Chris Mautner (he recommends avoiding the hardcover collections).
Can’t argue with your “read the whole damn thing” standard since I’m pretty obsessive about reading everything and more when it comes to criticism. The “activation energy” (nice term) is reasonably high when it comes to Love and Rockets so Chris’ suggestion to proceed from Heartbreak Soup to Human Diastrophism is the best option time allowing. That appears to be nearly 600 pages of reading but Charles sort of suggests that comics are complicated in his book, doesn’t he?
Humberto is first introduced in Human Diastrophism, so you’d learn nothing directly about him from the earlier stories.
Howard’s story is another story (An American in Palomar). Reading that one story would give you sufficient context to understand his character in the one page. However, I think you could appreciate Human Diastrophism pretty well without reading An American in Palomar. Howard is restricted to that one page out of 105 pages (not 40 or 50). I think you’d get a far richer and more interesting reading out of that page knowing what came before and what was to come, but Howard’s role is nothing remotely like central to HD.
@Caro. I think the question of how to read a long-running comics series is a real issue and a problem. Part of the problem is the collector’s mentality that governs comics publishing and reading, so there is a preference for a “complete run” over more selected volumes. For example, arguably the Kirby/Lee Fantastic Four didn’t become something really special till around issue 40 or so, but there’s been a strong impulse to reprint and read and analyze from the start. As I’ve said before, there’s merit in readers and critics zooming in on a work’s period.
Another example is Cerebus. 300 issues long: the first 25 issues are very weak. Issues 25 to 50 are Sim finding his sea-legs. By issue 50 or so, he knows what he wants to do and has the skill to do. And of course, the last 100 to 150 issues are hampered by Sim’s increasing ideological and religious hectoring. But because Sim has crafted and marketed Cerebus a 300 issue epic, many people feel you have to read the whole thing; the good, the bad, and the indifferent alike. (Although I think increasingly critics like Wolk are winning the argumetn that the best thing you can do with Cerebus is read it selectively and focus on the good graphic novels, rather than the dubious early and late work).
With Love and Rockets, the same problem exists to a smaller degree because Jaime’s early stories, although very pleasant in and of themselves, are but a pale shadow of what his mature work is like. But his learning curve was briefer: I’d say you’re only reading about 100 pages of juvenilia, before Jaime hits his stride.
As for Gilbert, I think he hit the ground running with Heartbreak Soup and the early Palomar stories — there are still people who cherish those early stories.
The recent Fantagraphics paperback set are the way to go: not only are they relatively cheap but also they are organized in a way that makes it easy to follow the stories.
In terms of investing time, actually reading all of Jaime and Gilbert is not that difficult. You could easily read everything Jaime wrote in a week making allowances for life chores (i.e., if you work and have a social life but only read in the evening and on weekends.) Gilbert would take a bit longer: maybe 2 weeks. What’s time consuming with the Hernandez is not the reading but the re-reading. The stories constantly cross-fertilize each other and enrich other, so there is a strong temptation to re-read them and re-visit them.
That’s actually something comics critics need to address more often: that the reading of comics has a different tempo than the reading of prose texts. In prose texts, the big time sink is the first read; re-reading a beloved book tends to be quicker than reading it. In comics, the first read tends to be, at least for me, relatively speedy while most of investment in time comes from re-reading. But that could just be me.
So, then, a person who reads a single volume of Hernandez’s work can comment on it…but not with as much authority as someone who has read the whole series (which you need to do for a monograph.) And, because of the nature of comics, to have really iron-clad authority, you (at least possibly) need not just to read it once, but to reread it numerous times.
Presumably you’re not going to reread something numerous times if you hate it, so this is a way to make sure that nobody with real authority dislikes the canon, I guess.
If I had said, “this page is awesome; I can see just by looking at it that Palomar as a whole is a work of transcendent genius,” would there be the same level of concern about my methodology, I wonder? I’m sure folks would have encouraged me to read the whole thing, and probably people would have said, “yes, but you can’t appreciate the *true* genius until you read the whole book.” But I have trouble believing there would have been the same level of animosity, or the insistence that I had to read the entire book before I could express an opinion.
In comics, the first read tends to be, at least for me, relatively speedy while most of investment in time comes from re-reading. But that could just be me.
I find this to be very much the case too.
Caro, on reading the Hernandez’s: You could probably get a good idea for both brothers by reading the second volume of each brothers run in the newer softcover editions: “The Girl from Hoppers” and “Human Diastrophism”. You’ll skip the early stuff (good to go back to if you end up liking their work) and get right to a few of their classic and well regard stories.
That’s actually something comics critics need to address more often: that the reading of comics has a different tempo than the reading of prose texts. In prose texts, the big time sink is the first read; re-reading a beloved book tends to be quicker than reading it. In comics, the first read tends to be, at least for me, relatively speedy while most of investment in time comes from re-reading. But that could just be me.
It’s definitely you. That’s about as Jeet Heer a thing to say as I can think of.
I know any number of people (including myself) who find the rereading of a compelling prose work more time-consuming than the initial reading. And don’t get me started on the relative time-consumption of rereading a compelling poem.
This is not to say that rereading a compelling comic doesn’t take up more time than the initial reading, but it’s hardly unique to the medium.
The point about poetry is definitely true; I’ve spent a week compulsively rereading a Wallace Stevens poem (and end up still not understanding what the hell he’s talking about.)
I think Bill Randall especially has talked some about links between poetry and comics though…and you could argue that there’s a back and forth between images and text that can shift on rereadings…
Actually I agree about poetry, that it needs to be re-read carefully and slowly. I specifically said “prose text”. I might even add that if we’re talking about a prose writer who is very “poetic” (i.e. uses highly charged, intense language) like Woolf or Nabokov or Updike, then slow reading is also the way to go. But lots of prose fiction re-reads quickly, I find.
Noah: “If I had said, ‘this page is awesome; I can see just by looking at it that Palomar as a whole is a work of transcendent genius,’ would there be the same level of concern about my methodology, I wonder?”
No, the problem with your comments weren’t that they were hostile but that, after looking at one page from one story and another page from another story, you were making large generations about Hernandez’s narratives, the two stories that they were part of, and indeed his whole body of work (generalizations which numerous commentators have refuted in great detail).
Comics are a visual art, so it is deceptively easy to think that you can “get” them quickly. And it is true that you can usually tell if a cartoonist is skilled or clumsy based on a glance. (Usually but not always: there are cartoonists like David Collier and Kim Deitch who seem primitive at first glance but are actually sophisticated storytellers).
“So, then, a person who reads a single volume of Hernandez’s work can comment on it…but not with as much authority as someone who has read the whole series (which you need to do for a monograph.) And, because of the nature of comics, to have really iron-clad authority, you (at least possibly) need not just to read it once, but to reread it numerous times.”
The person who writes a monograph won’t necessarily have more authority than a casual reader. If the monograph is smart and insightful, then the author will have authority. But if a monograph is superficial and un-insightful, then the author of the monograph have little or no authority. For example, there is a museum catalogue called Steranko, Graphic Narrative : Story-telling in the Comics and the Visual Novel written by Philip Fry and Ted Poulos. It’s not very good and rarely gets cited in the literature. So the authors have very little authority, at least as comics experts or Steranko experts (perhaps they’re experts in other fields).
The re-reading of comics that I described and encouraged was not to gain “iron-clad authority” but rather to enjoy the comics. Jaime and Gilbert do fun comics. It’s a pleasure to read them and especially to re-read them. And the more you re-read them, the greater pleasure you can get from their work because each individual story is part of a larger tapestry.
I don’t know why the requirement that critics acquaint themselves with a body of work forecloses the possibility of hostile criticism. Quite the reverse: the best and most convincing hostile critics are the ones who are most deeply immersed in a body of work. Dwight Macdonald wrote a devastating review of James Gould Cozzens By Love Possessed and he had clearly read that book very closely and (if I remember aright) had read some of Cozzens earlier novels. Mark Twain was quite familiar with James Fenimore Cooper’s work, and also wrote a very great and hostile essay.
A more recent example is Marvin Mudrick, who wrote very harshly about some very big name authors (Joyce Carol Oates, Hemingway, James Joyce and even Shakespeare himself). Whenever he attacked one of these authors, Mudrick would read their whole body of work. An anecdote from Roger Sale:
“Not long ago the man whose office is next to mine, David Wagoner, had his fifth novel reviewed by Mudrick in The Hudson Review. Mudrick had not liked the novel very much, but, not content with that, he had gone back and read Wagoner’s first four before describing his opinion of the fifth. Wagoner was understandably not very happy at Mudrick’s dislike of his novels, but more than that he was dumbfounded by Mudrick’s procedure. I could only tell him that this was just like Mudrick, and also that I too knew no one else who would read five novels by a man in order to be able to level against one in just the terms he wanted.” (Roger Sale, “The Great Reviewer,” The Hudson Review, Vol. 23, No. 4, Winter, 1970-1971, pp. 772-778.)
Comics related examples would be Gary Groth and Kim Thompson. In the early days of the Journal, when they went after somebody like Don McGregor or Will Eisner, they actually read their work carefully, which made the resulting critical drubbing all the more devastating. As I’ve said before, one problem with Noah is that he wants to be the Groth or Thompson of our times, but he doesn’t want to put in the intellectual labour that’s needed to be a strong critic.
Ah, but I very much don’t want to be Gary or Kim, though I admire the writing of both. Among other things, they both have an ideological and institutional commitment to the comics form that I absolutely don’t aspire to.
Noah: but you spend a fair bit of time and energy not just writing about comics but also running the HU site. To my mind that shows “an ideological and institutional commitment to the comics form.” Your ideology is different that Gary and Kim’s but it’s still an ideology. And at this point, HU is an institution, for better or worse.
Sorry: “Your ideology is different THAN Gary and Kim’s but it’s still an ideology.”
“And at this point, HU is an institution, for better or worse.”
Okay, now I’m just flattered.
Noah says:
“Presumably you’re not going to reread something numerous times if you hate it, so this is a way to make sure that nobody with real authority dislikes the canon, I guess.”
I think this cuts to the joint of the blogger/academic distinction.
As a academic I often re-re-reread things I can’t stand. But others cite/pay homage to it, and I need to be able to speak with authority on it. In fact, many of the things I analyze (mid-twentieth century non-fiction film) are hardly things I’d watch under different circumstances. But again, if I want to work through the theory I do like I need to know these things. Otherwise I risk seriously mis-deploying the theory.
That said, as Suat points out, many academics fake it… I had a professor tell me that Marshall McLuhan rarely read past the introduction of anything he cited.
That said, if I’m at an academic conference, and someone does a close reading of a section of text I haven’t read, and that reading seems fishy to me, I feel free to question them on it, right there. This is maybe the equivalent to what Noah did… hardly something to get up in arms about. Sorry about the ramble. Anyway, the LR #3 Jeet cites as a reprise of themes is the one I recommended in another thread. I dare Noah not to like it just a little…
Mid-twentieth century non-fiction film. Ooh.
I say ooh in all seriousness. Have you seen this, Nate? http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger
Oh yeah… I’ve spent lots of time on that site. There’s also a subscription only set-up called American History in Video that has all kinds of newsreel and information film material online and searchable. If you have access to a university with access, it’s a sweet deal. I’m hoping it will save me a trip or two to the National Archives.
Cool. You should check out Megan Prelinger’s book, too, if you haven’t: http://www.amazon.com/Another-Science-Fiction-Advertising-1957-1962/dp/0922233357
It’s fantastic. Scholarship aside on a purely aesthetic note, she found and reproduced these ads from Los Alamos with abstract space-agey paintings that are just gorgeous.
I live in DC, so a trip to the Archives is less of a hassle for me. But I would say if you can find what you need on a site like that or a subscription service, it’s better, because the Archives has god-awful indexing for a lot of their material. I once watched this amazing footage of Monsanto workers conducting radioactivity tests on live rats, from the 1940s, and the index entry said “Air Force footage” and a series of numbers that nobody at the archives could associate with anything and NOTHING ELSE. Not even a date in the index entry. And a box of materials with some really interesting material on the Atoms for Peace program was labeled “Office 45, main building, notebooks.”
There needs to be a National Archives wiki or something where people can capture information about what they find so we start to get some aggregated knowledge that’s more organized and useful than what they have…
Caro,
You should email me off the comments section. Most of my research is in nuclear test films, and it sounds like we have shop we could talk.